Suzz's Permanently Perfect

Hi!  Suzz here. I hardly ever do perfect... Part of the reason I love the vintage grunge style of crafting is that I don't have to worry about that extra smudge. :)  I love archival inks and the variety of colors along with the ability to not smudge anything and dry quickly!  

The beauty of the archival ink is the ability to use other mediums which you can blend and spray without losing the sharpness of the inked image. I also love the various colors which can be paired with watercolors to change the way the image looks.  I decided to use the same image and ink it up with three different archival inks and color the image with the same watercolor to show  how the outline ink can change your art and how it appears. 

I started with three scraps of paper that I cut into a tag shape.  I then stamped the flower with three different archival inks.  

For my next step I used a pink watercolor pencil and a water brush to add shading to the flowers. 

I loved the effect of all three flowers and how they looked different just because of the ink used on the outline stamp.  The watercolor pencil was the same for all three and yet each flower looks like they have a different shade of pink and green.  

I also used the archival ink to ink up the edges of the tag all around just create a nice crisp line.

Then I took each flower and created a different background  using a mix of distress inks, distress ink sprays, and archival inks to add texture and interest. 

On this first tag I stamped the flower on a scrap paper and cut the flower head out and laid it over my tag's flower.  I then stamped the field label using black archival ink in an alternating pattern.  I then used post it notes to mask off the rectangles to sponge in distress oxide ink in the alternating rectangles. 

I finished with a stamped sentiment which was cut and applied at different angles.  

For the next tag I used a new stencil with the same distress ink to add a little visual effect in the background of the tag. 

I could have used the mask but because I was randomly applying the distress ink, I just sponged around the flower.  

I also used a watercolor pencil (black) to add a hint of shading around my flower to make it pop from the paper.  I used a water brush to soften the shading of the black watercolor and was able to do this because the archival ink will not respond to the water brush. 

I added a hint of distress spray inks to the background and use the same effect on another piece of card-stock to stamp my sentiment and apply. 

For my final tag I wanted to use the archival ink to add the pattern to the background of the tag.

I stamped the pattern using the same archival ink.  The pattern started to take away the focus on the flowers so I smeared watered down white acrylic paint to soften the effect of the archival ink.  

I added shading again with the black watercolor pencil around the outlines of the flowers to make them really stand out.  I finished with a splatter of distress oxide stain spray spritzed onto my craft mat and picked up randomly onto my tag. 

I hope this inspired you to try out your various archival inks in a fun way.  I wanted to share with you the first thing I did when I received the new archival inks.

I always smear a solid section of the ink pad onto a scrap piece of card-stock.  (you also can use labels which already are ready to stick on your ink pad container)

Then I cut strips and tape them to the ends of my ink pads.  Because I have a wonderful ink rack my husband created for me that stores all my archival inks that looks like this: 

It makes it really easy to pick out my ink pads whether they are in the rack or stacked up on my craft desk. 

Suzz

Products:

• Ranger Archival Ink Aubergine
• Ranger Archival Ink Jet Black
• Ranger Archival Ink Wine Celler
• Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Abstract Floral
• Ranger Tim Holtz Watercolor Pencil - Black Soot 
• Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Stencil - Deco Floral
  
• Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz - Curiosity Shop
  
• Ranger Distress Oxide - Peeled Paint
• Ranger Distress Oxide Stain Spray - Peeled Paint
• Ranger Distress Ink - Vintage Photo
• Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz - Love Notes
• Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz - Mr. Rabbit
  

Saturday Showcase

Hi Everyone, Tera Here. This is my first Saturday Showcase for the Funkie Junkie Boutique! I wanted to showcase a project using some of my favorite things... Stamps and Inks/Sprays! If you don't already know me, I am a rubber stamp addict! I also love bugs and grungy vintage things. Naturally I combined those to make a super cute and easy A2 card that you can use for any occasion!

To start I used a pale greenish white piece of cardstock from my stash. I stamped the type background in speckled egg distress ink. After drying that with my heat tool, I then used one of the large layering stencils (THS143) with an embossing dabber to apply a thin layer of embossing liquid through the stencil. The embossing powder/glaze I used was "fossilized amber"

I forgot to take a picture after I inked around the edges... I used the speckled egg, and walnut stain to add more grungy goodness like you see above.

