Outlaw Layout

Hello again fellow bloggers & scrappers! I bring you today my latest layout titled 'Outlaw'. This is a completely 'rugged' masculine layout that I'm actually very proud of!

This is my husband decked out as a cowboy. We did this photo shoot a few years ago where we both dressed up as old western figures. In this picture he's giving us his 'mean' look. That's about as mean as he gets folks! :-) I found this picture while rearranging my photos & felt compelled to scrap it. When I showed it to my husband he was pleased. He said the layout was very 'manly'--just like him. You just gotta love him!

This layout is 99% Tim Holtz. Everything from the paper to all the embellishments is by him. Only the cardboard that's in the background & the stamps which are by Graphic 45 are not by him. I used lots of techniques here--misting, inking, distressing & a technique I called 'burnt edges' where I made the edges of my layout & photo mats look burnt. I have a brief tutorial on this technique found here. I'm sure someone out there has done this already--but the tutorial simply shows how I went about doing it. I was very pleased with the results. I also used several tips & tricks from the man himself throughout the layout.

Here's a closeup of some of the stamping I did & the cardboard. The cardboard I misted in Suede Glimmer Mist & Olive Green Smooch. I pretty much drowned the cardboard in both of these mists & then let it air dry.

I used the clock mask by Tim Holtz to mask the big clock & randomly spread some Th gears & cogs around the clock & behind the photo mats.

The flourish is grungeboard. I first embossed it with Vintage Photo Distress Embossing powder. Then with my fingers I removed a little bit of the embossing powder to reveal the grunge board below. Next I inked it with Vintage Photo distress ink. Finally I spread some Rock Stickles crackle paint on it & this was the end result. In person, it looks as if it's rusted. This technique I got from reading Tim Holtz's blog. It's also in his last book 'A Compendium of Curiosities'.

I used four TH hitch fasteners & a TH ball chain to go around the border of my picture. I just wrapped the ball chain around the fasteners & secured with a connector. I hung the two tokens from a TH Swivel Clasp that is also hanging from one of the fasteners.

The rest of the embellies are also little items from TH. The Bingo card & the calendar I got from TH's Lost & Found Paper Stash.

The title is housed in a TH ornate plate. Talk about over-dosing on TH products?!

The title itself I printed from my computer. I then put some Glossy Accents ontop of the title & let it dry. This gives it a dimensional raised enamel effect.

Well that's it for today...thanks for stopping by & as always comments are very much appreciated!

Till my next post...

Burnt Edges Tutorial

Here I am with the burnt edges tutorial as seen in my layout 'Outlaw'. As already mentioned...this technique has most likely been used before--I'm simply showing how I went about getting this burnt look.

Prepare to get messy with this one. It's all about using your fingers with ink, glimmer mist & water.

Here are your basic supplies. Paper, dark brown glimmer mist. I used Suede Glimmer Mist. Dark brown ink. I'm using chalk ink in a Dark Brown color. I use chalk ink because this ink smears a little with water. You can also use a Walnut Stain Distress ink for this since Distress inks also react well to water. A mini mister or any kind of spray bottle & a Tim Holtz distresser. If you do not have this little gadget, running the edge of a sharp pair of scissors along the border of the paper works good too. Heat gun (not pictured).

First step is to distress the edges of the paper with your distressing tool or scissors. Here I've already done that. As you can see in certain areas I went in a little deeper with the distressing. Do not be afraid to slightly tear the edges while distressing...this adds to the effect!

Here's a closeup of an area where I went in a little deeper with my distress tool.

Next you ink the edges. Just loosely go all around the edges inking as you would any other edge. This is just to give the edges a darker look.

Take your mini mister or spray bottle & lightly spray some water along the edges of your inked distressed edges. How much water you use depends on your paper. Thinner paper will need just one spritz of water while thicker paper may need more. The idea here is to soften the paper so that you can roll, wrinkle & tear it.

Once the edges are moist use your fingers to roll, tear & wrinkle the edges. The paper will be soft so that you can shape the edges any way you want.

Here's a closeup of a corner after I finished shaping it. As you can see in some places I tore into the paper, in others I just wrinkled it & in other areas I just rolled it. Do not be consistent in your technique...use all three techniques & spread them around all edges of your paper.

This is where we get messy! Take your glimmer mist & spray it on your work area. I use a Craft Sheet by Ranger for working. This way I can just wipe the sheet clean when done. Make sure you have a place to do this kind of inking so you don't ruin any table tops or desks! Glimmer mist does stain...

