Love You Forever | ft. Lawn Fawn "Booyah"

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you're having a great day.

Today I thought I would share a card I had created a long time ago, but never got around to posting. I created this card for all the horror movie watching, zombie loving crazies like me who would truly have their houses decked out in Halloween gear all year round if they didn't think their families would question their sanity. I tip my hat to the people who do it anyway.

I created this card for those people and to celebrate their love the way only they can.

To begin, I stamped both the hair pieces from the Booyah stamp set by Lawn Fawn, masked them off and then stamped the ghosts, using Memento Tuxedo Black ink on 110lb Copic-friendly cardstock. I then coloured the images with Copic markers and added a couple stitches.

I die cut them using a smaller torn paper die and sponged Dried Marigold Distress ink around the edges. I popped that up on some foam tape and set it aside.

For my background panel, I die cut one of the larger torn paper dies and used the Falling Hearts stencil by Simon Says Stamp with Black Soot Distress ink to fill in the background. I took some Hickory Smoke Distress ink and sponged along the edges so it wouldn't be such a stark contrast.

I adhered the heart panel to the front of a standard A2 sized card base in black, then adhered my panel with the ghosts.

On the inside it says "Love you Forever" in CTMH Cranberry ink.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own. If you haven't already, please follow me on the right side bar or over on Facebook, so you don't miss any future posts. Drop me a line in the comments section below and let me know what you think.

If anyone happens to know the name of the "torn paper" die I keep referring to, please let me know! I know that they are nesting dies and there are maybe 5 in the set, they look like Spellbinder but I can't find them anywhere. Help!!

Product Review Series | Daler Rowney Medium Texture Paste

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you're having a great day.

So last week, I reviewed the Mother of Pearl Structure Gel by Daler Rowney. I liked it so much that I was able to get my hands on the Medium Texture Paste. In many ways these products work the same way.

Typically I work with 110lb Copic-friendly cardstock in white and a portion of this review will be on that paper, but because this paste is white the rest of the review will be on a piece of 65lb Recollections dark green cardstock.

Like the Mother of Pearl Structure gel we talked about last week, this tube is giant. 8.4 US fluid ounces of awesome. And for the same low price of $5.97!! I still can't believe it.

Pros:

• Giant squeeze bottle
• No worries about product drying out
• No worries about dried product falling in and mixing with the good stuff
• Clear Bottle - I can see how much is in there

Cons:

• Can't put excess back in the tube the way you can with a jar
• Seems that this only comes in white

This paste spreads like icing. It is amazingly smooth. I wasn't really expecting that because it looks a little cakey - almost like caulking in a tub (I don't know what that stuff is called), the stuff that painters use to fill in the holes in the walls. But it was incredibly smooth and it stayed exactly where I wanted it to.

For this paste, I mixed it with some Distress Ink to see how well it picked up the colour. I smooshed my mini pad of Carved Pumpkin on to my non-stick craft mat and mixed a bit together with my palette knife; as you can see in the picture above it picked up the colour beautifully. I have not yet tried to mix this with other mediums, but I suspect it will work just as nicely.

I generally only use my Distress inks for mixing whether it be the mini pads or directly from the reinkers depending on how concentrated I want the colour. However, when the texture paste is this inexpensive I certainly will not feel bad about experimenting with it.

Finally, I put this through a stencil. Whether coloured or not, this is typically the most common way for me to use texture paste/structure gel on a project. I feel that this product went through incredibly well, it kept the form and didn't slip under at all.

Couple of Observations:

• Incredibly smooth to spread
• Dries matte
• Low odor
• Super fast drying time - by the time I was done with the stencil example, the first smear test had already dried to the touch
• Uncoloured product dries slightly transparent when spread thinly over darker cardstock
• Very inexpensive

Overall, I am beyond pleased with this product. Once my other tubs of matte paste are gone, I won't be replacing them. I'll definitely be switching to this as my go-to for matte embossing paste. Even though I'm not able to return excess to the container, the cost for this is so low that a little waste is not something that will bother me at all.

