Shrink plastic playtime

I've been playing with shrink plastic. Please excuse the awful scans, my Hewlett Packard all in one scanner, copier, printer doesn't like scanning anything which isn't completely flat.

I shrink all my shrink plastic on a thick wooden board. If you shrink it on top of paper, it will probably stick to your paper half way through the process and you'll never get them apart!!! I think a craft sheet base is also good.

Lots of people have trouble with shrink plastic, I used to when I used the Milwaukee type heat gun and I don't have any trouble since switching to the 'hair dryer' style of heat gun. I also take the heat away once the plastic starts to 'move' and bring it back to specific spots to try and control the process. If it starts curling, aim the heat to the underside of the curl and it will curl back and flatten out. If you do this throughout the shrinking process, it is unlikely to curl enough to stick to itself. When you think it;s finished shrinking, if it's not flat enough for you, you can use a pallette knife to flip it over and give the back a bit of heat. Flip it back, and if it's still not as flat as you'd like, lay an acrylic block on it and leave it to cool under the block - if you press, you will also squash the plastic and it can go out of shape.

Remember when adding colour to shrink plastic that it intensifies hugely and often darkens as the plastic shrinks. If you lightly sand the shrink plastic before colouring, it 'grabs' the colour better. Use a nail buffer or the sanding blocks Lucky Squirrel sell for the purpose, or very very fine sandpaper. sand one way, then again at 90 degrees, so the sanding is 'cross hatched'. If you want your shrink plastic to have holes in it, or a particular shape, cut it out before heating, as you won't be able to cut it afterwards.

If you want all over colour, add just enough that you can only just see the colour, and you will probably find you've added more than you planned once shrunk! You can use chalks (probably the best think to colour clear shrink), colouring pencils (good for background colour), pigment inks (good for background colour and images, but pretty opaque), Brilliance inks (good for everything, but need to dry overnight for images), Stazon (great for images).

Remember, you can click on the images to see larger versions showing more detail.


This pair of ATCs use 3 different colours of shrink plastic in 3 different ways. The ATC on the left has embellishments made from clear shrink plastic, stamped on with Galaxy Gold brilliance ink (and left overnight to dry - this ink is marvellous on shrink plastic but it really needs that drying time). The colour is added on the same side as the images, also Brilliance ink (but you don't need this to dry before shrinking, as it doesn't matter if it smudges. Shrink, and edge with a Brilliance ink.

The ATC on the right has a randomly shaped left over piece of black shrink plastic (although colour probably doesn't matter here) which I coated with a pretty thick coat of Stewart Gill Pearlise (Black Pearl) . This technique works will all Stewart Gill paints, I haven't tried it with other fabric paints, and it doesn't work with ordinary acrylics, as far as I know. It's something to do with the binder in the paint, I think. Anyway, once the paint is on, just heat and shrink (more carefully and slowly than usual, in stages if necessary, you want it to curl as little as possible). The paint ruffles and creates an 'encrusted' texture on the surface of the shrink plastic. The texture also has some shimmer, which means if you get your colour combinations right, it can look like bronze which has been under the sea for centuries...

The other piece of shrink plastic was white, but I added some ochre pigment ink to soften the background colour, then stamped the image with black Stazon ink. This is is fantastic for using with shrink plastic - it dries very quickly and is permanenet, so great for images.



This dangly decoration design is based on a lovely gift Maggi sent me. She made hers in paper, I decided to try it in shrink plastic. I used clear shrink plastic, and stamped all images with black Stazon. I added background colour using Colorbox pigment inks. The smallest squares were punched using an inchie punch, the others were careful measured and cut squares. It's all 'Lucky Squirrel' brand shrink plastic, and I wasn't careful to keep the orientation of the shrink the same after I had punched. The shrink plastic shrinks ever so slightly more in one direction than the other, so my carefully measured squares have come out as diamond shapes. No problem with that, but I would have liked it if they had all been short and fat or tall and thin. I will make another, ensuring I keep all the shrink the same way up!

