Funny sort-of Valentine – Tim Holtz February Tag

When I was in college, my friends and I were part of the medieval club. And in someone’s strange humor, Valentine’s day was dubbed “Gargoyle Day”. As I recall it, regardless of dating status we celebrated with break-up comedy movies, chocolate, and gargoyle crafts. There was also a “Black & White Ball” around mid-February as an official club activity which involved modern formal apparel and medieval-style group dances. Yeah, I’m a big nerd, I own this.

Gargoyle Day and the Black & White Ball were my favorite versions of Valentine’s Day. I didn’t mind the kiddie version of passing Valentine’s to every fellow student and making our own mailboxes. And I remember my parents giving me candy and toys. But I guess I don’t remember seeing big romantic displays of chocolates and roses. If my parents did a romantic dinner or something, either I didn’t know, or it didn’t make an impression on me. I do remember them showing each other love and kindness all along the way, and making time for each other on a regular basis.

So in my own dating life, I’ve voted for regular displays of affection over big romantic gestures. Don’t get me wrong, I like the opportunities for creativity inspired by every holiday. And I’m impressed by the romantic efforts other people go to for their loved ones. And maybe, just maybe I’m looking forward to making pink heart-shaped pancakes and other silly gestures for my little boy in a few years. But otherwise, Valentine’s Day just isn’t my holiday.

So that’s a long preamble for my take on the February Tim Holtz tag. But I felt the gargoyle required some serious explanation! I loved the look of his background of embossed hearts that call to mind vintage enameled heart jewelry. I loved the little Industrial sticker details. I’m not sold on the popular chalkboard look, yet. Maybe it will grab my imagination at some point, but for now I’m skipping that technique.

So then the other thing this Gargoyle Day tag needed was a gargoyle! I drew a gargoyle as Cupid, colored it with Distress markers, and pinked up the edges of the circle diecut with Distress ink.

Ingredients: Watercolor paper, #8 Manila tag, Industrial border stickers, Distress markers, Distress ink pads, Sizzix Movers & Shapers hearts, Distress rock candy glitter, Seasonal chitchat stickers, Sizzix decorative strip ticket die, Grunge board, Stampers Anonymous Odds & Ends stamp, glitter glue, foil tape

Learning: I feel like I barely squeeked by with the hearts. I had cut them last month from foil-covered Grunge board that was left from the previous tag. I had hoped that I could cover them with red glitter glue and have a cool, mirrored, slightly glittery surface, but I had trouble getting good coverage with the glitter glue. So then I tried to cover with Distress glitter and go with the technique in Tim’s tag tutorial, but I should have just pulled off the foil or removed the glitter glue to switch Glossy Accents, because the glitter glue didn’t hold the glitter on very well when I inked it. Glossy Accents seems to be a really strong adhesive. I did like how easily the Distress glitter dyed with the Distress ink – that is a good trick to remember!

Something I tried with much more success was masking off part of a stamp. I don’t know if other people do this, and maybe there is a better way, but this is the method I came up with. I used bits of painter’s tape to mask off a section of the stamp I didn’t want to print, inked the stamp, pulled off the tape and stamped it. This gave me a nice blank space to scrawl “Gargoyle Day” instead of Valentine’s day.

My lettering on the ticket is kind of primitive, and I like to think that my gargoyle was taking over Valentine’s day, like maybe Cupid needed a day off or something. I think I could have pushed that idea a little more, but I didn’t have any other ideas.

Loving: I may have said this before, but I really like how the Odds & Ends stamps go with the Ticket Strip die. It’s just really cool to stamp a custom ticket, and I’m getting a lot of mileage from the concept.

I like the background every bit as much as I imagined, and despite the minor glitter losses I like how the Grunge board hearts came out. I like my gargoyle Cupid too, at least conceptually. I still haven’t decided if I like my “cartooning” style. But that is an issue for a different time.

Together in spirit

Over the holidays, I had planned to meet up with my oldest and dearest friend. She lives overseas, but comes back home at most twice a year. I dearly wanted to meet her new and very significant other, and I also wanted her to meet our new baby! Sadly, our baby picked up something very contagious at daycare and shared it with his parents, and by the time we were all well enough for visits, my friend had already returned to Italy.

