This card took me a while to do but it was a lot of fun! Avery Elle has a new stamp set out called Pixie Dust and it’s just adorable!
Here’s the card:
She’s just so cute! This card did take a while and it’s PACKED with techniques. In order to not make this blog post monumentally long, I am going to to a quick run down of what was done.
Cover the fairy girl with liquid frisket to mask her off from the background spraying. Let it dry.
Mix Luster Mica Powder in Hawaiian Orchid and Deep Sea Dive , or Blue Ice, in a Fine Mist Spray bottle. Spray the background keeping some of each color more concentrated in the top or bottom. Dry with heat tool.
Spell out “Fairy Kisses” in Silhouette Studio using Blessed Day Font from http://www.urbanfonts.com . Weld the letters together and cut it out using your Silhouette Cameo 2 .
Stamp the sentiment on a scrap piece of paper that you have inked with Picked Raspberry Distress Ink. Also ink up the Fairy Kisses sentiment with this ink.
Run “Fairy Kisses” through a Xyron Creative Station with sticker adhesive installed to turn this intricate die cut into a easy to place sticker.
Adhere other sentiment using a tape runner or liquid glue.
Revel in the beauty of your card! You’re done!
Here’s a close up of the fairy girl: Thank you so much for stopping by!
I had so much fun making this Art Journal page and it’s definitely my most favorite art journal page so far! There are links below the pictures to purchase the items that I used that we sell and also links to the products we do not sell.
I originally intended to post a process video of this art journal page, but apparently my larger 64GB memory card couldn’t handle more than 1 hour and 20 minutes. So, until I figure out a way around that, I will just do blog posts of the longer projects. This one took me multiple hours due to the many layers and drying time.
Here’s the links to the products I use that we sell:
• Distress Inks (one or two greens, a purple, and a pink)
• Watercolor Paper cut down to 4-1/4 x 5-1/2″
•Black paper cut down to 4-1/2 x 5-3/4″
• Cream card base measuring 9-1/2″ x 6″ , scored to create a 4-3/4 x 6″ card.
• Painter’s tape (or something to hold down the stencil
• Sponge Dauber or cosmetic sponge
• Recommended, but not necessary, non-stick craft mat and heat tool.
First lay the Moroccan Tile stencil on the watercolor paper and quickly spritz with the 3 Luster Mica Spray Mists. You need to do this quickly because the paper will start to curl. The cool thing is, you will end up with a concentration of color in the middle and it will fade out to the edges. Let that dry for a second and then grab the Floral Frame Stencil and place that on top of the watercolor paper and tape it down to your work surface. These stencils are made specifically for 4-1/2 x 5-1/2″ card bases so it makes it easy to get it perfect. Grab your palette knife and Prima Light Paste and apply light paste through the stencil. Carefully remove the stencil when you’re done applying the paste. It’s best to let this air dry, but if you are impatient, you can use your heat gun. Just be careful because it will bubble if you leave the heat in one area for too long. One that is dry to the touch, re-apply the stencil and grab your distress inks and sponge. You can easily color the flowers and leaves since you have the stencil protecting the surface underneath. Dab on color as you see fit and then remove the stencil. Let that dry for a little bit and then apply the “Mothers help us Grow” stencil. If you line this up with the paper, it will align itself perfectly inside the floral frame. Grab another distress ink and a sponge and sponge the ink through the stencil. I found that cosmetic sponges work better than the small sponge daubers for this stencil. Since it has words on it, there are a few areas that the sponge dauber would snag on, but the cosmetic sponge did not. You can carefully lift the stencil and peak if everything went through properly before deciding if it’s done. Then all you have to do is tape it on the black piece of cardstock and then the card base. It’s that easy! Check out the dimension you get when you used the Prima Light Paste with one of our stencils! Thank you for stopping by!
Now that I have officially released the Luster Mica Powders to everyone, I want to start releasing Technique videos and Technique blog posts. I think seeing what you can do with these powders in action will really show you exactly how diverse they are.
This first technique is about mixing the Luster Mica Powders with various gel mediums. Now, since the Luster Mica Powders already have a built in binder, we aren’t relying on the gel to work as a binder, but rather using the gel so we can get a different look and perform different techniques that we can’t achieve with using water and mica powders alone.
Heavy Gloss Gels and Gloss Gels will add dimension to your work. This extra body will allow you to use your mica powders with stencils and texture tools. You can also brush a thin layer of your mica infused gel over a project or portion of a project to seal it in or to layer on top of. You can create multiple layers this way and protect the layer underneath from any additional colors that you would like to add with mica powder mixed with water, thus creating a resist effect. One drawback is that the shimmer doesn’t catch the light the same way it does as when the mica powders are activated with water. It gives it a completely different shimmer that is beautiful in its own way.