I have noticed that tall oblong pieces often shrink into parallellograms, or shrink 'off square', and squares often turn into diamonds. I wish they'd invent a shrink plastic which shrank in completely true proportion to the original. This effect shows more and more the larger your piece is. So if you don't want it to be noticed, work with pieces which are less than 2 inches in any dimension before shrinking!

Opals embossing powder & ironing

I have wanted to play with Annette's 'Ironed Opals' technique for some time, but don't have anywhere to buy the Vilene stuff Annette uses. I'm also not quite sure which Vilene product it is. Today, I decided not to let that stop me experimenting, so I tried the technique using what I have at home. I bought some nappy liners a long time ago, but could never make them go into interesting holes (which is what I had bought them for!!!). Today, I laid a nappy liner on a piece of non-stick baking paper, then laid a sheet of iridescent gift wrap on top, then sprinkled with Opals, added another nappy liner, plus another layer of non stick paper, and ironed the whole thing:


You can see the gap half way down on the left where there was no gift wrap. The nappy liner behaves differently when there is nothing to stabilise it.

So, I tried just using 2 nappy liners with a layer of Opals between them:


The Opals fuse the nappy liners together, and if everything gets hot enough, the nappy liners start to make holes. When you peel the Opals sheet from the non-stick paper, it is not very shiny. A quick blast from the heat gun brings back the shine. It also makes more holes, and enlarges holes made whilst ironing. It's a balance between getting the shine back and not destroying the whole piece!

Next, I decided to try and stabilise the nappy liners by adding scraps of gift wrap, and sprinkling snippets of metallic fibres over the 'sandwich filling' between the nappy liners. And I like the 'fabric' of this best (not so sure about the colours LOL):


The scraps of gift wrap stop holes appearing in the nappy liner, so do little piles of the metallic fibre stuff, cut into short lengths. The metallic fibre is something I bought from BitsNPeices4U in the belief that they might be fusible fibres (which they are not). Click on the pictures above for more detail.

Christmas presents

I have been busy making 24 Christmas presents for the 12 days of Christmas swap on CC Swaps yahoo group.

I won't spoil the surprise for the recipients by posting pictures of what I made, but I was so pleased with the way they looked when I'd finished wrapping them (never my strong point LOL) that I thought I'd share that here.

For the smaller presents, I sprayed mulberry or silk papers with colourwash sprays, and for the larger flatter gifts, I crumpled brown paper up then sprayed each sheet with 3 colours of Radiant Rain. A quick handmade tag and tied it all up with soem interesting balck yarn to add drama. I hope the recipients realise that the wrapping is part of the gift, to be used in their art!

Stamp versatility swap

The idea of this swap was to explore how the same stamp can be used to create different 'looks'. We each had to create 3 cards or ATCs using the same stamp in different ways. here's my take on it, using a stamp by Invoke Arts:

Background - Reynolds freezer paper used in a 'spray box', which has accumulated overspray from previous projects on non-plasticised side. Adhere to cardstock using gel medium.

Embellishment - heat fun foam with a heat gun until it begins to curl, stamp into fun foam and hold the stamp down as hard as you can for about a minute, until the foam cools. Remove stamp, cut around image. Paint the fun foam with 2 coats of a paint intended for fabrics - I used Stewart Gill, but Lumieres would be fine. Once dry, gently rub some Rub'n'Buff or Treasure Gold over the raised areas to highlight them. Adhere to the background using glue dots.

Background - cover cardstock with small pieces of metal tape, burnish, then use a Ten Seconds Studio metal roller tool to add texture. Rub with Rub'n'Buff or Treasure Gold to dirty it up a bit, then add colour with a Brilliance Inkpad.

