Three Tilda's, links and a video

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend and are ready to take on the coming week with energy, happiness and joy : ) 

Last Monday I went to my local Michaels armed with a gift certificate and a coupon for 20 percent off my entire purchase, including sale items.  While I was walking through one of the aisles two ladies stopped me and asked if I knew anything about scrapbooking.  They were shopping for a daughter/grand daughter and did not have any idea of what was needed. An hour later I had helped them pick out a "starter" packet of goodies for the lucky young lady, and I warned them both that scrapbooking was very addictive and that they should watch out because the next time they end up at Michaels it could well be for themselves!  (We all know how easy it is to get pulled into the world of papercrafting.)

While I don't do much scrapbooking, I do a whole lot of stamping/card making.  Stamping, to me anyway, is a sort of therapy.  I can go into my corner (yes, going to your corner can be a good thing sometimes), take out some paper, stamps, ink, embellishments and forget about everything except the card in front of me.  This weekend I managed to play some more with the distress inks, and I have to say the more I use them the more I absolutely LOVE the way they bring the stamped images to life.

Here are the three cards I worked on this weekend:

From 2010-02-21

From 2010-02-21

From 2010-02-21

And here are a few more tips for using the distress inks as paint:

1.)  Use a heavy watercolor paper, at least 120, I bought some 140 lb cold press this weekend that was on sale at Aaron Brothers, 15 9 x 12 sheet pads for $4.49.  I still can't find any "hot press" paper in my area, but I will keep looking and may order some online.

90 lb paper is not heavy enough in my opinion, the paper starts to pill and warp as you add layers of color.

2.)  Experiment with the effect that you want:  putting water on the paper before you add color will give you a softer, more muted effect, applying the paint directly to dry paper gives you a brighter color, but you have to work to feather out the color so you don't get a harsh line.

3.) Make sure you have an assortment of paint brushes, I use a round 5,4,2,1 and 0 for my coloring.  The larger brushes I use to put down a light base of color, the smaller brushes for adding deeper amounts of color and soot black to areas for shadow.

While I have lots of copic markers, colored pencils, chalks and other coloring mediums, I am becoming ever so partial to the distress inks, especially since I am still experimenting with the technique.

How about some links and a video this week?  Lots of wonderful things are going on in the stamping world, and here are just a few things you might find fun and interesting:

More flowers:  Easy, easy, easy, and ohhhhhh so cute!  I loved this project, and thought the flowers were amazing!  Nothing special is needed beyond a scallop circle punch and your imagination.

Flourish stamp set:  Good price on these stamps, and a great set to add to your collection.  Flourish styled stamps are so versatile, no stamp collection is complete without a few of these stamps. And check out this link on how you can use these stamps to make other images.

Paper Reference Deck:  While I do not have a large amount of SU paper, I do have all sorts of other solid paper that this reference deck would work well with.  Having your solid colored card stock in a reference deck is a great help when trying to match designer paper.

And yet MORE homemade flowers: These are quick, easy, cute and inexpensive to make.  Buying flowers can add $$$ to your budget, so why not make as many of them as you can, adding fewer store bought and more homemade flowers to your projects.

Crafting the Web:  Wow!  Amazing cards, lots and lots of copic step by step coloring and an overall great blog to bookmark and visit often.  You are going to love the cards that Theresa Momber creates.

Make the Cut:  I thought this looked interesting, and given that I do not own a Cricut am not in the market for this product, however I thought some of you with Cricuts would find this product useful.  If anyone has this product already please post a comment and let us know what you think.  And here is one review I found with a number of comments about this product.

DoCraft TV:  Lots of great videos from this fun UK website. 

Video, video and more video!  Yes, lots and lots for you to view here, over 1,300 stamping/crafting videos.  Many of these videos are basic in nature, so make sure to save the link for anyone you know who is just getting started with stamping.

And here is yet another Jennifer McGuire video (she does the absolute BEST videos!).  This time she is showing all sorts of ways to use alcohol inks with glass and transparencies (I have to try some of these techniques):


Thank you for stopping by!  And thank you for all of your nice comments, I love hearing from you.