Clearsnap Petal Point Inks

Hey everyone!

Blitsy has the Clearsnap Petal Point Colorbox Inks and the Cat Eye inks on sale right now! Go check it out, http://blitsy.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/26945/  . P.S. – they are doing a special promo right now that I will get $1.00 in Blitsy credit just for you signing up. You don’t even have to buy anything! I really appreciate you using my referer link 🙂 . If you already have an account, that’s great!

The petal point inks are awesome. I only have one set right now, but I love using them when stamping multi word sentiments. Here is an example of one I did recently:

Even doing that tiny “A” in the middle was a snap! Just use the point of the petal. Go check it out before they are “blitsed” out!

http://blitsy.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/26945/

Thanks for stopping by!

Room to Grow!

Finally! Well, I say finally, but in all actuality I haven’t been waiting that long. It always feels that way though when you want something . I’ve been feeling very cramped up in my crafty space lately. It’s not that I don’t have alot of room either. I just had a terrible layout and I wasn’t making the most of my wall space. I had items on those Recollections Peg Boards stacked up on top of eachother, but I had a whole wall next to it that was empty. It was all a matter of getting more storage pieces. I had been wanting to go to IKEA for quite some time and finally had a chance to go last Saturday all by myself. Normally I wouldn’t want to go alone, but in this case it was optimal. At least then when I am sitting there staring at a basket for about 3 minutes I don’t have my boyfriend saying “What ARE you doing??”. The answer…I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate it into my craft room even though I didn’t draw it out on my plan. LOL. He doesn’t quite understand why I am like that and I can see how it would be annoying to deal with me. I barely have patience for myself sometimes! So weird, I know.

I still don’t have everything up so I am only going to share one picture. Even after I have all the new storage pieces up I won’t consider my room finished. I know it will take a while. I try to stop myself from being envious of others crafty spaces when I see YouTube videos. I just remind myself “you know, they probably accumulated all of that over many years and you have only been doing this for 5 months! ” and I also tell myself that being envious is never a good trait and then I find myself being happy for them that they have all that awesome stuff and the crafting community is so amazing. 🙂

So, the picture I want to share is to show you how I ended up using this space that I was originally planning on neglecting. The reason is because I keep inventory and shipping supplies in my closet. I had to make sure if I put something on the wall next to it that it wouldn’t be in the way when I was accessing the closet.

There you have it. Now I am not stacking things on top of eachother on my peg boards anymore. Yay! This storage solution was so super cheap and easy to install. They are called “BYGEL Rails”. The rails at this length were $2.99. The S-Clips were $0.99 per 10. The storage cups that are hanging there were $0.99 each. I also bought some shorter rails ($1.99 each) that will be within arms reach of my desk. I haven’t put those up yet, but I can’t wait! The shorter ones I have will also hold some BYGEL Metal Baskets ($1.99 each) that I got. I really like these rails since you can change how you want to use them at any time. Who knows, maybe some day I will decide I want these rails to all have the storage cups or all baskets? The fact that I can easily switch it up is awesome to me. I tried putting these rails up by myself, but it became pretty evident that it was a two person job. Luckily I had a sweet man that likes to use his drill there to help! My job was to tell him where I wanted them and to keep it level.

Hopefully this has given you an idea for storage if you were stuck. If it helped, please leave a comment to let me know. Also, if you have any awesome storage ideas, I would love to hear them .

Thank you for stopping by!

 

Making a 3D Paper Rose

I recently purchased the McGill Paper Blossoms tool set at the Scrapbook Convention I went to. Last night I tried out the tools with some paper flowers I die cut using my Donna Salazar Rose Creations Die by Spellbinders  . Click the highlited link to find the die template set at my store. I also have the Donna Salazar video in the item description. After I made these flowers I went on YouTube and found a video by Donna Salazar herself showing a couple of ways you can use her die. I’m telling you, this is a die you are going to want! It even comes with 3 different sized leaves. I have a tutorial below, but read the whole thing first! I tell you a couple of things that I would improve and do different the next time I make one of these.