Embellishement - fold a piece of Fantasy Film (ART Glitter Institute) or Glitterati (Stewart Gill) in half and put into a hot laminating pouch. Laminate, then stamp image using Stazon ink. Cut around image once ink is dry, and adhere to background with gel medium. The scan doesn't show the iridescence that is visible in real life.

Background - coat the card with Golden Iridescent Copper paint. make fabric paper - lay a thin cotton fabric (muslin in the US, 'lawn' in the UK) onto a plastic sheet, coat with diluted PVA glue - the cheaper the glue, the better. Add pieces of thin gift wrapping paper, leaving gaps between, coat with more diluted glue, add a sheet of white tissue paper, smooth down, add more diluted glue, and while the glue is still wet, add very diluted Golden fluid acrylic paints (other acrylics will also work, but diluting them until they are the thickness of ink may render some cheaper paints fairly colourless as they don't have enough pigment). leave overnight to dry. Overstamp with Brilliance ink - I used Cosmic Copper and a Stamp Camp stamp. Glue to felt using PVA glue, cut to size, adhere to cardstock and edge with 3 dimensional paint, which gives a 'faux solder' effect.

Embellishment - lightly colour some translucent shrink plastic with pigment ink, stamp image using Brilliance ink - I used Pearlescent Olive. Leave overnight to dry. Cut around image, shrink with heat gun, adhere to fabric paper with glue dot. Take a small metal tile, colour with alcohol inks, edge with copper tape, stamp part of image with Stazon, adhere to fabric paper with glue dot.

I had lots of fun experimenting, playing with techniques old and new, and combining techniques. I hope the recipient likes the results!

Lutradur

I went on a course at Gallery Textiles with Annie, to learn about Lutradur. I had purchased a sheet of Lutradur last year but didn't have the confidence to play with it in case I "ruined" it. Now I know that "ruining" it is one of the fun things to do with it!!!

Lutradur is a lightweight polyester fibre substance which responds to heat by melting, and which can be coloured in a range of ways. It can also be printed on (but the images will be ghostly rather than dark and crisp), or have toner based images and text transferred onto it with acetone. Colour can ba added using transfer dyes or even colourwashes or paints, but these may not react in quite the way you expect as the lutradur doesn't actually absorb the wash or paint, this wraps itself round each fibre and clings to itself. And you cna't hurry the drying, because heat melts Lutradur!

The piece below was stamped with Xpandaprint (sometimes called dimensional fabric medium) using a foam stamp. I learn that less is more with this stuff!


Once stamped, if you carefully heat, the Xpandaprint bubbles and expands into a raised image. At that point I sprayed the whole piece with a colourwash, then used hot foils to highlight the highest areas of the main focal point with gold. (Not all foils use heat, some only work with glues.)

I then took a versatool and used the fine solder point, to 'cut' the Lutradur here and there,and wafted a heat gun over it for a while until it started to melt into small distressed holes.

The piece below was black Lutradur (70g weight), which was coloured using metallic paints. They give texture rather than lots of colour. Once painted and dry, I used Xpandapriont and a stencil to create the ferns, then heated them until they expanded. As this was a test piece, I used the fine soldering tool again, to cut some shapes into the Lutradur. You can use metal stencils to cut precisesly, the tip goes through the Lutradur like a hot knife through butter. I heated the whole piece with the heat gun, if you enlarge by clicking on the image, you can see where the cut and heated areas are.


This is fun stuff and I am sure I will be using it again.

Canvas with metal

Another birthday or two, another canvas or two! I made 2 similar canvases for friends with birthdays. I painted the canvases purple because one of them loves purple, then stamped a swirly flourish with Victorian Violet Brilliance ink. I made the heart embellishment by cutting up an aluminium can, then running it through the Wizard with a small Cuttlebug heart die. It left a deep mark in the cutting mat... I ran it thought the Wizard again in the little embossing folder, to emboss it, and gave it a coat of Ranger alcohol inks - Eggplant, Currant and Wild Plum.


Finally, I adhered the heart and buttons using sticky dots. I hope both friends like their presents!