I'm looking forward to seeing what else Daler Rowney has available that I can use in my work. I'm also very interested to see how well this paste mixes with other mediums. 

I hope you enjoyed today's review. If you haven't already, please follow me on the right side bar or over on Facebook. If you have any further questions about this product of a suggestion for a future review, please drop me a line in the comments section below. I would love to hear from you.

*disclaimer: I am not sent products to review, nor am I paid to review them. I review the products that I use, that I find interesting and that I buy with my own money. I receive no incentive or reward to compare or review products. All reviews are based on my experience with them and are my opinion only.

Product Review Series | Daler Rowney Simply Acrylic Mother of Pearl Structure Paste

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you're having a great day.

It took a little while to put this one together, not because I had such a hard time with the product, but because in order for me to really show you the product, I had to use a black background, but when I actually use the product I'll be using it on white.

So for the purposes of today's review, the product will be tested on 65lb Recollections black cardstock. In the future when I use this product on an actual project it will most likely be on white.

I'm going to just start out with saying, this bottle is giant. 8.4 US fl. oz, or 250ml. That's an insane amount of product to put in one tube. I got this at my local Wal-Mart. I paid $5.97!!! They were practically begging me to buy it.

I've never heard of the product before, but since I'm always on the look out for new and inexpensive things to use on my cards, I thought "Literally, the worst thing that happens here, is I lose $6.00." That's like skipping a latte, let's all be honest.

Firstly, the fact that this is in a squeezey bottle is just amazing!
Pros:

• Not worried about drying out
• No more dry product cracking and falling into the good stuff
• No more scrambling to get the lid on between applications because we don't want our precious pastes to get hard and therefore crappy to use.

Cons:

• Can't really put excess back in the tube - it's really a use it or lose it situation. 

This gel, is just that; it really reminds me of a gel or a hand lotion. It's smooth and creamy and spreads beautifully, and you don't have to wait until it dries to get that shine. It is amazing. 

As you can see in the picture above, I have used the back of my palette knife to spread just a bit across a black page. I originally tried it on the white - because I want to show you how I would normally use the product - but there just wasn't enough contrast. 

It didn't matter if my flash was on or off, the shine on this stuff is incredible.

I looooooove using embossing pastes through stencils. I love the look and the texture and the little something extra that it brings to a card.

This stuff did not fail me. Like all other embossing pastes - your results are going to depend on your stencil. For this review - I used an incredibly basic stencil. 

Couple of Observations:

• Spreads like silk
• This particular product is quite thin, so it may seep under a stencil edge if the stencil isn't secured or is very delicate - here is an example of this paste over a shimmering background (why I had to do this review with black) but also how the edges of the stencil are not as defined.
• The product is a bit tacky when it seems dry. It wasn't until the next day that these little dots were completely dry.
• Very low odor. YAY!
• Clean up was the same as other embossing pastes - move fast, use warm water, a bit of gentle soap and an old toothbrush

Overall, I really like this product. Because of the Mother of Pearl finish, I didn't bother mixing this with colours as I typically would to coordinate with my project. I would use this for those times where I want something a bit transparent and incredibly shimmery. For the price, you certainly can't go wrong. Even if it is a bit different and you have to "waste" some product on practice runs, at this price, who even cares? I've paid nearly triple that price for half the product in a little jar that ended up drying out because the lid didn't have a good seal on it.

The only real downside that I have found using this product is the drying time. This isn't something you can just toss on a card or a project and work over in the next hour. It literally took overnight for me to feel confident that this stuff was fully dry and that was a thin stencil. Maybe if you find a background you really like, make a few of them at once and then use them later.

In the end, there is absolutely no loss when trying this product. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't. I'm not going to toss my other products in the trash because this is the be all and end all of structure gels, but once they are gone I'll certainly have less motivation to replace them. For me, this product is what I'm looking for in a shimmering gel. I'll just have to plan accordingly.