Here are the supplies I used:

•McGill Paper Blossoms Tool Set
•Foam Pad to shape the flower on ( I folded a piece of kid craft foam in half. Worked just fine)
•Spellbinders Rose Creation Die Set
•Big Shot or other die cutting machine that works with Spellbinders wafer-thin dies.
•Patterned Paper (mine was from a Recollections Paper Pad)
•Distress Inks (one in a color to match the flower part and another to match the leaves)
•Cosmetic Sponge or Ink Blending Tool
•Paper Piercer ( You will need this to pop the pieces out of the dies and poke the little hole out of the middle when it is stuck in the die)
•Glossy Accents (or other quick drying clear glue)
•Non-Stick Craft Mat (or work on a space you don’t mind getting inky)
•Metal Brad and Alcohol Ink (Or a brad that you like and don’t need to color with Alcohol Inks)

Ok! That looks like a ton of supplies, but hopefully you already have a lot of that stuff.

Wait…where did those come from?! LOL. I walked in my craft room the other day and found these beautiful flowers and two bags of my favorite chocolate truffles. He gave them to me for no reason! I couldn’t believe it and I was so blown away. It made me feel so special. I had to share!

Ok back to the project haha!

Here are some of the supplies I started with. I  ended up only die cutting less than half of this paper out. Running that die through the machine time and time again gets a little boring. Besides, I started to get a neck ache! You actually just need to run the full set through once to be able to make a flower. I just kept running it through with different colors since I plan to make a ton of these to put on Mother’s Day Cards.

I cut down the papers and ran them through the Big Shot.

Here are the piles I ended up with when I was done with all the cutting. I haven’t tried the vellum yet, but I definitely plan to! After I die cut all of these out I inked up the edges with a distress ink that closely matched the color using half of a cosmetic sponge. I did that to the leaves too. The next step was forming.

This is the part that would probably be easier to follow on a video. There actually is a video by McGill on YouTube showing how to make the paper flowers using their punches. I used a few of the techniques I learned from the video, but I had to modify them to use my dies instead. Basically what I am showing here is that I took the tip and swirled it around in a circle around the hole in the middle. I also swirled it around in circles on each petal. This apparently breaks up the fibers, but it also makes it start to shape and lift.

I repeated this with each size flower and slowly moved down the size of the ball point from 8mm to 6mm to 5mm to 3mm as I was getting to the smaller flowers. The picture below shows what it looks like at this point.

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If you like this look , you can actually just stop here and put a brad through it. If I was to stop here and use the flower just like this I would, however, add another one of the largest flower layers and curl up a small one for the middle. I would also still add the leaves to it. If you want it to be even more dimensional, you can add glue to the bases of each part and glue them together. That will force them to be tighter and more 3D. Donna Salazar shows that in her video about this die set.

The next step involves taking the tweezers out of the tool set and putting it through the hole to clamp on to the middle of each petal. You then take your thumb and forefinger and form the petal around the tweezers. Do this to each and every petal if you want to get this different look I will show in the end. You also take the tweezers and bend each side of the petal down. This part is really easy and doesn’t take that long.

This picture shows what the flower looked like after I completed the bending. The leaves were done the same way I did the petals. I first swirled around on them with the 8mm ball point then I bent the ends. One the leaves I also took a very small pointed tool and made a line down the middle. I am not sure if you can really see that though.

Next, I just put a little Glossy Accents on the bottoms of each flower piece and stacked them up. Pretty Simple. You could use hot glue for this part instead if you want.

Here is what it looked like after gluing was done.

I decided that I didn’t like how wide the opening was so I used another one of the smallest flowers. The paper I used was not double-sided so I had to use a mixture of my pigment inks and distress inks to try imitating the patterned paper. When I make these again I will either make sure I can imitate the paper well or just use double-sided paper. I overlapped and glued the petals together to get a tight bud for the middle. I did not glue the last petal to the first just because I wanted it to look like that. It is up to you how you decide to glue it together though. I glued the small bud to the middle of the flower using Glossy Accents again.