Playing with fun foam

Today I made a 5 x 5 chunky book page out of fun foam (aka funky foam). I thought it would travel well, being bendy and waterproof!!! I heated the foam and stamped images into it while it was still hot. I protected already stamped area with a piece of mat board, so I didn't 'warm away' the first impressions while creating later ones.

This started out as green foam, I gave it a coat of Stewart Gill Metallica chestnut, then a coat of Stewart Gill Metallica bronze. Then I gave it lots of Treasure Gold wax rub on, in Olive, Copper and Gold.

I created the focal point by stamping onto a small sheet of mica, and used a piece of fabric paper behind the mica to make the image visible.


For the back of the page, I used the same paints and rub ons, but didn;t dare heat the foam again to stamp into it! So I stamped onto it with Brilliance Galaxy Gold - which you can just about see if you hold it at the right angle to catch the light! The image is a gel medium transfer onto fine cotton fabric, afdhered to the fun foam with more gel medium.



I enjoyed working with a different base so much, that I decided to make my next project out of fun foam, too!!! This swap involved making a set of 4 ATCs, representing the seasons. So, I heated the foam and stamped it withthe most appropriate stamps in my collection, and used Stewart Gill paints and Treasure Gold wax to colour them. Finally, each ATC had an embellishment added, to give a bit more depth and texture. Fun to make, I hope my swap partner likes them!

Deco book page

This is one of the pages I am doing in a round robin of deco books. There are 16 of us and this is the seventh page I have done, the 8th is drying as I write!


Page is painted with Stewart Gill Byzantia paint, no name for the colour, it was a sale item! I gave it a coat of Jo Sonya Opal Dust to add glimmer, then painted the chipboard letters purple and adhered those. The image is fantasy film, using an Enchanted Gallery stamp inked with Stazon and ironed. Don't forget to put a layer of greaseproof or silicone paper between your iron and the fantasy film!


Another fanatsy film embellishment, on a stamped background. I used Pearlescent Crimson Brilliance Ink and a Stampcamp stamp for the background.

In This House pages

On a (mainly Australian) swap group, we are doing an 'In This House' chunky book. We needed to make 15 pages each, using a standard template, where the total page height is 8 inches, and the width is 4.5 inches. Each of us had to choose a different theme for our pages, thereby ensuring no duplication within the books.


I chose 'The Welsh House' - Ty Cymreig - for my theme.

The front and backs of my pages were mat or mount board (used in picture framing), and I covered them with pages from an old Welsh language New Testament. I gave them a wash of lightly tinted gesso, to provide a chalky finish and a 'key' for what I planned to add.


For the front of the page, I created a digital collage, and printed it onto transparency, adhered top the page with Glossy Accents, and trimmed with German Scrap. The collage is made from photographs I have taken over the last year or so, and each element represents something form Welsh history, or which is culturally important.

The fossils represent the ancient landscape, where much of Wales was under the sea, while the modern landscape forms the background to the page. The carved standing stone represents the Celts, who were living in Wales 1500-3000 years ago. The Roman soldier represents the invaders who had such an effect on Wales 2000 years or so ago, the medieval character represents the Norman invaders, who arrived a1000 years o sao ago, and changed the culture and society completely. The timber framed roof is an image of a 1404 house in Beaumaris, the iron signpost in the bottom right hand corner reopresent the industrialisation of Wales (the world's first industrial country) in the 19th century, and the carved Ram's head represents the craftsmanship which abounds across Wales, and also the fact that we have so many sheep!!!


For the back of the page, I decided to use image transfers. I wanted the page to look older and more distressed thatn the front. I printed the reverse images out onto good quality photo paper (Epson double sided matte), then coated them with a very thin coat of soft gel, rapidly followed by a second coat, probably before the first coat was dry. Then I laid the immage onto the page, and ran them through my Wizard. It was easy to peel the paper off and leave the image on the page. I started with an image of a map of Wales:



and added two ladies in 17th century Welsh costume:


then a chapel:


and finally I picked a fern frond from my garden, dired it in the microwave, adhered to the page with gel medium, and painted over it with gesso. I hope I don't fall foul of the Australian customs people with that!

