Steampunk ATC its a Contest Winner (Honorable Mention)

On March 14, I attended the Original Rubber Stamp Convention in Carson, CA for the first time. I decided I would also enter the ATC contest while I was there. And my card got Honorable Mention! Yay!!
 

 

I took the theme from my monthly ATC group at Custom Impressions - gears or wheels. For the card, I started off with a pattern paper base. I used the "Clockworks" paper from Graphic 45's Steampunk Spells 8x8 pad. I love the dimension in this pattern, especially for a monotone looking print.

I then added some multicolor metal gilding to the right side and upper left corner. I really like the texture and color the gilding brought to the ATC. I also added a Tim Holtz word band on the left side.

Next, I diecut gear shapes on metal sheets and grunge board. I tinted the grunge board with brass distress paint and walnut distress ink.

The gears were added to the card background, with one being pop dotted to add a layer of dimension. A G45 brad was added to the center of the grunge board gear.
 

 

For the central image of the ATC, I choose a stamp of a woman with gears in her hair from Graphic 45's Steampunk Debutante line. I stamped it on watercolor paper with black Stazon ink.

I colored the image with Prima watercolor pencils using a water brush to blend. I tried to achive a vintage, hand colored look. After the watercolor was dry, glitter and shine was added to the gears with Zig wink of stella pens.

When the image was colored, I fussy cut the lady. And then added some embellishments, gears and a number die by Tim Holtz, then a Graphic 45 brad.

The stamp was popped dotted onto the background. And as a finishing touch, I added s little glitter. to the gears.

CHA 2015 Wrap Up Part One: Tools

For the third year I was lucky enough to attend CHA. This year I went with Custom Impressions, my home store and the location I teach at. (We are doing the G45 Celebrations layout classes there soon!!) I thought I would share some of what I saw and did at this year's CHA. So in no particular order here are the products and techniques I found intriguing, exciting and beautiful.

So, let's start with some cool tools:

Sizzix Inksheets
These really cool sheets that allow you to use your dies and embossing folders as stamps are pretty awesome. The come in black, white, gold and silver. I got to play with them in a  card class with Stephanie Bernard and on the show floor. They even won an award for being the hottest product this year! I have a feeling we will see many cool uses for these ink transfer sheets! (To use them with your wafer thin dies you will also need a transfer platform for your machine.) Gotta get my hands on these.

 

Sizzix Precision Plate
I have known about the advantages of using a metal shim with detailed dies for a while. In fact I bought one with my eBosser. But this platform for the Big Shot is the right thickness to replace one of your regular cutting plate and seems way more durable than others I have seen. Watch a video with Tim Holtz using the Precision plate here. If you use thin dies like i do this seems like a no brainer to buy.

Tim Holtz Idea-ology Remnant Rub Tool
This is a jeyal tool with a stylus on one end and a round angled chiseled end on the other. It is amazing for tranfwring rub ons (which were super popular this year.) And i have a feeling a metal stylus will have more than one use. Should be a good addition to my basic tool box.

Tim Holtz Shadowpress Station

This is a cool little gadget to help you in the shadow deboss folders that Tim started releasing last year. The folders are of different words spelled out in the shadows of the letters, and would look very cool in cards, layouts or multimedia projects. Requires a brayer. I am very curious to play with this tool.

Chameleon Markers

 These are alcohol markers that have a blending solution end that you use to dilute/lighten the color so you get a gradient when you color.  This allows you to get more out of less markers. I was really fortunate to try these out at the Some Odd Girl booth on the Gwen cat lady stamp. I really liked the way the blacks look.

 They worked really well, once I got my mind around coloring from light to dark. (I tend to go from dark to light with Copics.) They will work alongside Copics or any other alcohol based marker. I am dying to get alone with these makers!

Water Based Markers

 The manufacturers/importers of the most popular alcohol markers (Copics and Spectrum Noir) are broadening their horizons with new lines of water based markers. These will be joining the water based markers already on the market which range from Timmy's Distress markers to Crayola Markers.  The markers from the Imagine Int'l booth are named Kirarina. They have 2 shades of the same color in the same pen, a darker fine point and a lighter wide point. They are also apparently scented.

The markers from Crafter's Companion are called Spectrum Aqua. They have a Japanese style brush at one side and a very fine point at the other. When I was at the booth, they explained that the pigment is blended with the water previous to being poured into the marker barrel as opposed to being blended as it is added to the barrel. This is supposed to avoid the color separating. As much as I love my Copics I am leaning toward the Spectrum Aquas.