I hear that such things are quite normal with small children. Oh well. So I wanted to send her a nice card. I chose stamps with flowers that remind me of Ohio summers, thinking of our youth and Girl Scouting adventures. I also wanted to give my newly expanded set of Distress markers a good test.

So here was my coloring progression.

The stamped image:

A base of the darker colors. In general, darker and cooler colors should go where you think would be furthest from your imaginary light source.

Then I blended the colors a bit with my waterbrush before moving on. I wanted to see how much coverage and mid-tone I would create with the water before moving on to lighter and brighter colors.

Lighter colors came next.

Again, I spread the petal colors with the water brush. Then I moved onto the centers of the flowers. Brushed Corduroy is greenish, and therefore a cooler color, so it became the base for the shadowed areas of the centers.

A little Walnut Stain for the darkest areas, and to color in the stamen.
I later went back with a Micron to outline some spots where the stamp impression came out a bit too light.

I finished up with some green for the stems.

And the finished card:

I’m entering this into the Anything Goes challenge at Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge blog.

Ingredients:
Distress markers, Archival ink, Sizzix Tattered Flowers die, Sizzix Thinlits circles, DCWV Blue Citrus papers & solid card stock, Flourishes stamps, Stampers Anonymous Nature’s Moments, glitter glue

Learning:
I feel like the biggest area I can improve on with this card is my stamping. I’m having fun combining stamps, but I need practice creating combinations that don’t overlap in awkward ways. Maybe masking would help. I also need practice getting a good impression for the purpose. I feel like in stamping to color, an even impression is really important. I think the lower flower came out too dark, obscuring the coloring’ and the upper impression of the same stamp came out too light, forcing me to outline with a Micron to prevent it from looking too different from the other flower. Fading stampings might be a great way of creating distance in uncolored stampings, but it didn’t work well for me here.

Loving:
I love the color combinations and how the markers worked out. Those watercolor brushes are so much fun to blend with! I also had a lot of fun alternating colors with the Tattered Flower die, which I hadn’t used much before. My favorite thing was combining the stamps, because I feel like they made a great wildflowers scene, despite some of the impression issues.

Distress test pattern and labels

Last night I got a chance to sit down and play with some Distress inks and markers.  First, I tackled a labeling project that I’ve wanted to do for a while.  I got this idea because StAz-On comes with little labels for the sides of their inkpads, and I felt like my Distress inks really need side labels too.  Besides, because Distress is water-reactive, I wanted a label that showed the real ink as it prints, and as it looks wetted.  The retail labels on the top are nice, but I don’t feel like they really depict the ink color well – this happens because the label-manufacturer’s colors may not be an exact match for the inks.  Color matching is pretty tricky across media.

Labeled Distress inks

So I sat down with a sheet of return-address labels (Avery 8195 was what I had on hand).  Without removing them from the label sheet, I wrote the color name on the labels first in waterproof Micron.  Then I swiped the bottom of each label with the corresponding ink pad.

Finally, I used a wet paintbrush inked with the same ink pad to paint a watercolor sweep across each label.  I let them dry and stuck them to the sides of the ink pads.

The label size was almost perfect, but they were just a teeny bit tall, so I folded the top and adhered to the horizontal surface as well.  Some of them started peeling back up on the top a bit, so next time I might just trim them.

I’m so excited about how nice they look all stacked up!  I also think this will make it so much easier to reference the real color instantly.  The labelstock handled the water brushing surprisingly well!

My next little studio-reference project was to fill in a color chart.  I found that the MarkerPOP! blog has nice color reference tools including blank color charts for their markers including Distress.  So I printed a blank chart on a linen-finish bond paper.  Part of my goal was to have a real-color reference chart – again, manufacturers have a hard time matching color, so retail labels and plastic caps may not be the best color guide.

My Distress ink color chart

I also wanted to have a reference to compare Distress ink pads to Distress markers.  I know they are supposed to be a coordinated palette, but do they really match exactly?

I’m also curious about how they blend with water.  Does water shift the color?  Do the ink pads and markers blend differently when wetted?

