Ornaments

Christmas is coming! Sure, it's only September and Halloween hasn't even happened yet, nor has either Thanksgiving (Canadian and US, we celebrate both because, well, we can *laugh*). But, when you're making stuff, you have to start pretty early to be able to make enough.

The Putting It Together section has a technique tutorial on how to make the decorated paper I used for the ornaments including infomation about why I use particular supplies.

Challenges

Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps Kraft-tember Krop challenge: Your Favourite Colour
Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps Saturday challenge: Release Week - Anything Goes
Southern Ridge: Your Favourites (purple and Distress Ink)
Through the Craftroom Door: Anything Goes

Addicted to Stamps and More: Anything Goes
Penny's Paper-Crafty: Anything Goes
Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra: Anything Goes

Supplies

InLinkz.com

Putting It Together

One of my favourite colours is purple. I love the sumptuousness of the shades of purple. I decided to make my own decorated paper to use with the ornaments die cut to make the ornaments.

For the technique

To do this technique, you need a craft sheet, watercolour paper, Distress Ink, and a spray water bottle. A heat tool is optional if you want to wait for the paper to dry on its own. Perfect Pearls are also optional unless you a glittery effect.

For my craft sheet, I use a clear plastic divider sheet that's slightly textured. This allows me to move my work area and, more importantly, I can smush Distress Ink on it and wipe it off. I generally use the smushes as a very changeable palette for painting, but it can also be used for other techniques, too. Any type of studio sheet or most plastic sheets that are not water permeable and can be wiped clean will work, I just have these sheets from a die storage solution. I don't really like the dividers with the die storage but they work perfect for this. I also have an Ikea desk pad ($8) which covers a larger area. You can also use something that, too, for this technique. I like the smaller sheet because it's more mobile.

Watercolour paper comes in a variety of styles and weights. I'm using a light weight (90 lb) very smooth paper. This technique should work well with most other types of watercolour paper. Heavier paper won't be a bendy, and more textured paper could have a different final appearance with colours pooling into the textures which would be really cool, too. My favourite go-to watercolour paper for most of the things I do is actually the cheapest at Micheals, Canson Watercolour Value 9" x 12".

Distress Ink is designed to be very water reactive. This technique may not work with other types of ink because they aren't designed for this type of reaction. Inks which dry water proof most definitely will not work. Slow drying inks with a bit of water reaction may work, but will likely give a different final effect. This technique works best when limited to 3-5 colours. Avoid complimentary colours (blue and orange, red and green, or purple and yellow) to limit the colours blending into a less than attractive muddy brown.

The heat tool I use is from the hardware store. It's a Wagner that's quite similar to the Wagner sold as a heat tool for scrapbooking. The biggest difference is the handle and availability (and, depending on the retailer, a lower price point). The heat gun I have has 2 heat settings. I rarely use the higher setting. The Wagner heat tools heat up fast and have a consistent heat.

My spray bottle is a cheapie from the dollar store which works great when I want a very wet spray. Any spray bottle will work. I also use Ranger Mini Mister spray bottles when I want a fine mist or don't want to saturate the location with water.

Perfect Pearls are a powdered, pigmented, mica with a touch of fixative that reacts with water to fix (adhere) the powder when it dries. Other pigmented mica powders, such as Pearl Ex and eye shadows, do not have that integrated fixative. You could use them for this, but would need to add an adhesive or medium for them to stay on on the paper and not rub off. Same for glitter of any type.

You can also mix Perfect Pearls with water in a spray bottle, such as a Mini Mister, and have a glittery spray that adheres when it dries. The Mini Misters are often sold in a package of 3 which is perfect, two for shades of Perfect Pearls and one for plain water. If you have either the White Confetti of the Perfect Pearl in the Mini Mister, you will want to mark it so you don't mistake it for your plain water mister.

On to the making!

I swipe-smushed Distress Ink in swaths. I put down 4 of the purple shades: Shaded Lilac, Seeded Preserves, Dusty Concord, and Wilted Violet.

After you have the swaths, use a spray bottle to wet them down.

Wet down the swathes so they are very wet.

Place the watercolour paper on the wet swathes, no need to press.

When you lift up the paper, some of the ink will transfer to it.

If you want, you can put the paper back down on the ink, to add colour to spots on the paper that missed getting inked the first time. You can do this as much as you like, to cover the paper. However, each time you put the paper in and lift it off, your swaths on the craft sheet will become more blended. Depending on look you want, this might or might not be a good thing (and this is also why you want to avoid complimentaries). Stop when you have as much colour on the sheet as you want.

While the paper was still wet, I spray on Perfect Pearls with a Mini Mister.

You can let the paper dry naturally just set it aside and it will dry. But if you want to dry it faster, use a heat tool. I am impatient and I wanted to add some dry Perfect Pearls.

I wanted to add in some colours of Perfect Pearls that I don't have in Mini Misters (yet), so I used a paint brush to tap them on and to brush them across the paper. Where the paper was still damp, the powder adhered. Where it was dry I could move it around a little.

I added in both streaks of Festival Green and Perfect Gold.

I lightly spritzed the paper to fix the powered colours and add in the droplet effect . Water drops will "lift" some of the colour that's sitting on the paper. Heat drying or dabbing with a paper towel can increase that effect. This photo, sadly, doesn't pick up the sparkle or nuances of colour. It looks even cooler in person.

I die cut the ornaments from a small portion of the decorated paper. I'll use the rest for later projects. I also cut a frame from gold foiled card stock.

On my desk, I did a dry layout with a sentiment stamp from new Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps set, Shake It Up.  It matched perfectly.

I decided to use the sentiment panel I had cut and stamped a few days prior for a different project but decided didn't fit. I knew I would find a use for it later, this is the later. I also embossed a panel of Soft Finish white card stock (love the feel and whiteness of Soft Finish) with the snowflakes folder that was part of the Surprise KKS kit. I glued the gold frame to the ornaments with Multi-Medium Matte.

I dry fit the pieces together and added a silver foiled panel partially behind the embossed panel. I always do several dry fittings of elements to decide if I need more or even if I need less.

Dry fitting is an important part of my design process because I am a very visual person. I rarely sketch out ideas but mentally dry fit elements in my head. Dry fitting on my desk helps me match mental image to physical.

I adhered the silver and embossed panel directly to the card base with Tombow dot runner, my preferred adhesive for making cards because of its convenience. I adhered the sentiment panel to the embossed panel, centered and at the bottom. I added foam mounting tape to the back of the ornaments. When putting foam tape on items with shapes, I do so in small snips of squares and, in this case triangles, to give a good base to the shapes so they won't crush when put into an envelope.

I put the ornaments across the top of the card sightly overlapping the signature panel and then added rhinestones to the centres of the embossed snowflakes as well as the corners of the signature panel. If I were to make this again, I'm not sure I would add the rhinestones but they do add a nice iridescent sparkle.