Suminagashi Paper Marbling - Club Scrap Challenge

This month, Julie challenged us to try different marbling techniques. I had taken a class on suminagashi marbling, and had been wanting to try this again.  The nice thing about this this technique is that it is water based which leads to easy clean up and minimal supplies are needed.  I'll link to some supplies and resources at the end of this post.

After playing for a while, I had many sheets to make into cards! I liked using watercolor paper and newsprint paper (no printing) for this technique best.  Mulberry paper also works well, but if it's deeply colored, the pale marbling might not show well.

I decided to have some fun just by using them as backgrounds to start.  I decided to use the June small die of the month from Spellbinders to create some cupcakes and candles. This is a standard 4.25 x 5.5 card so you can see the scale of the cupcake.

I thought the cupcake was a little large, so I switched to just using the candles on a few cards.

Finally, I used a punch to create some shapes for layering and had some fun with washi tape and other sparkly things.

Supplies and resources

• Sumingashi paints were from a set that has enough colors and paints to last a long time.  I mixed some of them to create different blues and greens in my samples.
• Sumi brushes (Club Scrap members may still have one from the Pure & Simple kit) are the traditional brush to use - look for smaller ones since you don't want a lot of paint in your brush.
• Some paper and embellishments were from the Paradise kit
• Ruth Bleakley has a nice post on trouble shooting sumingashi marbling
• Washi, die cut papers and sentiment stamp are from my Club Scrap stash of papers.

Shibori Technique Challenge

Julie posted a great tutorial on a technique to make shibori-style prints from tissue paper.  This technique is inspired by Club Scrap's April kit - Shibori.  I tried it out today and made these lovely cards.

The blue and purple were some spray mists that I love.  I wasn't completely happy with the color coverage on these, but by stamping in colors and black ink, I made some great backgrounds for cards.  I used my xyron to cover a piece of white card stock with adhesive and laid that on top of the tissue paper to give the tissue paper some stability for stamping.

I had a lot of fun with this technique, and made several more tissue paper strips after this.  I altered Julie's technique by spraying my tissue paper with water first before applying the sprays.  I hope to share more cards soon!

Sketchy Cards (SFYTT)

In between organizing my supplies, I've snuck in a little time for crafting. Today, I wanted to make some cards, but was a bit stuck, so I turned to the "Sketch for you to Try" challenge.  I flipped the card horizontal, and came up with this:

About a week ago, I was playing with picket fence distress stain, so I used that on the text background, and then used paint and a Club Scrap stencil to make the background. I'm so glad to be taking May Flaum's class - it's been a great inspiration and a push to stretch myself.

Once I started crafting, the sketch inspired me to make a second card. I felt like brighter colors and a bit more sparkle this time.

I'm going to be in the local ice show this weekend for the first time.  I'm looking forward to the memories, and to making some great scrapbook pages.  Hope you all have a great weekend.

Most of the stamps and paper in this post are from Stampin' Up! or Club Scrap.

Pine board book - Caardvarks challenge

Club Scrap is sponsoring a challenge at the Caardvarks blog, and I took the challenge to heart. This has been a multi-step project that has taken a little bit of time every night - mostly because each step needed to dry. This is the same project that I showed you a piece of a few days ago. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it was a creative adventure.

First, I made the inside of the book using a large piece of paper, masking at regular intervals, and then painting, stenciling, and stamping up a storm. I sliced and diced the paper to make a maze book that I then glued so it opens like a regular book. To see how I made the inside of the book, you can watch Tricia Morris from Club Scrap demonstrate this on a different size of paper. On this one, I used gesso, watercolors, the Ivory Elegance stencil (no longer available), and the Be Still rubber stamp.

The covers were made with pine boards from Club Scrap (oh no! These are sold out now, so I need to hoard my stash of these!). I painted them quickly with some acrylic paint, mostly just to seal the surface. The wood grain shows through just a little bit.

To finish it off, I stamped a variety of my favorite quotes from Club Scrap stamps on some paper from the Bistro kit (the orange) and the Written Word kit (the purple). I'm sort of in love with the green-purple-orange color scheme.