Prima/Julie Nutting Watercolor Pencils

Along with her 2015 stamps (OMG love the decades ones!) Julie Nutting is introducing her own line of watercolor pencils through the Prima brand. I was lucky enough to get a chance to play with them at a make and take station and they are quite nice to work with. They go on very smoothly and you have alot of control over how light or dark your marks go on. And when water is added (with Prima's new water brush if you like.) the penicil takes on a lovely painterly quality as you can see in my sample.  I was able to create dark to light gradients easily.

 This was most noticeable on my Friend Julie's Doll when she used just the black pencil and it looked just like satin. (I really wish I had a picture.) The pencils will be sold in sets of 12 sorted by themes like flesh tones or neutrals. I don't currently have a set of watercolor pencils, but am pretty sure I will soon.

Crop Cutterpillar

The Cutterpillar is a trimmer that you either love or hate. I love mine and want to drag it with me to crops and friends homes etc.  The Crop version is built to be light and portable, but it still has features like the light source at the cutting edge and self sharpening blade. I get pretty good accuracy from this trimmer, but again you should try out trimmers and find the one that matches your needs. The Crop was also partially funded by Kickstarter, so this popular trimmer is manufactured by a smaller company and will be harder to get your hands on right away, I think they have started pre orders on their web site.  I really want one, but think I need to wait to have some extra pin money first.

WRMK
We R Memory Keepers are like the king of tools. So I can't make a post about the newest CHA tools without mentioning them.  This year they added a banner maker and a 3 in 1 (envelopes boxes and bows) to their punch board collection. And they expanded the punch board idea with the Template Studio. This allows ypou to make gigatic envelopes, bags, flowers etc. How freaking cool is that? I want to make the envelope boxes for gifting 12x12 paper. Although it does look like it needs some surface space to use. And lastly, one of the items i saw I  loved were the new style of rolling bags with cabana stripes. Wish my current roller bag wasnt in such good shape lol.  I better figure out a way to get my desk cleared off to use the Template Studio cos that may be coming home with me..

 My Next Post will cover Papers and Stamps from CHA 2015, including Graphic 45 and Prima!!

The Paper Phenomenon Files (Part 1) OR How I Learned to Embrace My Inner PITA and Became a Kathy Orta Fan.

A bunch of my friends were doing it but I wasn't sure it was for me. But the projects I saw were really cool and I I liked them . So eventually I decided I would try it too. And now I just can't stop. What am I talking about I'm talking about doing the Kathy Orta tutorials from paperphenomenon.com.

It started innocently enough. I decided to buy three tutorials on her website. The three I chose were the file m for memories, the vintage camera and the vintage typewriter. Now clearly I didn't choose the easy tutorials. I chose projects that were things that I wouldn't normally make. I wanted these to be projects where I learned something new. So I chose projects that were heavy on the construction which I hadn't done often.

 

First up with a vintage typewriter. The first step was to make sure I had all the materials and supplies I needed. After that I cut down all my chip board according to the instructions in Kathy's tutorial. And although there are a few moments where I struggled in the construction it wasn't very hard to follow the directions and put the typewriter together.

  

I did do one thing differently from the tutorial and added a small mini album to the inside of the typewriter instead of the calendar cards that were in the original tutorial. I used the Prima / Marion Smith Romance Novel paper for the mini album. It was based on a mini album in Kathy's Interactive Mini-Albums book. (I bought a digital copy from annies.com. It is aldo available signed on paperphenomenon.com)

 

I was really pretty thrilled with the end result. And was proud to give the typewriter and album to a friend of mine (who is a romance/ya writer) as a birthday gift. I also made another Vintage Typewriter for a friend as a graduation gift. (I used Graphic 45's  Bohemian Bazaar for the mini album.) I also put black painted grunge board over the "roller" of the typewriter on the second version, this gave it a very realistic look.

 

To make your own Vintage Typerwriter, you can buy the tutorial here at Kathy Orta's blog, paperphenomenon.com. And some of the hardware can also be purchased here at the blog shop. Many of the items are Tim Holtz items and can be purchased at craft stores. But getting them from Kathy can save time and having to buy extras. For the typewriter's keys, I bought laser cuts from PorkchopShow's Etsy store. (The black ones seem to fit better than the silver.)