On a separate piece of paper I stamped one of the butterflies from the specimen set in black soot archival ink. 

Before cutting it out I used the spray stains above to color my image. After I cut it i used walnut stain distress ink again to ink the edges.

Before gluing my butterfly down I added the specimen stamp and some stitches to finish off the background.

For the card base I used an ultra dark brown piece of cardstock (It's almost black). 

I hope you liked this little inspiration!!!

Products Used: 

Stamps: Specimen, Stitches, Newsprint &Type

Layering Stencil: THS143

Distress Ink: Speckled Egg, Walnut Stain

Archival Ink: Black Soot (You can now preorder the large size HERE)

Spray Stains: Antique Linen, Old Paper, Speckled Egg, Broken China

Embossing Glaze: Fossilized amber

Embossing Dabber

Saturday Showcase - Junk Journal featuring Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stamps and Stencils

Hi everyone and welcome to another Saturday Showcase, the Design Team's chance to share tutorials and products available from The Funkie Junkie Boutique with you. As part of the current 'Positively Pensive' challenge I put together a junk journal featuring the designs of Wendy Vecchi and some ways of using ballpoint pens to decorate the pages.

If you just want to take a look at the junk journal in more detail here's a short flip through video to show the pages inside - for those who want to know how it all came together I've added a tutorial below;

The Tutorial

As mentioned in my challenge post I took to YouTube to find a way of decorating stamped images with ballpoint pens and found a brilliant tutorial by Alphonso Dunn HERE. Armed with this new found knowledge I stamped and coloured a heap of Wendy Vecchi designed flowers.

To show you this stage in more detail here's just one of the flowers from one of Wendy's older stamp sets, stamped with a couple of coordinating Archival Inks and shaded at different stages with the coordinating ballpoint pens. It's worth checking out the range of Archival Ink colours that Linda has in stock as it's a great alternative to the black ink I am sure we all reach for instinctively.

And here's a close up of some of those flowers, trimmed and inked around the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Oxide Ink.

Next up I used blue, pink and green Dina Wakley Media Acrylic Paints with my gel plate to create a bunch of coloured papers ready for use on the tea stained pages. As well as using regular copier paper I also pulled prints on some of the white tissue and brown paper that our orders come lovingly wrapped in. It's also well worthwhile looking through some of those scrapbook papers you may have in your stash - I found a couple in mine that worked well once tea stained.

And so now it's on to creating the junk journal - I began by cutting two Pocket Notebook cover pieces from regular cardstock using Eileen Hull's Sizzix Scoreboards Die. After gluing them together along the spine I covered the outside with one of the gel plate prints. To add extra decoration I stamped the beautiful lacy flower from Wendy Vecchi's stamp set 'Friends & Art' randomly across the back and front. To strengthen the inside I covered it with fabric, frayed around the edges, before stitching along the edge of the cover. Since at this stage the coloured paper on the outside was already starting to tear a little along the scorelines I embraced that and used a pair of scissors to scuff the paper along those lines.

Below you'll see how I layered a few of the painted papers beneath one of the stamped flowers. Adding a little fabric and some stitching is really effective, as is stamping onto some of the painted tissue before applying it over the flower with Distress Collage Medium Matte. I'm definitely going to be doing this a lot more in future.

Eileen's 'Pocket Notebook' Die has a section for cutting basic pages so I made a few from tea stained copier paper, stamping them with lines ready for someone to journal on. Use the Archival Inks that have been used for the flowers and you get a coordinated look throughout your journal. I would also mention at this stage that if you are not a fan of tea staining paper and card you may prefer to use Seth Apter's 'Tea' Izink Dye Spray. To make more sturdy pages I used a couple of long envelopes, glued together at the top and trimmed to fit as shown below.

Pockets need things to go in them so I stamped the flower images onto the edges of tea stained index cards and postcards with 'Acorn' Archival Ink. Since there was no margin line on the index cards I added one to each of them with the pink ballpoint pen.

Below you'll see how I attached punched strips of patterned paper to the outside of the envelope pages to create pockets. These can be decorated with a mix of the coloured paper/tissue, design tape and lines drawn with ballpoint pens.

Turning to the inside of the envelope pages I added gel printed paper to one side, adding a smaller pocket and part of a stamped flower image. On the other side I stuck down a medium glassine bag from Linda's store and stamped a Wendy flower and phrase onto it with Archival Ink. Since the bag is translucent you can see the tag that's been added inside.