Birthday canvas

Another friend, with another birthday... this friend likes hearts, so I used those instead of/as well as buttons.


I painted the canvas with white gesso, then added a coat of Golden fluid acrylic in titanium buff, then coated the top half in Golden fluid acrylic raw umber, then added a little more titanium buff where the colours joined, to blend the edge a little.

I stamped some flourishes using Golden fluid acrylic bronze, then 'sewed' the hearts on with gold 28 gauge wire.

Birthday canvas

Life has been way too busy of late, and I haven't really had much time to have fun, but this canvas for a friend's birthday was fun to do!!! The background is canvas painted with white gesso, then acrylic paint, then stamped with white gesso. The heart is fun foam - heated, stamped into while hot, and cut out when cold. A touch of rub on wax in a metallic finish adds something, too.


I hope she likes her 'birthday card'!!!

Victorian Gothic themed wedding

So, when a friend invites you to their wedding, and tells you it is 'Victorian Gothic' themed in terms of clothing, you have just the thing at the back of your wardrobe, don't you?

After trawling through what seemed like millions of websites, and a couple of costume hire shops, I decided I would have to make my own costume.

I'm not quite sure what Victorian Gothic looks like, but I couldn't find much in the way of sewing patterns, so I went for a 'kind of' medieval style of dress, and thought the dark colour of the taffeta fabric made it a bit more gothic. As the wedding was in mid August, when it is supposed to be hot here in the UK, I took the advice of the fabric shop staff, and lined the dress with antistatic/anti cling lining material. Of course, that meant making 2 dresses, and sewing them together round the neck. About half way through, I did begin to wonder about my sanity...



The front of the dress has a net panel, with small diamante gems and iridescent beading, using seed beads. I did the beading while working away from home last week - about an hour before breakfast and 2 hours after dinner for 3 days.


Husbands like to take pictures from the most unflattering angles...




The back of the dress is laced. We hunted everywhere for the right kind of ribbon or cord to lace it with, and eventually bought some braided cord in a pale gold, which I was dyeing with Adirondack colorwashes 2 hours before the wedding. I went to the wedding with very gothic looking deep green fingers LOL.

The bride wore a blood red dress with a basque style top and medieval sleeves. Only a few others dressed up, one lady had a black dress with some sequins and embroidery on the bodice, and several men wore frock coats, frilly shirts and cravats. I didn't feel too out of place, and the dress attracted a few compliments!

Iridescent gift wrap background

I have been in a fantastic 'angelic' skinny page swap which involved quite a few Australians. Some of them had used fantasy film in an interesting way on their pages. They had stamped and embossed an image onto their backgrounds, coated the page with gel medium, added fantasy film and heated. The embossed pattern shows through the fantasy film - a really neat effect. I tried it with a couple of chunky pages I am making and it was a complete disaster - the fantasy film shrank and distorted the pages beyond any possible flattening out. I wondered if I had done it wrong, or should try again using much thicker cardstock.

While I was thinking about this, I remembered some other 'stuff' - a year or two ago, Zeborah (see blog links) was playing with some iridescent gift wrap, trying to make 'faux dichroic glass'. I couldn't get any of the giftwrap here in the UK, and 'Legs' (http://www.picturetrail.com/queenoftexas) very kindly sent me some. I have since discovered fantasy film, which is thicker, has better colour, and stands up to heat better. However, for this technique, I think the thinner iridescent gift wrap has the edge.

I painted some cardstock with Stewart Gill Byzantia Aegean paint, then embossed it with a Stampcamp stamp which looks like the veining in rock, and a deep green iridescent embossing powder. I coated this with some gel medium, laid the gift wrap on top, and zapped with my heat gun. This is how it looks:


I then used the background to make some ATCs - for this one, I stamped onto heatproof acetate, and embossed the image in white. It is adhered to the ATC with Glossy Accents.



