Foiling with glue pen

Hello there,

My latest obsession is foiling. I was introduced to it a while back and was experimenting, but wasn't very successful :-(. I kept looking for ways to add foil accents to cards and tags but I don't have a foiling machine.
Then I found a technique that totally works for me! I use a two way glue pen. This means that the glue stays tacky after it dries. This way you can add foil to anything you want!

All you need is a two way glue pen and some transfer foil. I always cut my foil in pieces to size, I find it easier to work with and I waste less of it. 

I just "write" where I want my foil. Here you see the wet glue. It dries clear and tacky. 

You see the shiny glue. It is dry and ready to foil. Make sure the glue is completely dry. I always use my heat tool to dry it. Make sure you don't overheat it, because it will bubble. 

Just place the piece of foil with the coloured side up on the glue and start rubbing. I just use my fingers, the cheapest tools I have ;-)

Tadaaaaa. That is it! Isn't it super easy? You can add foil accents to any card or project this way. 

Here you see that the foil only transfers where the glue is. The rest stays in tact. I use these "leftovers" for other projects. If I need some red for tiny holly berries or things like that, this will be perfect!

Here I covered the whole text with various colours. Just add a mat and a card blank and you are done :-)

And there you have a finished christmas card. For international mail I prefer this type of cards as the chance of it not arriving is smaller. Somehow cards with embellishments and such seem to disappear more often... :-(

I hope you have a great day and take care,
Keep your craft on :-)

Freddie
xox

Background stamp and embossing folder

Welcome to my blog,

In this post I want to share how you can use background stamps with matching embossing folders. There are so many techniques, I just want to share one of mine. This is a twist on a technique that Tim Holtz shared on his blog years ago. 

Here you can find his original post.

This is the original tag made by Tim. He uses a custom made stamp pad to stamp this. I am going to show a way that is kind of cheating a little. 

Here we go:

I went for the christmas theme as I am making christmas cards at the moment. Tim has several background stamp and embossing folder combos. These make great vintage looking cards 

This technique works best when you use a stamping tool, as we need to stamp the stamp several times in the same position. To make sure my paper stays in place, I always have a piece of Sizzix Sticky Grid on my platform. It is like double sided Post It. A must have for your craft room!!

This way I can stick my card away from the edge as I want a nice print all over my card. 

My trick is... Distress Markers! Instead of creating a giant stamp pad, I colour the stamp in various colours and stamp!

I colour the desired part of the stamp with my marker. Here you see I coloured the numbers with fosselized amber distress marker. Before I stamp, I breathe a few times on my stamp to moisten the ink. And yes I have accidentally touched my stamp with my lips and had distress lipstick that way lol. Just add new colour and huff and stamp. This is why it really only works with a stamping platform.

Here you see that I already stamped with barn door and fosselized amber. You do this with all the different colours. 

Here you see the finished stamped background. Now we need to vintage this up ;-)

I always use frayed burlap distress ink to give my cards a vintage feel. There is something about that colour that makes everything look warmer.

The next step is embossing the card to give it some dimension and interested. You line up the words with the embossing folder and run it through your machine. 

Don't be shocked when you find out that the top is perfectly lined up, and the bottom is totally offset... this is normal and has a logical explanation... the top runs through the machine first and pulls up the paper a bit when embossing. You just have to embrace that imperfection ;-)

This is the bottom of the card and you see the text is not aligned with the folder anymore. The only way to kind of prevent that is to wet the paper before embossing, but that would make your ink run. I don't mind this offset look, it all adds to the vintage feel in my eyes :-)

To complete the look I ink the edges with walnut stain distress ink. Mind you, no craft item leaves my desk without walnut stain ink hahaha.

These are my tag and cards that I made using this technique. The middle one has some foil on it. I will do a tutorial on that technique tomorrow ;-)

Thanks for stepping by and taking the time to read through my post.

Have a wonderful day, take care and...

Keep your craft on!

