Shaving Cream card background

What do you think? When I first read in a magazine a couple of weeks ago about marbelling using shaving cream I thought the magazine was run by madmen but it actually works out really well. I've since played around with the technique and created an easier way of creating my backgrounds with acrylic paints instead of inks!!

To create –

1. Cover the base of your container with shaving cream and spread it so that it is roughly covering the bottom of the container by at least a centimetre.

2. Squirt paint over the surface of the shaving cream. I used 2 different coloured green but you could easily use more than two colours or even use different contrasting colours like red and green.

3. Use the back of your paint brush and swirl the colours together through the shaving cream until you are happy with the effect you are seeing.

4. Place you card flat on top of the shaving cream mix and gently press the card onto the surface of the mixture. Using both hands, lift the card straight up and place onto a flat surface. Use the scrapper to gently scrape away the excess mixture on your card to reveal a swirly paint effect on your surface, much like marble.

5. Leave to dry thoroughly then use to create your card.

inexpensive ways to colour your stamps

I really enjoy finding ways to colour your stamps in an inexpensive way. Here is a card i made recently and id like to show what i used.

For this tutorial you will need:


regular Crayola pencil
regular water colours
staZon ink pad
water colour brush

heres some pics of the ones I use. I can grantee you'll race off to the kids room and pull out those supplies you thought were only for the kids!
I use the SazOn ink as it is a permanent ink and wont run when you use the water colours. Stamp on your background in a random fashion.

next use the white crayola pencil to colour santas hat. Remember these pencil are a wax base and depending on how much pressure you put on them is how dark they will come out. Its good to experiment with that. I pressed these colours quite hard to get good coverage in circle motions. A tip i use the white pencil to mark my darker cards when making projects it handy to have.




Now you could leave it like this but i decided to colour the rest of the hat red even though the card was red it still had a great effect. The red just stands out that much better.

With the water colours i used a watery black and a scrap of paper as a pallet i could wipe off the excess darker paint. Go around the outside of each of the hats blending the colour out. This will make the hat pop out at you off the card.

and the finished background with added glitter.....

So really you don't have to have to use all the expensive fang dangle pens and colours to achieve a great result just learn to use what you may already have.
heres a couple more cards i make with the same water colour pallet.


I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and my find some some ways to take a few financial short cuts........Valita

How to use Google Reader Video Tutorial

You have the wider version here

Hope it will be very useful as it is for me
Jana

Xmas mini Accordion Tutorial

This little boot can make a great mini for a fast album, I have all step by step pictures and template here to download.
Enjoy !
Jana

Making Butterflies using Flowers

I saw these done a couple of years ago but maybe some people have never seen them so I decided to show you how to do it...

I will show you pics of how to do it using 3 different shapes of flowers:

Snip one petal off...
And you have a butterfly!
With a 4 petal flower, simply trim off the tips of 2 petals
and tadaa...a butterfly!Here's another one.Just trim off 2 petals and there's a butterfly!Sorry about the poor quality of pics but it's so dark and dreary here this morning. The weather is sooooo yucky today.

Here's card I made using one of the flower butterflies!

Hope you liked the tutorial!

Happy Holidays!

Deanne

Customised Felt Embellishments!

Foam stamps have the advantagd of being much "thicker" designs - much bolder, I mean. They don't have a lot of detail at times, which is not so good for paper scrapping but quite handy for stamping on to fabric or felt.

Using felt has become the latest scrapping craze but it can get a bit expensive. If you have a Cuttlebug , Cricut or Sizzix you can run felt through it but that relies on the Dies you have, which can also be a bit costly.

Most craft shops have kids foam stamps for a very small price and they often have fantastic designs.

For this tip I have used some "Animal Crackers" stamps found in my local Spotlight store which cost 99cents for a packet of 6 designs.

You need:

Bold design foam stamps

acrylic paint

square tipped foam brush

felt

container of water to wash out your brush.



Step One:

You can either cut out your individual felt areas to stamp or you can stamp on the whole felt sheet. Paint an even, slightly thick layer or acrylic paint onto your foam stamp .



Step Two:

Press the foam stamp onto the felt firmly and leave on for a second or two. Don't press too hard or the excess paint will squelch out the sides of the stamp. Don't press too lightly or you won't have the entire image.



Step Three:

Leave your stamped felt to dry at least 1/2 an hour before cutting it out. Preferably longer if the weather is cool.





Now all you need to do is cut out the felt shape and use it in your scrapbooking page. There are many ways you could alter the shape even more - I have stitched around the outside of my shapes using a plain chain stitch, but you could also use a blanket stitch - especially is you stamped in pastel colours onto white felt - that would be perfect for a baby layout!

Here's my example:



There are so many different types of foam stmps out there that the mind boggles with how many different custom-made felt embies you could make.
For many more tips and techniques for your paper and digi scrapping, please visit my Blog Leonardo's Apprentice - I'd love to see you there!

Have fun and happy scrapping!

Sares x