Take your paper & ink the edges into the glimmer mist. Ink it by swirling the edges of the paper around the mist, dabbing the edges into it & by even using your fingers to take some glimmer mist & spreading it on the edges. Just have fun with this part! Get messy & ink those edges! If you run out of glimmer mist...just spray some more! Now, if you're working with thin paper, make sure to ink the edges gently...you don't want your paper to start completely falling apart. As you ink your paper, keep using your fingers to wrinkle, tear & roll the edges even more!

Here's what your paper should look like after playing around in that glimmer mist. Notice how in some areas I inked more than in others. This is fine. Remember you're trying to create a burnt piece of paper. Fire tends to burn in all directions & hardly ever in an even way. So the more uneven you are the better!

Next step is to dry your paper. Take your heat gun & start drying the edges. You'll notice that as you dry, your edges will start to curl. This is good...this is what we want! The closer you are with the heat gun to the paper the more the paper will curl. But be careful! Don't burn yourself or literally burn the paper! We're going for fake fire here...not real! So take caution. If you want to wrinkle a certain edge more. Just turn off your heat gun, wrinkle it with your fingers & keep drying...you'll see how the edges dry wrinkled.

Here you go! One really burnt piece of paper that you can now use on your project.

A closeup of a burnt corner.

Hope you all enjoyed this tutorial & that it'll be useful to some of you.

Till my next post...

Spiral Flower Tutorial

Good evening fellow bloggers! Today I'm going to take a few minutes to post a quick tutorial on how to make spiral flowers. I recently learned how to do this in a class I took at my local scrapbook store. During this class I made my very first canvas! I'll be posting this soon because I'm very proud of how it came out! These spiral flowers were part of the canvas. They're so very simple to make but yet make such a great statement on layouts, canvases, cards etc...In addition, I found that making these flowers is an excellent way to get rid of scraps!

So let's get started.

First your supplies...you'll need scraps of patterned paper in various square sizes. I've cut scraps into 2 1/2" inches x 2 1/2" inches & 4" inches x 4" inches for this tutorial. The bigger the square, the bigger the flower will be. Next you'll need scissors & some glue dots. The rest of the supplies (pencil, glimmer mist & chalk ink) are optional. These extra supplies are simply to add more pizzazz to your spiral flowers if desired. I'll be using all of these for this tutorial.

This step is optional. Spray your paper with glimmer mist. You're not looking for perfection here--so just spritz away! I ended up using some Smooch as well on the yellow patterned cardstock.

Once the paper has dried--cut out circles from the square pieces of carstock. Once again, you're looking for imperfect circles--so don't worry if your circles come out a little lopsided--lopsided circles give the sprial flowers more personality. Here you can also use a pencil to hand draw your circle if you prefer & then proceed to cut out.

Starting from the outside of the circle start cutting in a spiral fashion all around the circle until you get to the center. Do not cut the center of the spiral out--you'll be needing this later in order to glue the flower together. Also, try not to cut the spiral too thin. I learned this the hard way! When you cut the spiral too thin you end up with a very tight coil when you start twirling the flower & then it takes extra work to loosen it.

In the end, this is what you should have. Notice that I did not cut the center of the flower out.

This step is optional. If you want to define your spiral flower some more--ink it's edges with the chalk ink as shown here.

Before beginning to twirl your flower make sure that the pattern you want to be the face of the flower is facing you. With a pair of tweezers take the outer tail of the spiral flower & begin rolling it towards you. This part is the only one that takes a bit of practice because you need to keep your thumb placed at the bottom of the spiral flower so it doesn't spring out of your grasp. Also, try not to coil it too tight or you'll end up with a very tight sprial--& then you'll have to work to un-coil it!

Here's a screen shot of the flower after I've coiled it completely. I also wanted to show how I positioned my thumb in order to keep the flower from uncoiling itself. It helps though that I have very flexible thumbs as you can see here! My mom always makes fun of my twisty thumbs!

Once you have coiled the flower completely, remove the tweezers.

This is what you'll end up with. As you can see, I still have issues with how tight I coil my flowers! They look awfully tight don't they!? :-) No worries though...you just need to take extra steps to loosen the flower up a bit.

First trick is to turn the flowers upside down & then press down on the flowers with the palm of your hand. Don't be afraid to mash them--coiled flowers don't mash--they just loosen up a bit when you do this. If your flowers are still too coiled after this step then go onto the next step...

This step is simply to un-coil the flowers a bit in order to loosen them up. You do this by twirling the flowers in the opposite direction--which would be away from you. Do this with both hands & use mostly your thumbs to uncoil the flower.