We’ll be trying out 4 different mediums today with the Luster Mica Powders: Liquitex Professional Super Heavy Gloss Gel, Liquitex Professional Gloss Gel, Claudine Hellmuth Studios Multi Medium Gloss, and Prima Marketing Art Basics Light Paste (this is an opaque matte medium, but I threw it in to show you the difference). For all different gels I first mixed the powder in using a palette knife on a silicone mixing surface before applying to my surface.
1. Liquitex Professional Super Heavy Gloss Gel with Luster Mica Powder in Hawaiian Orchid:
The Super Heavy Gel was a pleasure to work with. It mixed up easily and it works wonderfully with stencils. The stencil I used in this picture is called Stripes and it’s by Tim Holtz. They are made to be broken up like it’s shown here and I was easily able to apply the gel through the stencil with a palette knife. You can see how different some of the Luster Mica Powders look depending on the light angle and the color they are applied too. Hawaiian Orchid is a color shifting powder. It switches between violet to a more pink/ fuchsia color on black. On white, it stays prevalently pink with a touch of purple shimmer coming through. On the upper right hand corner of the first and second picture you can see where we dragged one of the Texture Tools through the gel. It worked great!
2. Liquitex Professional Gloss Gel with Luster Mica Powder in Gramma Nutt:
Gloss Gel preformed just as well as the Super Heavy Gloss Gel just with a little less heft to it. The gloss gel feels a little more creamy while the super heavy is almost more like a paste. They both dry completely clear and worked great. The smudge you see on the white background is from me partially cleaning the stencil and accidentally getting gel on the opposite side, so it’s by no fault of the gloss gel. The picture shows the gel laid down via palette knife, one of our texture tools, and then used with the Tim Holtz Harlequin Stencil. As you can see from the pictures, Gramma Nutt color shifts as well. This color shifts from blue to a orange/gold. The shift is also more prevalent on the black cardstock whereas the white stays mostly blue with a little of the orange shimmer coming through.
3. Claudine Hellmuth Studio Multi Medium Gloss with Luster Mica Powder in 24 Karat Gold:
Claudine Hellmuth Multi Medium Gloss performed better than I expected. Being that this gel is less viscous than the other gels, I figured it wouldn’t perform well with the stencil at all. I could easily get it to drip from my palette knife. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it worked perfectly fine with the Tim Holtz Doily Stencil! 24 Karat Gold Luster Mica Powder looks pretty much the same on a light or dark, but still appears a little more brilliant on the black.
4. Prima Marketing Art Basics Light Paste with Luster Mica Powder in Blue Ice:
Prima’s Light Paste is definitely not the first thing I would think about mixing with Luster Mica Powder. It is an opaque matte paste which is the opposite of what helps shimmer shine. However, I am glad I tried because I did discover something interesting which can have its time and place to be used. If you apply it thinly, you can see the color and a little bit of the shimmer. If it’s thick, then it is opaque and you really just get the color of the mica powder as it would have looked on a white background and no real apparent shimmer. BUT if you look closer to the bottom picture, you will see that it has some shimmer coming out through the matte paste. It reminds me of when the sun hits a rock just the perfect way in the desert. It has a beauty of its own and could be used for certain projects. Blue Ice is a color that is much more apparent on a black surface. When it is applied over white it really looks more like a super pale blue.
Here’s the video showing me performing these techniques:
That’s it for the first technique! I hope you learned something today! Thanks for stopping by!
We now have 19 different Luster Mica Powder colors available for sale on our website!
Luster Mica Powders are a great way to add some shimmer to your next project! Each 1/2 ounce jar includes 6 grams by weight of powder. The powder has a built in binder. That means you can mix it with just regular water and it will stick to paper, chipboard, cardboard, wood, canvas, and other porous surfaces!
Here are some other ways you can use Luster Mica Powders:
• Mix with other fluid or semi-fluid mediums such as acrylic paints, gloss gel, glue, etc. You can use it to tint or add shimmer to existing colored acrylic paints.
•Mix with Encaustic Wax . (some of the powders are not stable in wax, so we advise testing it out before making a full batch)
• Mix with Resin or brush into molds before pouring
• Mix with clay or brush on top before baking
•Stamp with embossing ink and then brush the mica powder over the stamped image. Mist with a fine mist water bottle to seal in the design.
• Make your own Mica Spray mists! Make sure to only mix a little at a time, since a little goes a long way. Use warm water to help the binder and powder mix well. Let sit for about 10 minutes and then shake up. You will want to use a fine mist spray bottle for the best effects. It also helps to swirl a little between sprays since the mica will settle to the bottom. You can make multiple spray mists from one jar. I would recommend not putting any more than one grams of powder per one ounce of water.
