Wax crayon resist technique

A little while ago Sarn made this gorgeous card using wax crayons to resist water based inks - it was a weekly 'pick' in the Playground too. So, being me, off I trotted to buy a packet of wax crayons, just the ones that kids use (Crayola from Sainsbury's). Then I started to look at how to use the crayons and found a slightly different twist here shown by Meryl Holland - but still based on the principle that the wax resists the water based inks.

This is what I made:

I used:

- A6 white card blank

- snippets of black card for matting/layering

- a snippet of patterned SU card from the snippets folder

- a piece of Clarity White Coated/Silk card, an Anita's stamp which is many years old and just happened to be on a shelf right in front of me and an Adirondack Black Archival ink pad (Stayzon would work as well). Stamped the image onto the piece of card and left it to try - you can speed things up with a heat gun, which you need for the next step anyhow.

- wax crayon, happened to pick a red one but in truth the colour doesn't matter as it won't show in the final article. Then coloured in the hearts on the stamped image using the crayon and making sure the hearts had a really good coating just as if you were doing normal colouring in

- then took a fairly stiff bristled paintbrush and whisked off any stray speckles of wax which had just crumbled and gone onto the remainder of the image before gently heating it with a heat gun to melt the wax where I'd coloured the hearts (any melted stray pieces of wax would leave you with speckles at the end of the whole process of course)

- then I used a makeup sponge to whisk TH 'Tumbled Glass' and 'Milled Lavender' Distress inks over the whole image - just picking the ink up from ink pads, although you can use daubers and of course you can use colours as strong as you like to get better contrast

- lastly, I took a paper tissue and rubbed all over the image - that lifted any red colour from and left the hearts clear white

- oh, then I trimmed the image and assembled the card of course

If what I just said is as clear as mud, the link to Meryl's tutorial is at the top of this post - I do like that she's so down to earth.

Of course, am now looking at other stamps to check out possibilities and still want to try Sarn's wax resist technique :)

Len sometimes says that the time will come when there's nothing new to try - how wrong can you be?!

Di
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Thanks a bunch

I recently made a few thank you cards and this was the first one:

I used:

- DL white card blank

- Penny Black 'Love Blush' stamp, stamped with VersaMark onto Clarity coated/silk card and allowed to dry. Then it was rubbed over with Tim Holtz 'Peeled Paint' using a 'sponge applicator thingy with a wooden handle' before being polished off with a piece of kitchen roll. NB. I didn't use embossing powder and heat set it, although that is an optional step extra of course, it was purely stamped with VersaMark and allowed to dry properly before going any further

- the image was then die cut using a Nesties Labels Eighteen die and an embossing tool run round the edge before removing the image from the die

- a piece of green patterned card (a QCME magazine freebie by Pink Petticoat) was trimmed to fit diagonally down an oblong snippet of white card and stuck down before I added three embossed lines. Little trick, which is probably obvious, don't do the initial emboss from the back of the piece of card - do it from the front first so you can see the line of the patterned paper you want to follow, then flip the card over and run down the lines again from the back

- a snippet of  white card was used to stamp an Elzybells sentiment in SU's 'Old Olive', then punched out using SU's 'Word Window' punch, then popped onto a snippet of the sponged green 'Peeled Paint' background which had been punched out using SU's 'Modern Label' punch

Did the supermarket run today and got 'Miss Supermarket Personality of the Year' working on the checkout I unfortunately picked. One of those who totally delights in throwing stuff through ten times faster than you can cope just for the sheer fun of it. Wish you'd seen me juggling with one packet of linguine and another one of spaghetti like a circus clown - oh, and also just add three escaped apples into the mix, five items in one performance. Sigh - am applying to the 'X-Factor Talent Show' as there are skills I didn't know I had just waiting to be exploited :(

Di
x

Resist stamping

Although I used the VersaMark Watermark stamp pad yesterday to cover and then enamel some gilt metal corners with Frantage, the real reason I bought the pad was to have a play with 'resist' stamping'.

I learned a few things along the way, including not to use a really detailed stamp otherwise it tends to just become a blur - this is one I did feel was OK though:

I used:

- 5" x 7" white card stock

- SU 'Tempting Turquoise' card behind the embossed layer and also to back the sentiment

- Penny Black 'Pin Striped' stamp, stamped with VersaMark onto Clarity coated/silk card and allowed to dry. Then it was rubbed over with Memento 'Teal Zeal' ink using a wedge shaped makeup sponge before being polished off with a piece of kitchen roll. NB. I didn't use embossing powder and heat set it, although that is an optional step extra of course, it was purely stamped with VersaMark and allowed to dry properly before going any further

- the image was then die cut using a Nesties Labels Eight die and an embossing tool run round the edge before removing the image from the die

- a piece of white card was embossed using Crafts-Too's 'Lattice folder. For those few who might not know, Couture Creations have at last re-issued their 'Tied Together' embossing folder - I actually really like both of them, the 'Tied Together' one has more elongated shapes whereas the Crafts-Too one is symmetrical

- a snippet of turquoise ribbon was then wrapped around the turquoise and white layers before attaching to the card front. I think this was about the very first ribbon I ever bought for card making, it has little silver swirls on it plus was wired, which is easy enough to remove

- sentiment is by Craftwork Cards, just popped onto a turquoise oval punched with SU's oval punch

- I then went a bit mad with turquoise gems in the other three corners :)

After making the image for this card I had another go with a different stamp using a TH blending tool with felt pad attached with velcro - it worked OK too but I do like playing with makeup wedge sponges. Err, and I suppose the dreaded brayer is still to be tried with this technique :(

Di
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