I wanted my middle metal brad to kind of match the flower so I took a silver brad and dyed it with Adirondack Alcohol Inks. It didn’t take too long to dry. Be careful though because I didn’t realize that I should have dabbed out the ink stuck under the bottom of the top part of the brad. There was some in there and it got on my flower as I was lowering it in. Oops!

Finished!

All the pictures just above are of the finished flower . Hopefully you were able to follow my odd instructions. If you need or want a video, just let me know! I wasn’t comfortable with doing a video the first time since I didn’t know at all what I was doing, but now I think I could do it.

Next time I make these flowers I will use more layers  like 2-3 of some of the same sizes for more fullness. I will also probably use double-sided paper.

Thanks for stopping by! Don’t forget to comment 🙂

Giveaway Winner and New Videos!

With better odds of winning than a lottery scratcher, I am happy to announce that the winner is my new subscriber, Sarah Blake! Congrats! Please e-mail your shipping details to intoxicatingarts@gmail.com . 🙂 Like I said, I knew this giveaway was a little premature, but I didn’t care. I was itching to have someone else see how awesome the Graphic 45 items are. Thank you everyone (my 2 subbies!) for entering. I plan to do another one when I get 50 subscribers (whether on the blog or on YouTube). I don’t care how long it takes, I’m not giving up lol.

Here is a link to my YouTube videos, Click Here! I just went to a Scrapbook Convention with my Mom on Saturday. It was my first scrapbook convention and it was pretty fun. It was so packed and we were there for just over 4 hours. I just added a video of some awesome deals I found at Michaels. The sound cuts out just a few minutes into it for some reason. I am not able to upload it without that happening so I just left it so you can at least see the stuff. The other video is of the stuff I found at the Scrapbook Convention and the sound is not messed up on that one.

The past couple weeks have been ridiculously busy for me and I have not had any crafting time 😦 . However, next weekend I will be forced to craft. (yay!). My mom is coming over to join me in my crafty space on Sunday. Hopefully I can make some cool things to share!

Thanks for stopping by!

My First Giveaway! New Graphic 45 Goodies!

 

8″ x 8″ Tropical Travelogue Paper Pad by Graphic 45.

Graphic 45 Flower Staples

Graphic 45 Alphabet Sticker Staples

Kraft Envelope Album Staples by Graphic 45.

It might be a little too soon to do a giveaway, but I don’t care! lol. I’m so excited about all the awesome paper crafting supplies I have to offer that I want to do a giveaway. I am convinced once you try out Graphic 45’s items you will be hooked. Since you know I have the best prices and I will give you great service, I know you will come back to me to get them. This giveaway is for one of each of the items I posted a picture of above. The items that are not yet hyperlinked to my store are in my possession, but I just haven’t had a chance to post them for sale.

Here are the rules and how to enter:

•Must be within the Continental U.S. (sorry, when I get bigger I promise I will be able to branch out)
•Must be subscribed to my blog (New subscribers are totally welcome. Just subscribe before you comment)
• Leave a comment on this post telling me:
 1. What your favorite Tropical place is.
2. What you would make using these supplies.
•You have until Sunday April 15th at Midnight to enter. I will use Random.org to pick a winner. You may only comment once. Double comments will only be counted one time.
•I will announce who is the winner on April 16th via a blog post on this blog (which is why you need to be subscribed). You will be instructed to e-mail me your information so I can mail you your new goodies. If I do not hear from the winner by April 23rd, I will use Random.org to pick a new winner using the original comments on the blog post.

I think that about does it! Don’t forget to spread the word so your crafty friends get a chance to win these fun Graphic 45 items too!

Thanks for stopping by and Good Luck!

Simple Organza Flowers

I made my first Organza flower today and it was surprisingly quick and easy. I got this idea from someone’s video I saw on YouTube where they made their own fabric flowers. I started searching around and eventually ran into a video called ” simple Organza flowers ” . I watched the video and once I saw how easy it really was, I knew I had to make some. I didn’t know where to get organza so I ended up buying some of eBay which came in this weekend .