Here’s a video covering all of the colors we have to offer. We have even more colors to be released and I will be making technique videos in the coming months!
I have always been one of those people that touches things. Even when I am not supposed to. I remember being in stores when I was little and getting told ” Don’t Touch THAT!” so many times. I would just find something shiny or pretty or textured and want to touch it regardless of how fragile it was or what the price is and with no consideration of how clumsy I am. So, it’s only natural that I think paintings and mixed media projects with a lot of texture and dimension are even more awesome than their two dimensional siblings.
That being said, not only do we offer our own Texture Tools, but we also carry Ranger’s Texture Tools and all of their Texture Pastes. Prima Marketing also has some great products for texture. I’ll run through each of these really quickly.
In my last blog post I shared our new Texture Tools. These are not a replacement or competition to Ranger’s Texture Tools though because the textures are almost completely different. Having both sets would give you even more texture options.
Click the picture to buy!
Ranger’s Texture Tools come in a 6 pack with a removable ring for storage. These texture tools have texture on the long edge and one of the shorter edges. They have a print of the design on them for easy reference. They are made of a durable flexible clear plastic , very similar to the plastic we used on our Texture Tools. Drag the tools through mediums that can hold peaks and keep their form such as Ranger’s Texture Pastes. Ranger’s texture tools retail for $7.00.
Ranger has three different Texture Pastes to choose from. They each come in a 3.9 ounce jar and retail for $7.50. Click on any of the pictures below to purchase from Simon Says Stamp.
Click to Buy!
The first is an opaque texture paste that will cover any imagery underneath it. This is their original texture paste. Acrylic paint and inks can be mixed into the texture paste to make a solid color. One of my most favorite techniques for using the texture paste is applying it through a stencil with a palette knife. After the paste is dry, you can also stamp on it or paint over it. Ranger states that these texture pastes are artist quality.
Click the picture to buy!
Then, Ranger came out with Transparent Texture Pastes. This picture above is Transparent Matte. Transparent texture pastes are great for adding texture without covering up the layer underneath. You can also tint these with inks to get a transparent colored texture. This one dries clear with a matte finish.
Click the picture to buy!
This is probably the one that I am most excited about! While there are times that I don’t want any gloss, most of the time I am using my Luster Mica Powders or Luster Mica Spray Mists and I want a TON of shimmer on my project. You can mix Luster Mica Powder in this for sparkly dimension! Of course, you can mix mica powder in all of the other ones too, but it shows up the best and sparkles the best when it’s in a gloss.
Prima Marketing has a pretty cool paste as well!
Click to buy!
Prima Marketing’s Light Paste is from Finnabair’s Art Basics Line. I have to tell you that I am IN LOVE with everything Finnabair has come up with for Prima so far. It’s right down my alley. Light Paste holds its dimension, so it’s another great option for use with stencils and texture tools. The difference is that it is light and airy feeling. You can add a lot of dimension without added weight. It is opaque and dries white with a tiny bit of transparency to it. A major bonus is that you can dry it with a heat tool! However, I noticed some shrinkage that may have been attributed to drying it this way. I have not tried air drying it though, so I can not be sure. Most of the time in art shrinkage is not a problem since we are not dealing in “exacts”. Light Paste can also be used as an adhesive, but for economical reasons I would stick to using it for dimension. Art Basics Light Paste can also be mixed with acrylic paints to achieve a white-washed dimensional paste. Another great characteristic of Light Paste is that it is bendable! You can put it on projects that have movement and not worry about cracking. You get 8 fluid ounces in a jar for an MSRP of $13.00. That’s still a great price when you consider what a large amount you are getting. This paste is unlike any others I have tried and is worth a purchase to have in your craft arsenal!
I hope this blog post has been informational and helped you decide which texture product is right for you. If you have any questions, just post a comment or e-mail intoxicatingarts@gmail.com. Thank you for stopping by!
As we get closer to Christmas I start frantically making Christmas cards while trying to design new laser cuts for Valentine’s Day. It puts me in a cross of thinking about reds and greens , as well as love and hearts. I think this card shows my mood pretty well!
The paper is from Lawn Fawn’s Snow Day collection. See those adorable hearts on the music sheets? So Cute! The tag is a Lawn Fawn stamp, but the sentiment is one that I got in the dollar bin from Michael’s a few years ago. I used my tiny attacher to adhere the tag.The light bulbs you see here are the some of my wood laser cuts that have been colored with Luster Mica Powders. The Green one is actually Luster Mica Spray Mist in Turtle Town and the red one is Maui Magma mixed with a little 24 Karat Gold. I am working on getting the powders released as soon as possible. They do have some nice shimmer to them that didn’t really come through in the camera. The embossed the tops of the lightbulbs with green embossing powder and then threaded them with floral wire and added a little bell. I had to make sure it would have enough room to jingle which just took a little bit of finagling. This was actually a pretty simple card. I hope you enjoyed seeing it. Thanks for stopping by!