For this little experiment I got to play with my new Ranger waterbrushes.  You can see them along the right side of the color test pic.  Basically, they are a brush with an attached cartridge that you can fill with water.  I have to say they are pretty neat to work with and the ink cleans off of them very well.  I’m looking forward to doing some coloring during my lunch breaks and the waterbrushes should make my operation more portable.  I think with practice I can probably get as much control over the flow as if I use a regular wet brush.

Back to my color chart: On the left side of each square of the grid is the Distress marker swatch, and on the right is the ink pad swatch.  Interestingly, the Fired Brick, Brushed Corduroy, and Walnut Stain colors shifted a little when wet.  Also, some of the colors were pretty hard to spread (it might be the paper).  This isn’t a criticism, just media behavior I need to be aware of so that I can compensate if needed.  I’m going to keep this chart handy when I color as a good reference.

I haven’t filled in all of the stamp pad colors on my chart because I own just a small selection of those right now.  I recently got the full basic line of the markers (the 36 colors shown above, plus white), but I will probably prioritize getting reinkers over getting the full line of ink pads, simply because there are more distress and splash techniques that can be done with reinkers.  Right now, I prefer to stamp in Sepia or Black Archival ink and then color with watercolor.

Until next time, keep it inky…

As I get more into the paper craft world, I’ve been investigating which marker system I want to invest in for both the near-term and the long term.  Markers are popular both for writing and drawing by hand, as well as coloring in stampings and printed digital stamps.

Alcohol-based Markers:

First and foremost, I needed to figure out what the big deal is about Copic markers.  They are everywhere!  Clearly they offer a huge range of colors, which can be really helpful for producing quick coloring.  This is why we’ve invested in a massive quantity of Reaper acrylic paints for painting our gaming figures – of course we can blend color, but when you want quick consistent results, having a large pre-packaged palate is incredibly helpful.

On the Nattosoup blog, illustrator Becca has done some extensive testing to compare all of the alcohol-based markers.  A craft discount retailer near me carries Spectrum Noir, and I have been curious about them, so I really appreciated her detailed comparison.  Copic Sketch vs. Spectrum Noir
She also compares Prismacolor, ShinHan, and several other popular Copic alternatives to the Copic gold standard.

The short summary is that Copic Sketch has a lot of advantages.  Blendable and refillable, with interchangeable nibs and a compatible airbrush system, Copic Sketch also carries the most hefty pricetag.  Which is why the alcohol-based alternatives are worth checking out.

But what about comparing the big apple to the big orange?

Watercolor Markers:

Tim Holtz’ Distress Markers are the big brand of watercolor markers that most paper-crafters talk about.  The color palette is no where near as large as Copic Sketch’s, but the colors can be faded and blended with water just as alcohol-ink markers can be faded and blended with a blender solution.  And of course, watercolor markers have a different possible range of techniques and effects that depend on the water reaction:  blooming, using wet paper, soft or hard edges, fading, washes, and transparency.

Since I have always wanted to invest more time into watercoloring, but never really had project ideas that would suit the media, incorporating watercolor markers into my paper crafting seemed like a great idea.  Plus, Distress markers are a fraction of the cost of Copics!  There are other brands of watercolor marker (here’s a review of Letraset’s Aquamarkers, for example).  But I already have (and love) several of the Distress ink pads, which use the same color palette as the Distress markers.  Ok, and admittedly,  I’m also somewhat sucked into the whole Ranger brand.  It started as a Tim Holtz designer-crush and it’s just spread to their stable of other amazingly talented signature designers.  Don’t let me gush, now!

Here is a great review and test of Distress markers that shows some of the techniques possible with Distress ink.

Maybe some day I’ll try out the alcohol inks, but for now, I’m all excited to use “aquamedia” (the cool term for water-based supplies ranging from water-reactive inks, to acrylic paint).

One big disadvantage of water-based media is that not all papers stand up well to the extra moisture.  Wrinkling, layers rubbing off, and even surface cracking if embossing is combined with wet media are all potential problems I’ve already encountered.  So far, I’ve had the best success with watercolor paper, but I hope to sit down and do some experimenting with wet media on different types of paper very soon.

