Punchies

Here is the post showing my Mantle snowflakes, and the Christmas explosion that goes with it, and my poor old dog wondering what happened.  Using my Cricut Expression I made huge snowflakes from white paper, and holographic dollar store papers to hang above the mantle for the winter season.  They really were pretty because they were so simple.  I just came across the "waste paper" in my stash.  Funny the things that are squirreled away that turn up.  My inner crow was rejoicing, mmmmm, shiny!  Now, what to do with it?

An old tip is to punch scraps into shapes so the last bits truly are trash.  I follow Lindsey, "The Frugal Crafter" on YouTube, and she recently made a video diy-paper-sequins-without-a-fancy-die".  I wanted to try.  A friend gave me her hole punch and it was handy so I tried it.  I soon gave up poking holes into them, it was too time intensive for not much difference on such busy paper. 

Working on fun foam with a lowly click pen to push into the centre of each punchie yielded perfect sequin like cups.  So I got brave and dug out a little bitty dollar store flower punch, just as cute if not cuter.  The upper half of each picture shows them pen poked, the bottom half shows them flat.  I didn't bother poking them all, many remained flat.

So I punched,

and punched, and punched, and punched...  Look how they'd make cool eyes!

Then I thought, no need to mess around with glue.  Just stick them to 3/18" glue dots.  Except at first I didn't.  At first I messed around with Liquid glass, bubbles of it, just waiting, begging for cat intervention.  Thankfully they were not investigated by any cat people and the experiment progressed.  I put a dot of liquid glass on a few, others got completely covered with it.  When they were dry, they looked remarkably like pre-made glitter products, like these glitter gems, that are faceted, but not the same since my knock offs are smooth bubbles.

When will I learn, natural daylight isn't quite enough.  Sorry about the blueish hue, I promise that it was a bright and sunny day when I photographed these.

So I got smarter and put the punchies on the glue dots, THEN put the liquid glass on them in small and large bubbles.  Aren't they pretty?  The best part is, I have lots to play with, and they cost me almost nothing, and I gained 2 hours playing around in my craft room. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Monoprints

These are plastic templates I cut with my cricut expression from the CTMH cricut Artbooking cartridge.  They are dirty because I have been monoprinting with my Hectograph that I made back in July.  To make these templates, I used plastic pocket folders that I got for 30cents each with back to school sales.  That tip I learned from Lindsay at "the Frugal Crafter" on youtube. 

One side is shiny, the other matte.  I saved the scraps and used them as window accents in my recent Halloween-mini-book.

Here is a really good cricut tip:  cricut image direction.  She expains how to know which direction an image will cut on your mat.  I put a piece of tape on my cricut to remind me.  Glamorous?  Fashionable? No, not even remotely.   Practical, you betcha!

The arrow of green painters tape on the handbook shows you the 6" x 12" overlays are in different orientations (vertical and horizontal).

So here are my monoprints!  I was so excited to finally try these.  In about an hour, with a modest selection of cheap inexpensive acrylic paint I got on sale at Michaels, (50 cents each, a real score!), I went with the recomended 4-7 colours, and played with a brayer and wasted printer paper.  Here is a fun video showing how to do it Gelli plate monoprinting layers.  I kept it simple with these, but some of the uglier less pretty pages can get overprinted later to get more visually complex.  That's where some real art comes in.

I have a stack of blank school-work that a certain teenager generates.  Well, the school doles them out, he just leaves a lot of them blank.  They are begging to get monoprinted, and will be even more interesting with the assignment questions and various doodles that did get done.  I will show you in another post what I've done with these papers.

Playing with supplies, it does my art happy!

Hectograph update

Just a quick update on the hectograph experiment.  Last night I remelted the small batch with vast improvement. The unmolding from the silicone pan was super easy.  The top surface is a little bubbled, probably from being poured too fast but look how smooth the bottom side is!!  It also became a little more clear looking which is neat to see.  Baby is waking up now so no time to play & try it out.  It sat out all night in the container on the kitchen counter.  There is no change between last night & this morning.    It no longer shows sticky finger prints.  I'm excited to play with this mini loaf, I have ideas!  I scraped out the bigger pan into the plastic measure & remelted one minute at a time in the microwave, about 4 minutes total.  It is cooling off & destined to go into the fridge for an hour once it is not hot.  I will update again when I can.
Cheers!

?!Hectograph?! what?

