Index
(Click on images to see them at a larger size)

Antiqueing Cards
Bleach Stamping
Outdoors Backgrounds
Backgrounds to Dye For
Paper Beads
Blender Pen Refill Fluid
Card Holder
Cray-Pas Background
Découpage (Napkins)
Faux Polished Stone
Faux Shrink Plastic
Faux Wax Seals
Foil
Glitter
Heated Pearls
Hot Glue Art
Hot Glue Art II
Hot Glue Art III

Mahjong Tiles

I recently purchased Majhong pieces from our friends at Sky Blue Pink at a very reasonable price. The colors are very bright, so I dabbed them with various
colors of alcohol inks, Adirondack and Pinata. They are more subdued and a little more "classy!" The white ones turn out the best. The other colors are
more subtle and look good using some white and grey Pinata's. Then, I tried it on poker chips! Same process and same results. These are larger and I think will look nice with some other embellishing in the center.

How to Stop Ink from Bleeding Under a Ruler

To keep ink from bleeding under your ruler when making
a "faux" layer, tape a coin or two to the bottom of
the ruler. It keeps your lines nice and neat.

Smiles,
Julie K in Taiwan

Ribbon Storage

I have very little wall space in my craft "area", as one side is completely open to the dining room (hidden behind a folding screen), and the longest wall is almost completely covered by a large window. I do love the sunshine, but it makes storage a challenge, particularly for slippery ribbon. I'd love to have one of those wall-mounted wooden racks, or one of those ribbon racks to hang on the inside of a door (alas, no door). Instead, I use very large 3-ring binders with 3-ring clear plastic "pockets" that are open at the top. When I flip through the notebook, I can easily see which ribbon I need.

Jennie B.
Tampa FL

Faux Vellum

An economical substitute for vellum (for overlays and general decoration) is tracing paper. You can cut it to size and run it through your printer to make word overlays for your cards. You can choose to sprinkle on embossing powder as soon as the paper comes out of the printer and gently heat emboss (will scorch if you aren't careful) or you can set it aside to dry so it won't smudge.

If you stamp on it with a waterproof ink and color in the image with colored pencils or chalks and then flip the tracing paper over, it most often looks like a transfer image.

The tracing paper looks particularly nice if the edges are torn against a hard edge and then lightly brushed with a metallic stamp pad. Very elegant!

Fasten the tracing paper to your cardstock using brads, eyelets or double sided tape.

Enjoy!

Jane in San Diego

Reverse Imaging

This was something I discovered on accident and I find it gives a nice appearance. Stamp your image on vellum or other transparent surface, trim, set with EP and then flip over for the reverse image in your work. This is one of the easiest ways to get the reverse image of your stamp. Using vellum, there is a very nice muted quality of the image. Works nicely with mica too.

You might want to check to see if your image looks alright backwards by looking at the rubber stamp itself, since that is the image you will end up with. If there are directional components to the stamp like words or symbols, those will end up backwards just like the actual stamp.

Cheers!

Romi A.

Sakura Glaze Pens

I'm a new member and only been stamping for a year and a half, but I do have a good tip in using the Sakura Glaze Pens. I use the clear one a lot to make something appear embossed when it isn't, like to make a portion of a picture stand out more. I also use the clear pen to cover white areas in my stamp print that I want to keep white, the clear acts as repellent from getting other colors on the white. Hope this helps someone.

Minette L. in New Jersey

Scraps

My little tip for scraps,,,,

I pile them high,,, in a box, in stack, and sometimes I remember to look through the stack when I need a little piece, but what I really like to do is take them all , and all my punches,, and just punch like crazy, all the little things out...

I have a ziplock baggy for my punched items,,, and I find sometimes I make cards of just punched items,,,, this is fun to do with kids, I like to have them ready for my nieces and other little children that come to visit,,, give them some blank cards, a glue stick and a bunch of punchies,, and they are set up,,,

Have a blast .....

Take Care,,, Dee B.

Gluing Small Things

To glue small items place some PVA on the back of a quilters finger shield, hold the item with tweezers in the other hand and dip in the PVA then glue in position. Useful when gluing layers of punched flowers etc. Also you will find you have more control over what you are doing. Expect to pay about a $1 or £1 for a handy little item.

Carol C

Paper Chrysanthemums

I was going to save this for a future tip, but since so many posts have come up about shredders, I thought I would share this with you now:

If you have a pasta machine (the hand crank type), and many of us do for polymer clay, the pasta cutting side makes nice cuts of paper. You can get strips that are
anglehair thin or linguine wide :) Sometimes I fold a sheet of paper in half, feed it through part way on the thin angelhair cutter and reverse it back out, Then unfold and make a "loop" opposite of the way the paper was folded. I then twirl it on a quilling tool and make some neat chrysanthemum blossoms.

Enjoy,

Jane in San Diego

Joseph's Coat
Brayer with rainbow pad on white glossy cardstock. Stamp a design over entire card with clear embossing ink and emboss with clear powder. Brayer over entire card with a solid, darker color than the original rainbow pad.Your stamped images will pop out and be the colors of the original rainbow pad. Very stunning! (Robin W.)

UTEE-ultra thick embossing enamel
Take a cardboard shape and coat with a layer of your choice of pigment ink. Dip into UTEE and melt with heat gun. While still hot, dip two more times, heating in between. Get a stamp inked in a contrasting color of embossing ink (or clear) and set aside. Heat tile and dip into UTEE one more time. Melt and while still hot, set your inked stamp into the UTEE. Let it cool completely and remove stamp. Great for embellishments on cards!