The gears are meshing

For my father-in-law’s birthday card, I knew I wanted to include florals, because he’s a gardener. But I also wanted to make sure it was a bit masculine in colors. Since he’s a machinist, tinkerer, and inventor, I thought I might include some steampunky gears.

This week’s Flouishes Timeless Tuesday challenge was to use a non-rectangular shape. I don’t yet have any large dies for base layers of cards, so I had to improvise a bit.

I had an embossed, sanded and shimmer ink-sprayed piece of Core’dinations shatter card stock that I had done as my very first embossing experiment. That became my base, and it thought that the Tim Holtz Picture Wheel die would both reflect both the embossed gear shapes and the overall rounded shape that I wanted to use.

I really enjoyed watercoloring the stamping with Distress markers. It worked so well that I’ve decided to invest in the whole set eventually, so that I can watercolor on lunch breaks or on the couch. While it’s certainly possible to color, as I have been doing, with the Distress ink pads, a brush and some water, the markers are way more convenient and portable. I just hope that the water brush markers work as well as using a regular wet brush. We’ll see!

I’d like to try the alcohol inks like Copics or similar down the road, because of their broader range of colors, but right now I don’t need to invest in a whole separate technique because there is so much to explore in the world of water-reactive inks. Besides, I’ve always been drawn to watercoloring.

Ingredients: Watercolor paper, Core’dinations Shatter card stock embossed with a Darice folder and sanded, flowers and sentiments from Flourishes (Passion flower and Tag Lines), Distress markers, Distress ink, Archival ink, Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist sprays

Learning: I really need some better ways to cut a shaped card base. I drew guidelines and everything, but I simply could not cut a curve smooth enough for my satisfaction. Fortunately the recipient was more excited about the flowers and the gears – which lead to us experimenting with die cutting and embossing his basswood scraps – fun!

Given all the trouble I’ve had with Distress ink on acrylic clear stamps, I was very pleased to find that Distress inks and markers worked so well on Flourishes’ photopolymer stamps. I had fun blending colors using a Distress marker directly on the stamp for the inside of the card.

Loving: I loved the finished colors, the strong browns contrasted with the rich purple. I loved the way the picture wheel shows little peeks of the background. And I was delighted to find a use for the picture wheel die which I think I picked up as part of a lot. I was also happy to have finally found a use for the embossed gears sample I had made a couple of months ago.

Tropical blue

A while back, my group of work friends decided that we should bring back magnets as souvenirs whenever one of us went on a cool vacation. Just something to bring a little fun decoration to the ubiquitous metal filing cabinet. Since I had a baby over the summer, vacations aren’t really on my horizon for a little while. So I’ve had in mind making my own cool artsy magnets for my friends.

At first the question was format. The tag dies that I have are pretty small, so I decided an Artist Trading Card (ATC) would be a good size. I picked up some watercolor paper recently, thinking that might be a preferable medium for using Distress inks.

I started by doing some drawings, first in pencil, then in Micron. I don’t think of myself as much of a line art illustrator, my preferred drawing style is more about realistic shading, but sometimes I surprise myself with some decent cartooning. Maybe I’m getting better as I get older, or maybe I’m just starting to accept that my style is somehow cutesier than I intend!  Whichever it is, I think these came out really great! I colored them with distress inks (using a paintbrush on the stamp pad) and distress markers.

After that, I started inking up the background in zones of color, and sprinkling with water.

I used the outside of a previously cut ATC as kind of a viewfinder to decide just where to die cut my four cards.  After I cut apart the four sections, but before I die cut, I used Perfect Pearls mist to add a bit of glimmer (I don’t think you can tell from the photos).

I fussy cut my three drawings (the fourth friend’s card was based on a stamped sentiment rather than a “favorite thing” drawing). Then I inked along the cut edges with the side of the brush end of a black distress marker to take care of any imperfect cutting. Do other people do that? I know some people leave a stylish white border, but I felt like that wasn’t really me. I can’t be the only person to black ink the edges, but I haven’t seen other people mention it.