Uncoil the flower to your liking. Once you're satisfied with the flower it's time to glue them in place. Take your glue dots & place them at the bottom of the coil which would be the center of your flower as shown in the screen shot. Once the glue dot is in place adhere the center of the flower to the glue dot. No need to glue the outside layers of the flower--all you really need to adhere is the center of the flower--once the center is adhered the rest of the flower will stay in place.

Here you go--two spiral flowers in two different sizes.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I'll be posting my very first canvas soon!

:-)

Till my next post...

Shaker Box Tutorial

Ok, here's that second tutorial I mentioned in a previous post. Once again, I'm doing this my way. I'm sure there are many more other tutorials out there on shaker boxes--this will simply add to that list! This is very similar to the way I made the giant shaker box that I used to frame my picture in the 'My 2 Loves' layout. However, in the 'My 2 Loves' layout I used a transparency for the background of the shaker box as well as for the cover. I needed both the front & back of the shaker box to be transparent so that the picture would show through. In this tutorial, I use a solid background.

So let's get started! Here's a basic list of supplies. Paper of your choice, two-sided sticky tape, scissors, craft knife, 2-sided sticky foam (I have foam strips that I cut into the desired pieces), beads, buttons or sequins or anything else to throw into your shaker box. You can't really see it in the picture but I do have a transparency. If you don't have a transparency, clear report covers & acetate work too. The rubber stamp is optional, I'll be using a rubber stamp to decorate the background of the shaker box. I'll also improvise as I go--so if you see me using a supply that wasn't on my original list, you'll know why! I'm also using a heart template for the shaker box. Most shaker boxes tend to be square or rectangle--however, I'm going with a different shape--a heart--so it always helps to have a template as a guide when making a shaker box that is not a square or rectangle.

Let's start with the top cover of the shaker box. I flipped my plaid cardstock over and traced the heart template on it. I traced bothe the inside & outside of the heart template. I then used my scissors to cut the heart out.

With my craft knife I then cut the inside of the heart out. When done I ended up with a heart frame. The heart itself I will keep for a future project.

I put my heart frame aside & took my heart template again & this time traced it onto my transparency. For this step you only need to trace the outside of the heart. I then cut the heart out with my scissors.

Here I improvised a little. I decided to ink the edges of my heart template to define the edges more. So I inked it with brown chalk ink.

I flipped my heart frame over & then cut strips of two sided stick tape & stuck them all around the edge of the heart frame. I then removed the labels from my sticky tape & carefully adhered the heart transparency onto my heart frame.

You can't really see it here--but I've adhered the clear heart to the heart frame & now we have the cover to the shaker box complete!

I put the shaker box cover aside & grabbed my heart template again. I traced the heart onto the cardstock that I'm going to use for the background of my shaker box. I then randomly stamped my sentiment all over with yellow, brown & blue ink.

I then cut out my background.

I took the front cover & turned it around. I started adhering the 2-sided foam tape all around the back edges of the front cover. As you can see from this screen shot--you need to make sure that each foam strip completely touches the next foam strip. You want to make sure that there are no gaps in between the strips. Any gaps may cause whatever you put inside the shaker box to come out. I use tiny beads a lot in my shaker boxes so I need to make extra sure that there are no gaps.

Here's a screen shot after adhering the 2-sided foam tape all around the heart frame. Mine didn't come out very neat because I'm using a template with lots of curves. However, if making a straight forward square or rectangle shaker box you usually end up with a very neat border. Either way, in the end it won't matter since you'll be adhering the back cover to the front cover & in turn hiding any uneven foam tape.

Next step is to remove the backing of the 2-sided foam tape & adhere your background. I remove the backing from the foam tape all around except for one corner. This corner is where I'll be pouring in my beads, buttons, sequins or whatever it is that I'll be using inside my shaker box.

Here's a shot of what the shaker box looks like so far. Next it's time to pour into the shaker box the items that will give this box it's name! I'll be using buttons & tiny beads for mine.

Here's a look as to what the border of the shaker box looks like. As you can see, the foam tape created a sort of 'wall' that will keep whatever you put inside your shaker box from falling out.

Go to the corner that you left unadhered & start pouring in your beads, buttons etc...

Remove the backing from the remaining foam strips & completely seal your shaker box--and you're done!

Here's the shaker box living up to it's name--I just shook it & had all the beads inside go everywhere!

Hope you all found this tutorial useful & that you start incorporating shaker boxes to your layouts.

Till my next post...