The supplies I used :
* organza
* scissors ( ended up switching to x-acto )
* needle
* thread
* circle template ( you can also freehand, doesn’t have to be perfect )
* sharpie or paint pen ( to trace circle onto organza )

I happened to have a circle I cut out of grungepaper lying around, so I just used that one. I traced this five times onto the organza . I used white so I could see it better . I planned on cutting inside the circle so I knew I would be cutting the white away . Each circle represents one petal.

I quickly cut them into squares to make it easier to cut the circles .At first I was folding them in half and cutting them with scissors . When I cut this way, I didn’t feel like I had as much control while cutting as I wanted.

That’s why I switched over to an x-acto . I felt like the blade easily glided through and I felt like I had more control. That was just my preference though . You might want to try both to see what fits you best.

After you have threaded your needle, Take your first circle and fold in half. Then fold in half again. You should have a triangle now.

Take your needle and thread through the curved part of the triangle. There’s no specific length between stitches. It just depends on your personal preference .

Bring the petal to the end of the thread .

Pull it tight and it will bunch at the bottom . Fold your next circle and start threading it to add next to the first .

Repeat this until you have all five petals done.

At the end, bunch them all together and tie the last petal to the first one.

I added a small resin charm I had to the center to hide the middle hole .

See how quick and simple that was ?! They are so cute and look professionally made too. I never sew and these were incredibly easy to do.

I hope you give these flowers a try. In the video I found on YouTube called ” simple Organza flowers ” , she also shows how to do these using squares for a different look and she made one using satin!

Happy Easter everyone !

Faux Glass Bottle with Mystic Liquid

I’ll be the first to admit that my posts lately haven’t been quite “creative”. My excuse is plain and simple. I haven’t had any crafting time lately. I added up how much I have crafted in the past two weeks combined and it was a grand total of about 2.5 hours. *sigh* Unfortunately a lot of that time was taken up by trying to get inspired. It seems like once I finally get on a roll it’s already time to stop because I have to do something else.  OK, enough with the excuses. I’m sure everyone knows what I am talking about. What I want to share today is a little faux Glass Bottle  with Mystic Liquid that I made using the new Graphic 45 Olde Curiosity Shoppe Cling 2 Stamp Set!

Supplies Needed:

• Transparency
•Vellum
•Stayz-On Ink ( I used Royal Purple)
•Archival Ink (I used black)
•Alcohol Inks (I used a total of 5 different colors but one color per image would probably be fine.)
•Distress Ink- Tea Dye or other brown color
• Acrylic Block ( I used the Fiskars Stamp Press)
•Non-Stick Craft Mat
•Heat Tool ( To dry archival ink if you’re impatient like me)
•Half of a Cosmetic Sponge or an Ink Blending Tool
•Scissors (I used my Tonic Studio scissors, but any scissors that allow you to cut a small image will work)
•Glossy Accents (or any other glue that will quickly dry vellum to transparency)
•Popsicle Stick (I used a mini one that came in a big pack in the kids craft section of Wal-Mart)
•…and of course your Graphic 45 Olde Curiosity Shoppe Cling 2 Stamp Set! ( or you could use a different bottle and label stamp set if you already have one.)

1. Mount your bottle stamp onto your block and stamp your image onto the transparency with stayz-on ink. I used the Fiskars Stamp Press because transparencies are slippery and I didn’t want to risk smearing my image. You can use a regular block just be careful to lift straight up when taking the stamp back up. Set these aside.

2. Put your Label Stamp onto your block and stamp onto Vellum using Archival Ink. If you are using the same stamp as I am and you want the label to fit in the label area of the stamp, then you will want to make a little bit of room between your images.  You can either set these aside to dry or dry them with your heat tool so you can move on to the next step.

3. Place the vellum label over the stamped image and lightly pencil in where you should cut the label to fit the bottle properly. Cut ou the label. Any pencil lines you can see will be covered up by the next step as long as you made them light. I also made a second bottle that I only cut around the circular part of the label. If that is what you prefer, then you would skip the lining up and penciling part of this step.