Also, They have a white medium texture paste - looks thicker and I cannot wait to try that one out! It's been sitting on my desk, calling my name. So maybe we'll see that one next week.

I hope you like today's review. If you haven't already, please follow me on the right side bar. You can also follow me over on Facebook. If you have any further questions about this product or have a suggestion for a future review, please toss me a line in the comments section below and let me know, I'd love to hear from you.

*disclaimer: I am not sent products to review, nor am I paid to review them. I review the products that I find interesting and that I have purchased with my own money, my hope is to provide you with information based on my experience. I am not given incentive, payment or reward. All reviews are based on my experience and are my opinion only.

DIY - Make Your Own Stencils Using Border Dies

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

If you are like me, you have more border dies than you know what to do with. But sometimes we want the illusion of dimension without actually having the additional layers of paper. So what to do? Typically I would cut a border using my regular cardstock and then toss it at the end because it was so saturated with ink that it would either be no good, or the ink would transfer from an old project to a new projects.

Today I will show you how to use your border dies to create your own reusable stencils. 

The materials are pretty basic, and as you can see from the picture above it doesn't take much to make your own great stencils.  I chose to use borders as that is what I stencil most often, but you can do this with any of your dies - for example I plan on creating some balloon stencils so that I can create a party background for a future post (foreshadowing? Yep.)

Start with a piece of clean stencil material. I was able to get a two pack of stencil sheets from my local art store for dirt cheap. It's a thin, plastic material about the same sturdiness as my regular 110lb cardstock. They came in 8 1/2" x 11" and I trimmed it down from there. For the larger stencils in the first picture - I cut them to 6x6" squares and then used the left overs for other dies. 

 

Here I am using two of the "Stitched Hillside" Border dies from Lawn Fawn. These create a great snowy background in any winter scene (or grass if you're going for something a little more summer).

I used some low tack washi tape to hold my border dies in place and then ran them through my die cutting machine. Even though they create a stitched look, it doesn't change the way the stencil works as the stitch doesn't go all the way through the stencil, and if it does the hole isn't large enough to allow ink to pass through; at least for me. It will depend on the type of materials you use.

I did find that I had to run it through my machine twice - I would have done another pass but I didn't want them to shift and ruin my new stencil. After, just remove the tape and the dies, if the cut isn't clean, trace it with your craft blade. This material is incredibly easy to cut so while I did have to use my knife for all the stencils just to get a clean cut, it didn't really feel like I was cutting anything.

To finish it off, I used a smooth surface writer (this one is by Sharpie) to write the name of die that I used to create the stencil.

As you may have noticed from the first picture, they are all Lawn Fawn. The only reason for that is I have all their border dies. I'm not even kidding. It's like a compulsion. Or Pokemon - I just gotta get them all.

For the Ocean Waves and Puffy Clouds, I simply rotated the stencil 90 degrees and used the next size die. 

A couple things to keep in mind:

• You are cutting a plastic material - watch out for sharp corners
• If you need to finish off the cut with a craft knife - be careful and take your time, you don't want to slip and cut into your stencil
• This plastic is not a porous material - like any other stencil the ink will sit on it, it will get on your fingers, it will rub off onto your project - just wipe it clean with a baby wipe
• Store your stencils flat - these and any other that you may have - I keep mine inside a page protectors with a sheet of black cardstock so I can see it clearly, in a three ring binder
• Have fun with it! Now that all your dies can also become stencils the possibilities are endless!

I hope today's DIY has been helpful. If you haven't already, please follow me over on the right side bar so you don't miss any future projects or tips, if you are viewing this via mobile device, scroll to the bottom and click "View web version" first. You can also follow me over on Facebook. If you have any questions about this DIY or a suggestion for a future post, please comment in the section below, I would love to hear from you!