For this one, I stamped and embossed the image on acetate, then added some embossing to the background so that it is hard to tell where the acetate begins and ends.


For the final ATC, I dumped a small pile of 'Macquirie' Opals embossing powder onto a craft sheet, heated until melted, then stamped into it using this stamp from Cre8it. Once it was cold, just peeled it off the craft sheet and stuck it onto the ATC.

Had to have it swap

For this swap, you had to use something that you 'had to have' at the time you purchased it, but haven't actually got around to using! There were so many things in my stash to choose from...




In the end, I chose 3 things - some charms which I love but couldn't bring myself to use; a pasta machine which I had bought with the intention of conditioning polymer clay; and polymer clay, which I bought ages ago but haven't had the confidence to play with.


I covered some mountboard (about 2.5 inches by 4 inches) with brown paper, and gave it several coats of purple Stewart Gill True Colour paint (I still seem to be on the 'purple' trip!).

I stamped it with a texture stamp in Brilliance Galaxy Gold, and didn't like it, so gave it another coat of purple!!! It does have slightly more depth as a result.

I used black Fimo polymer clay for the embellishment in the centre - Fimo is most commonly available brand of clay in the UK. I conditioned it in a pasta machine, then stamped into it with a flourish stamp. I trimmed it into a tile shape, and brushed it with purple and gold PearlEx before cooking it in my Melt Pot (which I hardly ever use).

I attached a little hanging bracket to the back, and adhered the polymer clay tile and charms to the front, using Golden extra heavy gel medium. I hope my partner like it, because I will have a little trouble letting it go!

Purple & gold skinny page

I made this page for a small swap, the brief was that we had to make the page mostly purple with gold, and that we had to use a Paper Artsy stamp somewhere on the page.

The front of my page is on the right, I painted white textured cardstock with some purple Stewart Gill paint, then painted a layer of Jo Sonya's gold dust medium on top. This is a thinnish gel medium with small gold flakes suspended in it. When it dries, you can't see the medium, just the gold flakes. I accidentally did a second coat on one page and the medium has gone semi opaque, I won't make that mistake again.

Next step was to add some gold down the left hand side. I have some starry punchinella, so I stippled gold paint through it. I then stamped the Paper Arsty stamp several times over the length of the page, and embossed with violet interference embossing powder. This gave quite a subtle look to the pattern. The main embellishment is a moulded piece of friendly plastic - I like the partial mould effect rather than the 'perfect' moulded piece. Friendly plastic is lightweight and resilient, and survives postal journeys really well.

The back of the page is sprayed with 2 or 3 purple colour sprays, the daubed with some scrunched up plastic to give some texture. I stamped the image 3 times with Versamark and embossed with jewelled gold embossing powder, then stamped the image twice more in purple dye ink.

Fabric paper ATC

I made an ATC for a friend, using fabric paper:

http://adriennegoodenough.blogspot.com/2007/11/beryl-taylors-art-soul-class.html

as the background.

I stamped and embossed it and added an air dry clay face. Sadly, it hasn't scanned too well, because of the thickness of the face.
It's a shame to send him on his travels,
I'd quite like him to stay and keep me company!!!

A deco book

I haven't had a deco to work on for a little while, then this one arrived. It was completely bare, i was the first person to work in it. Daunting, or what. I looked at the blank page for nearly a week before I managed to put some paint on it.

Finally, I coated both sides with Stewart Gill paint, then adhered a piece of fantasy film (mother of pearl) with gel medium, then ironed the page between 2 sheets of baking paper. It has left a kind of mother of pearl effect on the page.


I stamped over the fantasy film using Ranger archival ink in grape, and used the same ink to stamp the words above.