An alternative is to ink your stamp with clear embossing ink and do the above steps. When the UTEE embellishment is cool, lightly go over high spots with Pearl Ex, Perfect Pearls or metallic rub ons. (Robin W.)

Unmounted stamps
There are so many ways to mount your unmounted stamps. One way I have found to work best for me is to use acrylic mounts and Zig two way glue. Trim your stamps, put a good coat of Zig two way glue on each one. It goes on blue and dries clear. When it is dry, you can stick it to an acrylic block and stamp away. If you want cushion for you stamp, lay a piece of fun foam or a mousepad UNDER your paper that you are stamping on. Works just as good as having foam on the back of your stamp. If your stamp loses it's tack, just reapply the two way glue. I find it lasts for quite awhile before it needs a new application and a bottle of this glue goes a long way.

To store them you can put them in cd jewel cases (not the slim ones) that have the center "hub" part removed. You can buy these at any department or office supply store. Label the cd cases as if they were a music or program disk. I can store a full sheet in two cd cases. I keep them hung on a wall in my studio where I can access the stamp I want easily. (Robin W.)

Jacquard Envelopes

Jacquard Lumiere Paints make manilla envelopes beautiful. Just paint with some of the metalics and let dry. They even feel nice. If you use a flow extender you can even draw designs in the paint with your finger or other tool.

Donna M

Xyron Tip

Run your punched out papers through your XYRON machine. It's a great way to use paper scraps AND be able to attach them easily to any paper.

Angela

Quilted Cards

Take a background sized piece of cardstock and place another piece of cardstock or ruler diagonally across the card stock. Stipple tightly against the edge and feather out about 1/4 inch. Move the ruler about 1/4 inch and do it again. Repeat until you have filled the card making sure you stop and heat set it so it does not smudge.
Repeat the steps going across the other diagonal When you are finished you will have a background that looks quilted.

There is a sample in my stippling class page.

~~C

Quilled Flowers and animals

Take long strips of paper about 1/4 inch wide and roll them around a lrger needle or Quilling tool. Take the tool out and let the paper unwind a small amount ina controlled manner until it is the diameter you want. Tack the tail of the paper so it does not unravel more. Pinch one or both ends to the shape you want. For example pinch one end and glue them in a circle for a flower. You can always make very circular pieces for flower centers. Pinch both ends for a chrysanthemum.

There are many sites on the internet that are much more eloquent than I considering I have never done this before.

~~C

Journal Cover Focal Point:

Stamp an image on thin copper sheet with Staz-on ink. Dry emboss the metal to give the image a 3D look. Do not try to get all the depth in one pass. Work it and it will not poke through. When finished cut the copper to the desired shape leaving and edge you can cover with braid or ribbon. Fill the indented copper with a gel medium or other levelling medium and allow to dry completely. Glue the image onto the cover of the journal and glue ribbon or braid around it to finish off the edge. The medium will keep the image from getting smashed down with use.

~~C

ZINE Creation:

1. Take a group of talented, colorful, creative people with a desire to educate and inform their fellow artists.

2. Add a webmistress extraordinaire.

3. Mix together with a generous portion of time, hard work and laughs.

4. The result is a ZINE titled "Spectrum" created for a group known as OSA.

Serves: ALL

Linda M.

Patchwork Card Backgrounds

Take a sheet of copy paper and cover it with strips of carpet tape (double-sided sticky 3" wide tape, easily available in a hardware store)--don't worry about the edges, you'll trim later. Take your paper scraps and make sure the corners are all 90 degrees (I usually work with a monochromatic palette otherwise it gets too busy), and start laying them down. Keep in mind that you'll be cutting the sheet into quarters to make card-size backgrounds, so don't put all the pretty papers in just one corner! Also pay attention to the thickness of the papers--it's easier to stamp on if they're all about the same weight. Mixing washi and cardstock, for example, makes for a really uneven surface so the stamp "skips". However, if you have leftovers of polished stone, or shaving cream, or some other technique you've used on cardstock, do incorporate those. When the sheet is full, turn it over and trim off the edges, then cut your sheet down to 10 x 7.5", then cut it again into 4. Now you have 4 background pieces you can use to stamp on or decorate or do whatever with!

Heather
=)

Small UM storage

I very recently stripped most of my rubber stamps from their blocks. I used the Tack-It-Over-And-Over method to adhere them to page protectors by category.I use Aleene's Tack It Over And Over.

First I strip off the stamp from the block, or use purchased an umnounted stamp.

I trim it as I like.

I brush it on the back of the UM with a liberal coating of TIOAO, let it dry .

When it's dry, I adhere it to a page protector that has a piece (or 2) of cardstock in it for support and put the thing in a 3-ring binder. You can arrange them any way you want for storage.

When I've cleaned them, I take them off the acrylic mount and when they are wet, they aren't sticky, which helps if you want to wipe them dry. Let it air dry a bit and you are back in business!

I was able to store over 600 UMs in 6 3" Avery (guaranteed not to gap) binders and cleared up a dozen Iris drawers of various sizes. That's quite a difference. My more special stamp sets I kept intact on the blocks.

I found that the teenie stamps were going to be a problem to view and keep in this manner, so what I did was adhere them, again by category, to the inside of these thin clear plastic card I bought a long time ago (and never used). These are perfect as the stamps are viewable and contained inside the box, not to be lost! I scanned them in, reversed the image and can see them easily on my computer, making them easy to find when I want them!

Fran C.

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