Freddie

xox

Pirate chest out of paper tutorial

Hello,

I hope you are having a wonderful day. A while back I made a treasure chest for my altered coins (see my previous post), all out of paper. Below you find a step by step tutorial.

I started out with an Eileen Hull Bigx XL die called Candy Drawer. I used two cuts of the circled part. I taped them together to make a wider box. This is the base I made the chest from.

This is the two parts taped together. As you can see I scored the top, as that needs to have the shape of the lid of the treasure chest. The rest of the scores are done by the die itself.

I am not holding this in quite the right angle, but you get the idea. I looked at how I want the shape to be and traced that and cut the sides out.

I cut the sides and made sure to add tabs for glueing it all together. I covered the "lid" with some weathered leather looking paper from an older TH paper pad. The rest of the chest I will paint black.

Here the box partly put together. One more side to glue, and then the outside can be decorated.

I want to cover the outside with wooden planks. So I stained a piece of watercolor cardstock with tea dye distress stain and embossed it with the 3D Lumber texture fade. This will be the base for making my planks.

I cut quite a few planks with the TH planks die, and also cut trim to size out of grunge board. Those will be the studded parts of the chest.

I used almost all my brows of the Distress ink palette to add depth to my planks. I used my ink blending tools and my fingers. Sometimes fingers are the best tools around ;-)

Apperantly I missed taking pics of how I made the trim. It is pieces of grungeboard that I painted with tarnished brass and antique bronze. Then sanded it a bit and inked it with ground espresso Distress ink. Then added the square brads and glued them over the planks that I already glued on the lid. I added a "lock" so I can close the chest.

I inked up some TH hinges with Mushroom alcohol ink to give them an aged look, and fastened them to the lid with brads.

Just above the lock I stuck a Jolly Roger from Ideaology, after I inked it with Mushroom ink. This completes the pirate look!

I forgot to mention that I cut the lid off from the base, this makes it easier to add the hinges. Here you see the base, with the planks added and the studded trim. 

This is the finished chest after I added two handles and four box corners. They are also inked with mushroom ink to age them.

And here it is, the pirate treasure chest filled with gems and coins. How I made those, I will reveal in the next tutorial ;-)

Thank you so much for stepping by.

Take care and keep your craft on!

Freddie 

xox

Altered plastic coins

Hello there,

For about 6 weeks now, a "coin goblin" has been leaving plastic coins in fence posts and on stones outside of our property. They keep popping up every now and again. I have been collecting them and wound up with 25 of them now. I decided to alter them to make them look like they were a treasure buried at sea. It is very easy to do and here are the steps I took:

These are some of the coins I am talking about. Regular plastic tokens. 

I rubbed grit paste on various spots of the coins. This will emulate rust. As metal oxidizes in salt water, we need a rusty crusty look. I just put my finger in the jar and smear it on.

As you can see I didn't cover them completely, I do want to see some of the writing and image on the coins. I let them air dry for a couple of hours and then they are ready to be painted.

I covered the surface and the side with tarnished brass distress paint of some of them.

And brushed pewter on the other coins.  They look weathered already, but not rusty enough.

I rubbed some rusty hinge paint on my gold coloured coins...

And black soot paint on my silver ones. This makes them look affected by the sea and time already!

As silver only blackens and rusts a little bit, I only rubbed a little vintage photo distress crayon over it so it gets a hint of rustiness. The gold coins need more work.

I rubbed the gold coin with cracked pistachio distress paint. This will give it an awesome oxidized look! Then a but more tarnished brass and antiqued bronze paint. We don't want to lose all the shimmer. I also used some rusty hinge and cracked pistachio distress crayon and finished it off with vintage photo crayon, just like the silver coin. I distressed some coins more than others to make it look more real.

When you throw them on a pile they look like I dove them up from the sea bed! All I need now is a treasure chest to put them in ;-)

The tutorial on that one will follow soon...

Thank you so much for stepping by.

Take care and....

Keep your craft on :-)

Freddie

xox