The second project I chose to make was the File M for Memories album. One of the reasons I really like this album is that it is full of pockets.  I think that this makes the File M album a great gift for my non scrapbooking friends because they can use ot like a journal or diary. Notes, poems, drawings or just about anything can be tucked into the pockets with out having to add glues.

This level of complexity to the pages did make it a bit harder at first. In fact, I found this album harder to make than the typewriter. The trick for me was that I needed to see a page completed and understand how it worked. However, once I understood how the flaps and the pockets come together it was much easier to visualize and itn"clicked" for me. And then the process of construction for the rest of tne album went pretty fast. I was very lucky and met one of the women I crop with had made the album before and help me put together my first page.

 

I matted the album mainly with Kaisercraft's Telegraph Road but I also used some of their other lines like Kaleidoscope, BeYOUtiful and Storyteller because this album is pretty large and takes a lot of paper to decorate. I also used some of the Kaisercraft Captured Moments cards. (These are like Project Life or journaling cards.)  I think all the papers matched very nicely. I think sometimes when you use a group of papers all from the same company the colors and the themes can work well together. This project was also I gift, this time for a friend of mine who recently moved to China.

  

Some tips for making the album: Choose a file folder that has a nice large tab on it. I think this is a nice look for the album. (I decided not to use the printable templates in the tutorial.) Definitely make a template for matting the tabs (it should be slightly, 1/8 inch, smaller than the tab base.) That way it will look consistent, I did not do this and regretted it.

 

Another tip I learned that really helped was that adding a. thin layer of glue stick over the scor tape (or other double sided adhesive), gives an extra few seconds where you can move the item before it's fixed permanently.  This helped me a lot. I sometimes need a second chance, so this avoided alot of boo boos. In the tutorial Kathy used  Scotch wet glue to attach the pattern paper(snd it looked fab). I tried, but it didn't work as well for me(maybe I used too much adhesive). I then tried using a glue pen (Martha Stewart), but it seemed to stay a little too tacky even after it dried. I now use Scor Tape with the glue stick trick and it has been pretty successful.

 

To get the tutorial for the File M album at paperphenomenon.com go here. The main supplies you will need a chipboard cardstock and pattern paper. And since this is a nice big album you can use that whole line of pattern paper you have tucked away for just the right project.

The final project in my triptych of Kathy Orta projects is the Vintage Camera. This is the tutorial I was most intimidated by. Both because of the difficulty and the fact it was going to be a gift for my Dad and Stepmom. But this also made it the tutorial I looked forward to the most. And in the end had the biggest "pay off" for me.

I have to admit I did stray from the tutorial. The biggest change was using Kraft Tex instead of regular cardstock for the bellows.  For those of you who haven't used it, Kraft Tex is a paper/fabric hybrid. It is made from paper fiber, but has the strength, texture and durability of fabric. Heck you can even throw this stuff in your washer! So basically i followed the cutting, scoring and folding directions the same as Kathy gave for paper. The difference was that I had to score a little harder and use a strong wet adhesive. I used the brown Kraft Tex and painted it black with Tim Holtz' Distress Paint. I then distressed, sanded, repainted and distressed again until it had an antiqued leather look. It was a bit of work to get it just right, but it was SO worth it.

 

The second place I was forced to make changes was in the hardware. While most of the hardware is pretty easy to find, the Graphic 45 Staples Metal Tags are not. I was lucky and had a pack with all but one of the six tags. So i only had to replace one. (The "P" medallion at the front of camera base, under lens.) The metal piece that curves around the lens is sldo different. Instead of the clip for binding documents (which I could only find in a box of 100), I used a Tim Holtz metal word band and curved it gently with pliers.

 

I highly recommend that you have a really good trimmer that cuts medium to heavy weight chipboard before tackling this project. Some of the pieces are cut quite small and can be difficult without one.

Inside the camera is a really cute album. Since this was an anniversary gift, I used Teresa Collins' Save the Date (with a little You Are My Happy and Something Wonderful.) The angled pocket construction of the album is very striking and would look good as a stand alone piece.

 

I think the camera ended up being my favorite piece. I plan to make a couple more, including one for myself. The tutorial can be found here. It includes video for the bellows portion, so be prepared to play you tube on this one.

I hope you enjoyed this first foray into the Paper Phenomemon files of Kathy Orta. I really enjoy making these tutorials and plan on trying more. Let me know what you think. Have you done any of Kathy's projects? What are your favorites? Or is there a different paper craft
er's tutorials that you love?