More interactive pages were created using an A4 sized piece of tea stained graph paper; I folded it up to fit inside the cover and then folded it roughly in half. After cutting down the fold line on the folded up piece I glued down one side to create a large pocket for a tag (the page on the left hand side). I left the piece on the right hand side so that it could be folded down to reveal a hidden panel. The right hand flap was stamped with Wendy Vecchi's 'Tiled' Background stamp whilst the pocket on the left hand side was trimmed with a piece of book paper. Flowers were added to both along with more paper, design tape and ballpoint pen lines.

And here's how I decorated one of those hidden flaps with gel plate printed paper, a flower and ballpoint pen marks made by using a stencil from Wendy Vecchi's 'Thank You' Stamp/Die/Stencil set.

All those pockets need filling so I made a bunch of tags, adding gel printed papers, stamping with the 'Tiled' background and design tape to them.

And just a final idea for another pocket to be added to the back of one of the graph paper pages - I found these brown wage packets ages back and decided to decorate a few in the same way as before with papers, tape and hand drawn ballpoint pen lines. I also added a checkerboard pattern to one of the tags using the stencil in Wendy Vecchi's 'Flower Pot' Stamp/Die/Stencil set.

Now here's a reminder of how just a couple of the pages looked when assembled;

Thanks for visiting to catch today's Saturday Showcase tutorial - I hope you've enjoyed seeing some ideas for using Wendy Vecchi's gorgeous designs in combination with ballpoint pens.

There's still time to enter the current Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog challenge 'Positively Pensive' to be in with the chance of being a Guest Designer here. We look forward to seeing your amazing creations.

Jenny

Products used to create this junk journal are available from The Funkie Junkie Boutique and are listed/linked below.

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stampers Anonymous Stamp Set - Friends & Art
Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stampers Anonymous Stamp Set - Funky Flower Art

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stampers Anonymous Background Stamp - Tiled
Wendy Vecchi MAKE ART Stamp/Die/Stencil Set - Thank You
Wendy Vecchi MAKE ART Stamp/Die/Stencil Set - Flower Pot

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stampers Anonymous Stamp Sets

Ranger Archival Inks

Dina Wakley Media Paints

Tim Holtz Ideaology Design Tape - Salvaged

Eileen Hull Designs Sizzix Scoreboards Die Pocket Notebook

Saturday Showcase - Faux Metal Effects

Hi everyone and welcome to another Saturday Showcase, the Design Team's chance to share tutorials and products available from The Funkie Junkie Boutique with you and kick start your creative weekend.

I love the looks that the ageing process can give surfaces and in particular those that occur when metal is exposed to the weather. Having put together an effective rusted effect on a Vignette Accent for a recent project I put together a 'how to', this time using the technique on some Tim Holtz Metallic Kraft Stock embossed with the 3D Texture Fades Embossing Folder 'Mechanics' (though it would work equally well with the 'Foundry' version). Here's the video;

Hopefully you now feel ready to start adding faux rust and verdigris to your metal (and non-metal!) surfaces. I've listed the products used below as a handy reference. Thanks for joining me here today. Have a great weekend and remember to get creative!

Jenny xxx

Tim Holtz Ranger Distress Paint - Rusty Hinge	Tim Holtz Ranger Distress Paint - Spiced Marmalade	Ranger Adirondack Alcohol Ink - Rust	Ranger Wendy Vecchi Archival Ink - Watering Can	PRE-ORDER Tim Holtz Ranger Distress Paint - Evergreen Bough
Tim Holtz Ranger Distress Paint - Cracked Pistachio	Ranger Adirondack Alcohol Ink - Mushroom	Ranger Wendy Vecchi Archival Ink - Orange Blossom	Ranger Tim Holtz Ground Espresso Distress Paint	(February Pre-order) Tim Holtz Idea-ology 8 x 8 Metallic Kraft Stock
(MAY PRE-ORDER) Sizzix 3-D Texture Fades Embossing Folder - Mechanics	(MAY PRE-ORDER) Sizzix 3-D Texture Fades Embossing Folder - Foundry	Tim Holtz Ranger Idea-ology Sanding Grip	Tim Holtz idea-ology Refill Pack for Sanding Grip (4 sheets)