The rest was a matter of stamping and gluing. I put magnetic strips on the back when all else was finished. And there we have it, four ATC magnets!

Ingredients:    Watercolor paper, Distress ink pads, Distress markers, Archival ink, Micron pen (liner), white acrylic paint, Harlequin Tim Holtz layering stamp, Perfect Pearls mist, tiny key from 7 gypsies, fastener/brad from Tim Holtz

Stamps from: Tim Holtz Visual Artistry City Central (creativity sentiment, cityscape, stars), Scrappy Cat (travel/adventure sentiments) , Flourishes (flowers, distressed flourish pattern and “be happy” sentiment), Bo Bunny (French background text)

Learning:  After doing such a vast quantity of holiday cards in such a short time, it was really refreshing to tackle something with more creative freedom.  I really enjoyed trying to capture my friends’ interests in a tiny art card.  I feel that using the watercolor paper was a big breakthrough since I have been gravitating towards wet techniques.  I love a good Clean & Simple card, but for non-card applications I am really enjoying the texture that can be achieved by layering inks, water, mists, dry-brushed paints, stamps, and so forth.  I feel like I am still finding my paper-crafting voice, but I think that this project has taken me a long way towards refining my style.

Loving:  I really feel like this project made a lot of things “click” for me!  I can’t wait to do more artsy ATCs, they are such a fun size!  Also, I feel like for the first time, I got some of these cool Tim Holtz techniques to really work for me.  I really enjoyed the watercoloring with the Distress inks and markers.  I just loved watching the colors come together!

Challenge:  Because of how well the beautiful blues turned out in my tropical vacation ATC, I feel compelled to enter this one in the “Blues” Challenge at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge blog.  I loved looking at all the design team inspiration, because blue is my favorite color!!  This one is for a coworker who plans great vacations like a skilled travel agent.  I feel like I really nailed that tropical turquoise blue.  I hope it inspires her to dream of the next great destination!

Poking, creasing, and getting inky

The Florishes Timeless Tuesday Challenge for this week was to “Score it, Pierce it, Color it“. I initially thought that would be quite easy, as I have a retractable pick, and just lately picked up a scoring board and a handful of Distress Markers.

First I stamped the snowman with Archival ink.

Then, I tried to do the piercing to look like snowfall. I don’t have a cork mat for piercing, but the back side of my scoring board has molded plastic supports which made it an unexpectedly good support for the card while piercing it. I was able to vary the hole sizes to look more like snow.

Scoring using the scoring board was a little trickier than I expected, as my scoring tool kept jumping the track, but I eventually made some lines that I was pleased with to provide a sense of foreground. Of course, I later had to re-score the lines after I ironed the card, but I am getting ahead of myself.

For the background, I inked my craft sheet with Weathered Wood Distress ink pad, spritzed with some water and smoothed the card front into the result. I dried it with my heat gun, but it was quite warped and wobbley.

I inked colors into my image with a combination of Distress markers, and Distress ink pads used like watercolors with a brush. Because the background was so textured, the scored lines weren’t showing up well, so I tried to run an ink pad, and then a marker over the raised surface hoping to pick up the raised lines. Neither worked the way I hoped, and I tried to make the inked lines look more deliberately sketchy, but doing do practically obscured the scoring.

Then I had to iron the card because it was so warped from all that watery inking! After that, I rescored my lines. Definitely a lot more process to this card than most!

Ingredients: Distress ink pads & markers, Tim Holtz blueprints stamp, retractable craft pick, Martha Stewart scoring board, Archival ink

Learning and improvement: I now believe that texture details like scoring and piercing would have been more visible on a solid background. I think the scoring lines were too shallow for trying to drag the ink pad across them. I would try both texture effects again. I think I’ve also discovered that not all papers should be used for very wet ink treatments. I just used the front of the A7 card which seems like standard card stock. Next time I think I would work on a watercolor paper or other suitable surface, then mount it onto my card. That would give me more style options too, as I could mount a contrast paper underneath.

Loving it: I like how the colors turned out. Despite the fact that my background ink style sabotaged my texture efforts, I still think the overall effect is pretty. I like the sketchy, watercolor effect I got when coloring the stamp.