The back of the page is also 2/3rds covered with fantasy film, and the purple piece is a piece of glossy cardstock, stamped with an image (Diva Impressions) in Brilliance, dried and rubbed all over with purple dye ink. The Brilliance resists the dye ink.

Row Houses

Well, I know these little row houses are very popular, and are popping up all over the net, but I had real trouble with them!!! I needed to make 26 for a swap. I looked at other people's, and loved them all, but couldn't quite get my own take on them straight. I have dabbled and dabbled, which is why there are several little groups of differing styles within the pictures.

When I finished, although they don't seem to have a cohesive 'style' I was happy with all but one. Can you guess which???

Update - I mailed these to the swap hostess in two batches (because I left the top 5 on the scanner bed and didn't find out till the next day). And only the set of 5 arrived. Somewhere in the British postal system, reside my 21 row houses, all unappreciated. How sad is that?

Angelic pages 2

These are the other 3 angelic pages I made for the Angelic Tall & Skinny book (which is going to be the fattest skinny book I have ever seen!)


Group 4 pages - I started with some dark pewter flower patterned/textured cardstock, and smooshed a black inkpad over the textured pattern to bring the pattern out. On the other side of the card, I used a magazine page to dab various shades of metallic, transparent and opaque acrylic paints onto the page. The paints were a mixture of Golden fluid acrylics and Jacquard Lumiere paints. Once dry, I stamped over them with some antique text in Galaxy gold Brilliance ink.

The angel on the left is actually Victory, it is a photograph of part of a a Roman bronze relief plaque found at Caerleon Roman Fortess in south Wales. I separated her from her background in Photoshop Elements.

The angel on the right is a scan of a half finished angel as used for one of my previous pages, before I added the upper body. I rather liked it, so I used it as one side of this page.


Group 5 pages - the images are both Tiffany stained glass panels. I love Tiffany glass, the coliurs are so rich and the designs are beautiful. I didn't want my background to detract from the beauty of the glass, so I just crumpled some black tissue paper, smoothed it out, and stuck it to cardstock with gel medium. I smooshed over the top of the creases with Versamark, then used 2 colours of Moonglow embossing powders mixed together - Angel Peacock Wings and Desert Moon Copper Pine. These turned into gorgeous deep green pearlescent highlights on the page.


Finally, my Group 2 pages. The page on the left is another crumpled background - this time it is crumpled copy paper. I coloured it with colourwashes, dried it, crumpled it, and used a Pearlescent Purple Brilliance pad to highlight the raised areas. I took the photograph of the graveyard angels, and turned them purple in Photoshop Elements before printing onto transparency. I used gel medium to adhere the transparency onto some iridescent textured gift wrap, which just adds some glittery sparkle behind some parts of the image.

The page on the right is a digital collage of a child graveyard angel, layered onto a background of a faded wall with ferns growing in it. I stamped the phrase using pigment ink.

Time tip in page

The theme for the CC Swaps monthly tip in page is 'Time'. I am still playing with fantasy film, so thought I'd make my page embellishments shine. I used 2 colours of film, and inked up some time themed rubber stamps with black Stazon ink, laid 2 layers of fantasy film on top, a layer of copy paper on top, then ironed with a dry iron on the cotton setting. This fuses the fantasy film layers together and heat sets the ink into the film. A quick trim around the edges, and you have gorgeous shimmery embellishments. Stamps by Non Sequitur and Invoke Arts.



The backgrounds of the pages were plain cardstock, painted and daubed with Stewart Gill Pearlise paint in Mermaid and Paua Shell. They are all shimmery. I stamped the 'time' background and embossed it with 2 different embossing powders - and interference one (which doesn't show up because the background wasn't dark enough), and a gorgeous pearlescent one from Simply Craft in Cardiff. The owner has had her own range of embossing powders made to her own specification, and they are gorgeous. They are a little more expensive than the ones I usually use, but I think they are worth it. Finally, I stamped the 'time spiral' using turquoise Stazon ink.