4. Dab the Distress Ink onto the vellum labels to make them look aged. Try blotting more in some areas than others to really give it that aged look. Blotting on a smaller surface is easier with this folded up cosmetic sponge than using the ink blending tool, in my opinion.

5. Ok, so now for the fun part! Decide what color you want your mystic liquid to be and grab those alcohol ink colors. If you are using multiple colors then start with the lightest and work your way to the darkest. Do not apply the alcohol ink directly to the transparency. Doing this will give you very little control. The alcohol ink will lift the ink off the transparency. (Tip: I remembered after making these that you could avoid the worry of lifting the ink off the transparency by simply flipping it over and using the alcohol inks on the other side. This would also give you a more finished look) Put one drop onto the tip of your popsicle stick and glide it around the areas that you want it to go. I did not use any alcohol ink blending solution. If you use the opposite side of the transparency then you can be a little more daring since you won’t need to worry about staying in the lines. When you are done adding alcohol inks cut out the bottle image.

6. Glue the vellum labels on the opposite side that you used the alcohol inks. I used Glossy Accents since I know it is quick drying and can hold these two materials together. The picture above is what they looked like when I first put the glue on. I ended up leaving these for about half an hour. When I came back I found that during drying they had curled. When the labels curled they still held tight to the transparency and the transparency curled right along with it. All I had to do was re-shape it with my hands and it went straight again.

Here is the finished product. I plan on popping these onto a bookmark that I am working on. If you look closely at the label on the right bottle you will see some crackle marks on the label. This happened when I was reshaping it after it had curled. I love the crackles. I feel like it just adds to the aged look that I wanted !

If you try this technique, please let me know !  I would love to see how yours comes out. I think using the alcohol inks on the opposite side will open up more possibilities of making the liquid in the bottle look more “liquidy” and not so potion-esque. However, I do like the potion look to it lol. I’m seriously tempted to make a chipboard cabinet and putting a bunch of these faux bottles into it!

Thanks for stopping by. Don’t forget to subscribe, comment, and check out my store at http://shop.intoxicatingarts.com . I have more Graphic 45 and Tim Holtz goodies in the mail as I’m typing. Yay!

Go to Blitsy NOW. Why I bought Tim Holtz’ New Book.

Ok, first click on this link, http://blitsy.com/rewardsref/index/refer/id/26945/ , (yes, I get a referer bonus )
and reserve “Compendium of Curiosities II”, then finish reading the post below. (Don’t worry, Blitsy holds it in your cart for one hour so no one else can snatch it up while you finish shopping. ) After you read my post you can decide whether you want to go ahead and buy the book or just have Blitsy drop it out of your cart. I’d hate for you to read the post and go to buy it just to find out they were already “Blitsed”.
You would think that promoting Blitsy would be a bad idea for me. However, when I find good deals that I am not yet capable of offering, I get much more enjoyment out of sharing those deals than getting frustrated that I can not yet offer them.

So…if you have been waiting to buy Tim Holtz’ new Book “Compendium of Curiosities II”, now is the time! I just got an e-mail from Blitsy that it was in and I didn’t hesitate for a minute. Tim Holtz has such amazing ideas. Yeah, I know there are YouTube videos with awesome techniques up the wazoo and he is doing his new “Creative Chemistry 101” class online. BUT to me there is nothing quite like having a hard copy to be able to refer to. When I first got into stamping, inking, paper crafting (not scrapbooking, which started when I was 12), etc, the very first book I bought was “Ink Essentials” which was also put out by Ranger Industries. Of course when I found out that some of these techniques were available for free on YouTube I got a little frustrated that I just dropped about $18 on a rather skinny book. However, I was cleaning my room the other day and ran across the Ink Essentials book. I started fanning through the pages and realized that I still haven’t tried many of the techniques in this book! Besides, if you don’t know the name of the technique or that it even exists, then how would you search for it on YouTube? Hmm, tricky! lol.

Ok, now go back to Blitsy and decide for yourself if you want that book!