Play Forever scrapbook layout...

Good Saturday morning to you all! After I've done my stint of demoing which consists of mainly card making, I like to return to a bit of scrapbooking. It reminds me of why I got started on this crafting journey and makes me feel less guilty about buying new stash, even if my thing at the moment seems to be using up scraps on my layouts! Anyhoo, this one's called Play Forever and the pic was taken quite a few years ago while we were on a wee holiday in Easthaven. Those are the kind of holidays where the kids just play outside all day on the beach and long into the evening. 

   First of all, I roughed up the kraft 12x12 background with a bit of distressing, stamping and doodling. I selected lots of colourful scraps from my leftovers box with a vague colour scheme that kind of holds them together and makes it work coherently. Then it was a case of embellishing with elements I've not visited in a loooong time. Those turquoise glitter Thickers - can't tell you how old those are. There's also some tiny tags on there that came from the very first K and Company boxed collection I bought off the selly telly back when I had committed myself properly to the hobby/addiction. I think it cost about £36 back in 2007 and I remember feeling sick with guilt that I'd indulged myself and spent that much money on crafting. At the time I thought that it would be the one main expensive thing I'd buy and it would last forever... Hahaha!!! I got the latter part of this right as it's now 9 years on and there's still bits of it kicking around although I have to say the sentiments I thought would come in well handy turned out to be a bit ropey - so they ended up going with a load of unused and unwanted stuff to the local charity shop where for all I know, might have been just what someone else was looking for!

   Enjoy the layout - feel free to let it inspire your imagination and get those scraps out!

Happy crafting all!

Love Jak xxx

Some of those K and Company tags! I don't think I'll ever run out of these!!!

Demo part 2

Ok, so as promised, here are a few more of those demo cards, starting off with embossing folders. I love a bit of embossing and I've recently started experimenting with embossing patterned papers etc with results I really, really like. Here's what I mean...

If you look closely, you'll see I've run the triangles background paper through a honeycomb embossing folder which just gives a bit of added interest and dimension to the card. But, if this is too much for you, just stick with plain cardstock.

This time I ran plain white cardstock through the DoCrafts Dogstooth embossing folder and then sponged gold acrylic paint lightly over the embossing which gives the cardstock real depth. You could easily do this with an inkpad if preferred, but I like to get mine into the sunk back bits too.

I soon got on a roll with this and began inking the embossing folders before I put the card inside so it presses the ink into the cardstock as it's embossing. I even tried inking and debossing too!

ink embossed paper

ink debossed cardstock

As you can see, the results are quite different with the debossed one being a lot bolder.

Next, I tried embossing a background I'd stamped with some colourful pigment inks. I loved this and although the Moroccan Flowers embossing folder is quite different in design style from the Folk Floral stamps, they really do work together. I think the key thing here is to make sure you experiment and mix things up. Sometimes things that shouldn't work together actually really do, so, be brave!

stamped then embossed

The embossing shows up clearly from this angle!

Then I got really carried away and did this acetate tag. I rubbed a bit of gold acrylic Ariste paint on the back of the tag, just to give a bit more definition to the embossing...

It's quite subtle and a bit quirky - I love it!

I hope you have enjoyed some of these samples and hopefully I've inspired you to give these techniques a try or revisit if maybe you've got a bit bored with them.

Have fun,

Love, Jak

xxx

Another demo done!

Hi everyone, hope you are all feeling crafty today! I'm still buzzing from my latest demo for DoCrafts! This time we had a different kind of demo and instead of introducing crafters to our latest products we actually focused more on techniques - these being of a distressing and inky, painty nature. It was such good fun to go back and rediscover these techniques using the DoCrafts inks and paints, my only handicap being that there was no facility/power for speeding up drying times with my heat gun but my ladies were very patient and loved having a go at getting their crafty hands dirty too.

Lots of goodies to play with!

These paints are great quality with lots of pigment

So lets start with some marbling....

Once I'd nailed the natural looking black and white stuff I drifted towards a more colourful approach...heehee! This is such an easy technique to do and if you don't like the way things are going you can lightly brush out or dab over with a bit more paint! I took a piece of the natural black and white version and incorporated it into a card featuring one of the DoCrafts Gorjuss stamps and some debossed vellum.

She's such a cutie

Here's that piece of marbling in the background. The card has also been embellished with the X- cut Woodland Flourishes die set which I've found to be pretty versatile as it seems to go well with lots of different styles of cards. 

Next up was a bit of crackle painting...

You will need: Coloured cardstock, loads of PVAglue - the cheaper, the better, and acrylic paint - any colour - just make sure it contrasts with the colour of the background cardstock you are using.

It crackles as if by magic!

Now, I don't mind admitting that this took me quite a few goes before it worked but that was to do with me being an idiot rather than how difficult it was to do. I would say, the main thing to remember here is to work quickly, be messy with the bog standard pva glue and don't be tempted do go back and overwork your paint. One sweep of paint on top of the glue is all you need. I sort of imagine it as just sitting on top of the glue. Now, in an ideal world a quick zap of the heat gun doesn't go amiss at this stage but it really isn't essential as science/physics or some kind of sorcery takes effect and the paint starts to pull away from the slower drying pva underneath. Once dried this makes an interesting background for a card too! 

Gorjuss again!

Doesn't that crackle work well with a bit of Gorjuss? I love that this card worked well combining the crackle, distressy feel with the dark and mysterious Gorjuss girl! I used an inky technique for the stamped picture frame that contains Gorjuss, which leads us nicely on to the next technique which is:- ink spritzing and distressing.

Springtime colours

Now this is one style that's usually more associated with Tim Holtz distressing inks but I wanted to try giving it a go with the DoCrafts Artiste ink pads as these are water based inks too so work in exactly the same way. Start with your lightest colour ink first, pat down on a craft sheet or glass cutting mat - even a sheet of acetate would work here, spritz with a bit of water and start dabbing the card around in the ink. I guess you could add as many layers of colour here as you like but I would stop at three. Why? I don't know - other than the main principle of colour mixing which says mixing three secondary colours together makes brown ( I know yellow is a primary. I'm just trying to illustrate a point here...)  This is one of those rare times where less is more and if you want to stamp an image over the colours you've mixed then you don't want to make them too dark or muddy! Here's a close up of all that beautiful inky spritzing!

Inky spritzing overstamped with a brown pigment ink

Of course, the real beauty here is that no two cards will ever be the same! Fabsy!!!

Ok, so there are quite a few cards I have to let you see but I'm going to wind this post up for today as duty calls (pesky kids eh!)!!!

Thanks for coming  by for a look - I'll get those other cards up here ASAP!

Jak xxxx