Hey everyone! I was able to get some crafty time in yesterday (wahoo!). I had so much fun making this card.
I started off the background using only inks from the Tim Holtz Distress Mini Distress ink kits #1 and #2. < Click there to purchase for the super low price of $5.59! I blended them using foam. I started off with Mustard Seed, then Spiced Marmalade, Picked Raspberry, Seedless Preserves, and lastly Salty Ocean. When the blending was done, I gave the background 2 spritzes of Hawaiian Shores Luster Mica Spray Mist. Then I stamped the tree and leaves from Lawn Fawn’s Sweater Weather Stamp Set. I used a silver metallic gel stick from Faber-Castell mixed with a little bit of water to stamp the stars at the top. The ground is a mixture of spackling and slate grey acrylic paint that was applied with a palette knife. I dried one layer a little with my heat tool (it will bubble if you heat it too much) and then applied a second layer which was then sprinkled with Martha Stewart glitter. The cute little monsters are from Lawn Fawn’s Spooktacular Stamp Set. I colored them with watercolor pencils ( a technique I am trying to get better at!) and fussy cut them. They were applied with homemade glue dots. The beautiful sentiment on the side of the card is a chipboard laser cut by Intoxicating Arts. These are $1.69 and come in a 2 pack with one Card Maker size and one Scrapbooking Size. The chipboard was colored using the same silver metallic Faber-Castell Gel Stick, but this time it was mixed with Claudine Hellmuth Studio Gloss Medium. I also used the gloss medium to adhere it to the card stock. I hope you enjoyed this card and if you have any questions, please let me know!
Today is National Coffee Day and I had the PERFECT stamp set to celebrate with! Lawn Fawn’s Love you a Latte set.
Which looks like this,
Love you a Latte
I wanted to make it look like the coffee mugs were sitting on a granite counter top, so I tried making a counter top by marbling my Luster Mica Spray Mists. I used Hawaiian Shores and Black Sand Beach. To get them to marble all you need to do is spray them and then spray water while you are drying it with a heat tool. I use the heat tool and water simultaneously to move the Luster Spray Mist in the desired direction. I stamped the mugs using Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored them with Spectrum Noire Alcohol Markers. I will warn you that I know nothing about alcohol ink coloring. I gave it my best shot, but I feel that I failed miserably. The faces I used are actually from another Lawn Fawn Set (possibly multiple other sets). The “+” is the cross from the little nurse bird in another Lawn Fawn Set as well. The “=” was just drawn in using a PITT pen. I used the steam that says “smile” on it, but I just wanted the steam and not the “smile”, so I masked that part off and stamped it twice. The gold embossed hearts are also from another Lawn Fawn Set. I used a ever so slightly larger one on the mug than with the sentiment. I ended up spritzing the black cardstock because I still do not own a embossing powder anti-static tool and I made a mess. I think the Luster Spray Mist hid my boo boo pretty well!
I’m playing along with the Coffee Lovers Bloghop because I LOVE coffee. I drink it 6 out of 7 days of the week and sometimes drink too much of it. HAHA. I hope you will play along too! To check it out, just click on the badge below and it will link you to the rules and the hop. Thanks for stopping by!
When I set out to make this card, I was trying to interpret a technique I learned from Jennifer Mcguire on her You tube channel. She used texture paste and watercolors and a vellum overlay, along with some die cuts to make a house warming card. I used embossing powder and the Stampers Best (discount code shown on the right side of my blog page! ) hounds tooth background stamp. Then I sprayed it with Luster Mica Spray Mist in Hawaiian Shores and Hawaiian Orchid. I die cut vellum from a Spellbinders die and stamped using an inexpensive acrylic stamp that I’ve had for a few years. The cupcakes are from Lawn Fawn’s Beep Boop Birthday stamp set. The cupcakes were colored with Distress Markers and used to cover up the glue dots I placed on the back. I found some ribbon and a flat back embellishment from my stash and added that for a little more interest. I was so happy to find the perfect stamp for the inside in one of my ‘never been used’ Tim Holtz cling stamp sets! Here’s the inside:
I flicked Luster Spray Mist on the inside by unscrewing the cap and tapping the “straw” part of the cap assembly. I’m pretty happy with how this card came out and just might have to do it again! Thanks for stopping by!
Thank you so much for stopping by!
Intoxicating Arts 