I have happily stumbled into the world of youtube surfing.  And pintrest, and craft gawker...  I'm doomed to not have any free time with these great eye candy sites, and a busy family too.  I really enjoy Lindsay from "The Frugal Crafter."  permanent gelatin printing plate aka hectograph video & post.  I was inspired to try it too.  The first video I saw she showed a recipe using alcohol and water and gelatin.  Another youtuber told of her trial & error & this, and the horrible stink it made in her home.  Revisions were done & showed Linsay changed her recipe to 7 packages of gelatin, 1.5cups glycerine, 1.5 cups boiled water.  I also heeded cautions not to use equipment that would be used for food.  I even commented asking what type of tray she used, but I couldn't find anything similar.  So at the dollar store I bought a cheapie 8x8 pan, a plastic measure, and a little silicone loaf pan to try it out.  For the 8x8 pan I went with 3 packages gelatin, 3/4 cup glycerine, 3/4 cup boiled distilled water.  The mini loaf pan took 1 pack glycerine, 1/4 cup glycerine, 1/4 cup boiled distilled water.  Why distilled water?  Our water has a lot of calcium, some iron and fluoride, which I didn't want to chance react with it.  I prefer to use distilled water for my crafting because it doesn't get scummy as fast if it sits forgotten in the craft lab.

I left the experiment on the counter & it set up slowly.  I stuck it in the fridge to move it along.  Hours later it did indeed gel up firmly.  The little one  was disappointing to unmold.  I had high hopes since the silicone pan is bendy & easy to twist.  It was a gooey mess.  I put it back in the microwave, remelted & tried again in the fridge.  It did set up again, but is getting tacky at room temperature.  The 8x8 pan, straight from the fridge was nice & firm but sitting on the counter at room temperature became sticky.  Phooey.  I thought once it became plastic it would be okay at room temperature?  I'm not digging another thing to store in the fridge.  Did I mention we are currently in a heat wave?  Precious fridge space is for cold meals & drinks, priorities right?  Maybe I don't have quite enough gelatin in there?  I will remelt & add a bit of alcohol & see if that helps.  It can't hurt as it is destined for the garbage otherwise. 

CTMH Liquid Glass

Hi again.  A friend showed me a trick with glue I have not seen anywhere so I would like to share it. As always, click on any picture to enlarge.

 I used unbleached kitchen parchment paper & made a row of dots of Liquid glass, and let them air dry.

 I coloured on the parchment paper with Outdoor Denim colour CTMH markers & then dripped on a few dots of Liquid glass, those are the 2 lil dots in the lower part of the picture.  They give me eye-deas!  On some clear dry drops I coloured them with the base & shade markers, to the left is the base, to the right is the shade.  They would be nice accents for flowers, boy theme projects, rivets, water bubbles, bullet points for journaling...

Here is my results using sharpie markers.  The penny is to reference size of the dots.  The dots closer to the penny were done by colouring on the parchment paper & covering with the liquid glass.  The darker coloured dots to the left were coloured with the same colour sharpie on dry dots.  The bottom dots are clear to show the difference.  The one on one's position on top of the 11 is a dry dot upside down showing it would make neat distortion effect.  It is a bit cloudy on the flat surface which could be attributed to air drying on the parchment paper?  I would adhere these dots to a project using more liquid glass. 

A few words about this Liquid Glass adhesive glue.  It is super strong & bonds most surfaces really well (paper, cardboard, metal, wood, plastic, fabric, fibres).  There is a possibility it could stain through fabric if just used to tack down so you would need to plan for that with strategic cover up elements like buttons, flowers or something layered over contact points.  If you get it on your fingers, it is there for awhile & feels like dry crazy glue (if you've ever had that stuff dried to your fingers, you know, it's just strange feeling.)  It dries in about 10-15 minutes beautifully clear & glossy.  I've used it to glue down old rub-ons of footprints that were dry & wouldn't stick, they looked like epoxy stickers when done (it was a great save for that old project).  After using Liquid glass a good tip is to thump the bottle against your table to bring it down out of the nozzle, then to squeeze the bottle gently to blow any remaining out of the tip to keep it clear.  Storing it upright also helps.

I always wanted to try this:  Look what happens when you dry it (on parchment paper) with a heat gun!  It reminds me of baby drool, kids slime crafts, learning to beat egg whites, learning to pull taffy or candy, or even scuba bubbles...  The clear blob is a dot of glue heated.  The double " blob is marker coloured on the paper & dripped with Liquid glass & heated.  The bottom half of the squiggle is purposefully over heated & became caramel coloured, The middle section is bubbled a bit with the proximity of the heat gun, the top half is air dried clear.  The puffy bubbles are firm, which could be a great texture experience in a brag book.  This adhesive is great value, a little goes a long way!