Paper Napkin Transfers

Happy New Year's Eve! 

Hello. Our plans fell through for the evening so I have a few minutes to do up a quick post about the fun I have had with paper napkin transfers. Admittedly, the first attempt was not fun but the experience improved significantly the second time around.

Zoo had sent out a link of a woman doing paper napkin transfers and I was intrigued. She made it look so nice and easy and relaxing. Here is her link.

In her video she used NoName plastic wrap like I have, a medium temperature iron and very little effort. When I tried it the napkins were getting ironed nice and flat but there was not much sticking involved, except with the paper I was ironing it all between and the excess plastic wrap. I then tried it on a hard book with a hotter iron and had a little more success but ended up pressing down sooo hard that I bent my ironing board, lol. At this point, I decided it was either a bust or I would buy some brand name stickier plastic wrap and try it one more time. 

I did shop today and bought some Glad Cling Wrap and tried again. It was sooo much better! I still had to put my iron on a little more than medium but I didn't have to press too hard and it stuck pretty good.

So the emoji napkin transfers were with the NoName wrap and most of them I can peel off if I wanted to so am worried about making things with them and then having them peel off. I may need to frame each one. Aren't they cute though? I was thinking of making kids cards with them.

These last two, below, I was fed up and so I matt mediumed the card stock and placed the napkins right on. I then flattened them using a piece of parchment paper so it wouldn't stick. They turned out fine. A bigger napkin  might not have attached to the page as flat as these smaller sections.

With the leaves napkin I used the much stickier Cling Wrap by Glad. When I started, I thought I was going to like the all colour side the best but in the end I love the leaves with the white. I have put a few napkins in the "Take to Zoo's" box, as I know she will want to play with them. I like hearts and she likes leaves.

In the shot below, you can see one of the corners didn't stick after I trimmed the edges. This amount of fixing will be easy with a tiny bit of matt medium or glue.

So there you have it... using paper napkins from the kitchen for use in the craft room. I hope you all have a wonderful New Year's Eve and an awesome 2018!

Take care and have fun!

Red Bear : )

Hello again. I wasn't sure where to put the cards I made with the paper napkins... a new post or added to this one.  Obviously, I chose the latter of the two options. I had such fun with these silly little happy faces. I will end up using them for my valentines cards this year, I think. 

I made a few : )

I used embossing folders on the backgrounds, eyelets (cheaper to mail than brads), string, funky scissors and circles. Easy and adorable.

 I used the different yellow faces on the insides. I only showed the 'lmao' tear smiley face inner.

Have a wonderful January! 

Red Bear : )

A stamp technique for use with stamps without designs

Hello again. Here is the post I had planned to do next. Zoo sent me a Two Minute Tuesday YouTube video by Connie Stewart  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfpDahwmGzs&list=PLxCtNfpskJFdwaN-N-l1VWQ31GZrPZzRS&index=34&ab_channel=ConnieStewart    and the following is my first experimentation with the techniques. I had a blast, ended up with completely inked up hands and can't wait to do some more. 

The first stamp that I came across that was flat without any detail was a butterfly from the StampinUps Flight of the Butterfly stamp set (the all black on in the case).

I stamped the butterfly with my StampinUp Tangelo Twist ink pad, stamped it off a number of times on a scrap piece of paper, then used the chain link fence stamp by Finnabair, inked in StampinUp's Cajun Craze ink to add the detail. The difference in the below images is from the number of times I stamped it onto the scrap paper. I then tried to add the body of the butterfly in the correct place and it didn't work the best. That of course took me on a sidebar thought process into making my own MISTI type stamp placement tool but that will have to wait for a future post.

The below picture is all the design stamps I used in this technique practice. I will add others as I come to them. 

 

The next unadorned stamp I used was a simple flower from the StampinUp set called A Beautiful Thing. I did end up using the detailed stamp from that set and had difficulty placing it in the right spot of the stamped image (hence more thought into making my own MISTI).

Here on in, shows the end of session one of making new stamps from existing ones in my cupboard. Me, being me.. I could not see wasting the tap off twice ink onto scrap paper or my work surface, so you can see I incorporated the original inked plain flower onto the page and then stamped the new designs around it. I had sooo much fun doing this and the pages turned out so sweet.

Here is a closer up couple of the flower samples. As I said above, I inked in tangelo Twist and then I experimented inking the detail in the same tangelo twist and also in StampinUp's Cajun Craze and Island Indigo. 

These two StampinUp background stamps are my ultimate favourites so of course they came out in the experiment. One of my favourite designs with this new technique is using the right (lines) background stamp and using the twist. It produced the coolest design ever.

 Upon coming home later that day, I once again sat in my craft room and played with this new technique. This time I used my plain square stamps, which I had purchased years ago with ideas in my head that did not work in real life. As I never get rid of stamps, ever, I had them still for experimenting with and I love them both in the sampling.

These two stamps are made by Shadow Stamps and the small one is A1873 Background 1 and the big one is A1875 Shadow Stamp 111.

The colours I used for big square samplings were tangelo twist and cherry cobbler by StampinUp.

I used the design stamps from above but added more of the green background plates. These came from the local Rewards Store's clearance bin and don't have a brand name that I can find. They are not stamps per say but I use everything as stamps for the most part. (the sentiment stamp I borrowed off Zoo and didn't use until the blue samples using the small squares. A note about word stamps and this technique... they end up reversed and backward which upon talking to Zoo is a great idea for making reverse stamped images for things we have wanted to stamp in another direction. Another future post, lol.)

I love this sampling. The square is large and thus the design added is more defined. It is two colours I love together and in general makes my day.






