ABC's of Techniques...the letter "B"

"B" is for Backgrounds!

 

I love seeing how creative people are with making backgrounds for their cards and scrapbooking projects. I have learned so many new things by browsing the Internet, looking at crafting magazines and just hanging out with other crafters. Today I am going to show you a few background papers that I played with. I tried a few new things...one of them was posted on another website and that's where I learned it, the other was just a random thought I had...may not have been worth the mess...but I hope you like it. I have tried a few very cool techniques that you really should experiment with because they make some amazing prints (sorry...no pictures but I'm sure you can look up the techniques on the Internet and find some samples). Some of my favorites are to put a few drops of ink in a bowl of water, use a straw to blow bubbles (you get to feel like such a kid...so much fun!) and then take your paper and gently put it on the bubbles until they pop on the paper. Another fun way to play is to put some shaving cream on a paper plate, put a few drops of different colored ink around and swirl them with a toothpick; then place your paper on your shaving cream. As you wipe off the shaving cream, your pattern will start to show and will be amazing...no two papers will ever by the same!

 

For today I am first going to show you the technique that I saw online...Bubble wrap! Not only is it fun to POP...but you can use it for some pretty cool stuff (just don't try to pop it after you make your paper-that could be very messy). The first thing you are going to do is lay the bubble wrap on a flat surface and then either pat it with your ink pad or rub your ink pad on top of it. For this card I used the new CTMH Pigment Ink-it's a wetter ink and I felt it would give me a little more time to play.

I then turned the bubble wrap over and patted the ink onto the paper...

Next comes the fun part...figuring out how you're going to use it. I decided to use it as water with the whale stamp from the Under the Sea stamp set. I also figured it needed some bling so I covered each of the dots in glitter to give it more of a watery look.

The next patterned paper I played with was kind of fun-but kind of messy too (but isn't that the best kind-your not stampin' if your fingers aren't multi-colored.)

I was looking around the house for something unique to try and that's when I saw it...

Rice, Rice Baby!!! Oh yeah-it makes some pretty cool grass!

I just put some in a bag, added a few drops of Olive re-inker, shaken-not stirred!

I then just poured it out onto some colonial white paper and kind patted and smeared it around a bit, be sure to wear gloves-otherwise your hands will be the color of your rice!

I'm sorry that the pictures aren't the greatest for details, between my camera and the lack of lighting in my house...my pictures are all pretty lacking.

Here is my finished project with the A Tree and Card Chatter-Sympathy stamp sets.

Thanks for looking and be sure to come back for the letter "C" so you can find out what a blond crafter I am. I have been paper crafting for YEARS...and had no idea you could do this until I joined CTMH. It is so simple and I am sure you all know how to do it...but come and share in my being oblivious :)

 



The ABC's of papercrafting techniques...

So it's obvious that I am a horrible blogger! I can admit failure, as hard as that is! But there may be hope for me yet! I think I may have figured out a way to help my "slackerness" (I know-it's not a word but it fits how I feel).  I was surfing through some other blogs when I came to one that caught my interest (www.simplyscrapping.wordpress.com) ...she (Shellie) is doing the ABC's of Techniques. I figure that I could challenge myself and do something similar to this. I think that by using her concept I hopefully will not only learn some new techniques (and help others learn new things as well), but it will also help me to be more active on my blog. My hope is that I will be able to post a different technique each week...maybe even more (I won't commit to that though...life does happen fast).

A = Altered Items

 

 

For my first technique I am doing an altered item. One of my favorite things about paper crafting is the fact that you can take a plain piece of paper and make something amazing out of it. It's even better when you can take what would otherwise be known as trash and transform it into something usable!

Here is a picture of a few examples of the "trash to treasure" concept...



On the left is a yogurt container on top and the same style container decorated to be used as a desk caddy or a gift container. In the middle is a penny bank that was made out of an oatmeal container (one of my favorite projects ever!!!)

For today I altered one of the inexpensive wooden frames from Wal-Mart (only $1-how can you beat that!) Here is what it looked like fresh from the store...

The first thing I did after picking out my paper was to trim it to the needed size (just lay it down on the backside of the paper and trace around it's inside and outside). There are a lot of different adhesives that you can use but today I used the Liquid Glass.

The great thing with using the Liquid Glass is that you have a little bit of freedom to move the paper around if you didn't line it up right. It does dry fast though so don't take to long! After the paper is adhered to the frame you can trim any extra paper and around the corners if necessary. I also go around the edges with a nail file to smooth them out.

 

Now starts the fun part...the decorating! I don't know about you...but sometimes I will start a project with one thing in mind and somewhere along the way...it takes a wild turn and you just have to go with the flow! That is totally what happened with this one...and I LOVE the results! Originally I was planning on just using the paper to embellish this. There are beautiful flowers on the backside of this paper and I was just planning on cutting them out for the decoration...

This idea went away as soon as I decided to use the Cocoa colored ribbon around the outside and inside of the frame...the colors together reminded me of fall...and then I remembered this BEAUTIFUL picture of my Cousins daughter-I knew then what I had to do!!! The ribbon technique used around the inside is called "ruching" (not sure if I spelled that right)...maybe that can be a technique for you to look forward to in the future :)

This is the final project...I have to say a huge THANK YOU to my cousin Stephanie for letting my use Avery's picture...this frame would be nothing if it wasn't for the BEAUTIFUL young fairy inside of it! (This picture does not do her justice - my camera is not very good...and the lighting in my house is even worse!)

I also want to say Thank You to Shellie at www.simplyscrapping.wordpress.com for inspiring me to be more creative and more proactive on my blog!!!

Thanks for taking the time to follow along and hopefully you will join me for the rest of the alphabet! By the way...I still need ideas for the letters U, X and Y if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them!