For the final sampling, I used the small square and two darker colours. I used the Island Indigo and Navy by StampinUp and the finished product reminded me of denim which I love. This one took the longest and hurt the hand/elbow the most because the stamp was only about an inch square but it is so adorable.

After playing with the technique I, of course, had to make some cards. I used up all of the flower paper and then saved one of each of the square samplers to send to Zoo. As usual, the pictures don't show the true colours but I did try out some new flag sort of designs that came to mind for the first ones and then used up a butterfly on the remainder of the flower ones. I used my home made MISTI to place the three hellos om the strip of paper at the side.

For the first tangelo/cherry cobbler big square design card I used a Yo-Yo I had made months ago that was the perfect colour (see a couple of posts previous to this one). I used a pair of the kids funky scissors and I think it turned out beautiful.

I hate to cover up all the hard work of the sampling so I tried to make the designed paper the focal point for the most part. In the ones below I used up scraps from cutting the edges with the funky scissors and I love how they turned out.

I used my home made MISTI for placing the 'To' and 'You' words. I added the tag at the bottom but thought it needed some green at the top so added the  2 words.



Over all I had an awesome time playing with Connie Stewart's stamp kissing technique and look forward to doing some more in the future. We will see what comes first... me playing with this technique some more or something else Zoo sends me to focus my attention on. Your guess is as good as mine : )


Have a great night!

Red Bear

Fold open window card

Good morning. I know my next post was going to be the 'Kiss it and make it better by Connie Stewart' but something came up that I just had to share. I was at a potluck yesterday with some other stampers and we exchanged Christmas cards. One person had done a cute fold open type window idea that I thought was too sweet for life so I came home and tried one after supper. The following is my take on how to do it.

I will start with the finished card so you know what I am doing and then the step by step will come afterward. This card is easy and fun and is full of possibilities for all occasions. The picture doesn't do it justice. It is purple and mustard yellow and I used the bee hive because of the honeycomb pattern on the designer paper.

 

First you choose a double sided piece of paper. I chose from Stampin Up's Moonlight Designer Series pad with a Hello Honey mustard yellow, a Blackberry Bliss purple and a Basic grey colour scheme. 

You then cut a piece 4 1/4 " square (4 &1/4" x 4&1/4"). To score it I used my Martha Stewart score board. I placed the square turned so that 2 of the corners pointed to the 3" marks. One on the top and one on the left. I then scored at the 1", 1 1/2", 4 1/2" and 5" points. Make sure the top and bottom tips of your square are both on the 3"line to start.

You then rotate your square around so that the scored lines are horizontal and then you repeat the first score steps with the remaining two corners.

 If you do not have a score board, scoring can be done as follow. Using a ruler lined up with two opposite corners, measure in 1" and 1 1/2" to find the score points. Do this for each of the corners.

When the score lines are finished, fold all the corners into the centre of the square along the inner     (1 1/2") score line.

Then fold the 1" corner tips out, showing off the inner designed paper. 

Your folded window is now ready to attach to your card base. Inside my window I added my bee hive from StampinUp's Just Buzzin By stamp set. I stamped it in purple onto white cardstock then cut it out. It was a perfect fit inside the window with a small border of the accent pattern paper to show around the white bee hive paper. I placed it on the purple paper which I had embossed with the CutterBug big dotted embossing folder. I layered some Stampin Up Curry Yellow paper under the paper before putting it on the white card base. The inside of the card has some scraps of the papers I used and then some bees and a saying from the same stamp set. All in all it turned out adorable and was easy to make.

If there is anything I have not made clear, please feel free to make a comment. Everyone's brains think a different way, thank goodness, and if my way of explaining doesn't work I will attempt to explain a different way. I know I jump in and wing it most of the time and then have to remember what I did so I can show Zoo what my brain was thinking at the time. Our thought processes do not always jive but that is a good thing, because we come up with new approaches to things trying to explain our way of doing things. Makes for many more fun things to try and learning new styles makes us both better crafters.

I will get to the kissing stamp techniques next, I promise : )

Have a great day! 

Red Bear

Fabric Yo-Yo's

Good Evening. I hope you all are happy and healthy, have crisp December air to breathe and some snow if you're lucky. It seems like forever since I have done a blog post and as usual I have been busy creating in the craft room but not recording it here. Ironically I talked to Zoo on the phone today and we were both inspired to craft after talking of the blog and all it contained. I, of course, was surprised how many posts I have done. Not being a fan of using the computer for more than entertainment, I have added more than anticipated.

Today I would like to talk about making Yo-yo's. Zoo sent a few videos and web sites to explain what they were and then I had to give some a try. Hand needle work has gone onto the hurt the hands, only do in small measure list, but I must admit they turned out cute. I tried some in a variety of sizes and like the larger circle sizes the best. I tried my Sizzix Circles #2 Bigz Die first and used the largest of the four circles. I ended up mostly tracing a larger circle from a stencil I have onto the fabric and then cutting it out. I found this method and size worked the best for me.

The two sites I used from Zoo's sampling were as follows...

https://www.positivelysplendid.com/fabric-yo-yo-tutorial/

http://www.bhg.com/crafts/sewing/accessories/how-to-make-fabric-yo-yos1/

So I grabbed some fabric from my drawer and away I went. When showing Zoo my new creations on our next skype craft session, she was floored that I had made so many in random colours without a plan for each one. I will eventually use them all and so was happy to prove this recently when one of the yo-yo's was the perfect colour for a card I was making.

This card was stamped using the 'Kiss it and Make it Better by Connie Stewart' video and I will go into this further in my next post. I look forward to making cards or mixed media work with the remainder of my yo-yo's. 

Have a great night!

Red Bear : )