Creative Chemistry Day 6

 Creative Chemistry Day 6: Distress Markers.

Today we learned about the newest addition to the Distress Line...  Distress Markers!  As soon as I heard about them from watching the CHA 2012 new releases on paperclipping.com, I knew that I HAD to have them.  I've got a few sets of permanent markers already (no copics, though), but no water based markers.  I also felt like it was a good opportunity to get the entire set without buying all the ink pads (even though I hope to collect all the ink pads eventually).  I ordered my set on Ebay and got them about a month ago.  It seems that they are rather hard to get right now and I got very lucky to get them so quickly.

Here are my creations:

 

m) Watercolor with markers, n) Stamping with Markers, o) Blending with Markers

 Here is my O-ring with all the tags I've created since starting this class!  It's starting to be quite the collection and I'm very excited about it:

Creative Chemistry Day 5

Day 5!  So tired...  will be very brief until the morning.  just want to get my pictures on the forum.  promise to add more soon...  don't know how Tim is doing it...  I'm exhausted and we're only half done...  can you believe we're half done already?  Kinda sad.

Left is Marbled Stains, Middle is Stained Kraft Resist, Right is Stamping with Stains.

j) Stained Kraft Resist, k) Marbled Stains, l) Stamping with Stains.

Creative Chemistry Day 4

Hello there!  Day 4 is finally here!  They had some technical difficulties, so the class wasn't available until around 10 am!  I was being manic about checking the page to see if it was loaded last night until I gave up and went to bed (thankfully!) and then this morning until I finally saw that beautiful "Day 4" logo.

Today we learned about caring for out stamp pads and Reinkers.  I bought 4 reinkers especially for this class, so I'm new to it all.  My oldest stamp pads are only a year old, so I didn't think I needed them yet...  But now I'm hooked and want more, more, more!

Here are all of my creations from this lesson:

Left is the Custom Stamp Pad, Middle is the Layered Misting, and Right is the Watercolor with Reinkers.

These 2 1/4 inch squares are for a display to put on my wall that I'm making of all the techniques.  g) Layered Misting, h) Custom Stamp Pad, i) Watercolor with Reinkers.

Once again, had some supply issues, which I was very nervous about, but I worked through it!  With the 4 limited colors, I wasn't sure how varied my looks would be, but you can see, each technique does something very different.  I also wasn't sure if they would work well together...  but I need not have worried...  like Tim says...  pretty much all his colors work together.

My biggest issue was that I don't have any Cut N Dry felt.  It's been on my wish list for months (since I saw another video where Tim made a custom stamp pad).  I found a hint on youtube from Stampin' Up demonstrators (don't do any Stampin' Up products, but sometimes I watch their videos to get ideas) to use baby wipes.  So I built up a little pile of about 8 to 12 layers of wipes (just folded and stacked) and followed the directions that Tim gave us.  It worked very well.  I'm sure the Cut N Dry felt would be much more precise, the ink spread out on the wipes a little more, and the felt pad would last much longer...  but as a way to do it cheaply and quickly, the wipes were wonderful!  I even saved them in little baggies and will try to use them another day and see how it goes.  Here's a picture (taken about 5 hours after I made them:

I didn't have nearly enough mini-misters, (only 3 and 2 are in use already) so I used travel sized squirt bottles from the dollar store.  They did the job, but man-oh-man, now I see why the mini-misters are so much better.  I used a mini-mister to measure out my water and pour it into the squirt bottle.  It only went about a 1/4 of an inch up the side of the bottle, but I wanted to keep the same measurements that Tim used.  Then I sprayed it on the tag...  and it covered almost everything else on my work station, too...  It was WAY more liquid than a mini-mister and less precise.  I used paper towels to build a little wall on all my subsequent squirts.

I loved the watercoloring with reinkers!  I've never been big on watercolor before, but it was a lot of fun and I loved the varied tones that I could get without much effort.  I bought the pallet and waterbrushes ahead of time and enjoyed working with them a lot.  [edit:  just realized that I was supposed to use watercolor paper and I just watercolored right on the manilla tag...  worked great anyway, but now I'll try some watercolor paper, too!  ooops]

Alright, well, that wraps things up for today!  See you tomorrow for Stains!

Creative Chemistry Display Beginnings

I decided that I need to have a way to display all the techniques that we're learning so that I'll have inspiration whenever I look up from my workspace.

In addition to the tags with the technique instructions listed on the back, I'm going to make a smaller version of each one in a 2.25 inch square and then I'll mount them all to a background.  I used a hole punch on labels and stamped the letters a through f (so far) on them and affixed them to the lower right corner.  Then I stamped the letters onto the back of the tags with the instructions.  That way, when I look at the display, I'll just have to look up which letter it is to get the instructions.  I also decided to use a butterfly theme on the squares so that the finished piece will look unified despite all the different techniques and colors.

a) Blended Spritz & Flick, b) Wrinkle-Free Distress, c) Brushless Watercolor, d) Archival Resist,         e) Alcohol Ink Agates, f) Reflections Stamping

If you are interested in learning any of these techniques (Plus a whole lot more!), it's not to late to sign up for Creative Chemistry 101 with Tim Holtz!  Go to www.onlinecardclasses.com/timholtz

I'd love to hear about how my classmates plan 

to display the things they are learning!

Alright, now back to my regularly scheduled posts...

Creative Chemistry Day 3

Creative Chemistry Day 3!  I stayed up late to learn the lesson and try out the techniques.  It's 2 am right now...  so I'll keep it brief.  Maybe I'll be back later to add some more!  Then again...  maybe I'll take a nap after work instead. :-P

On the left is the Alcohol Ink Agate Technique, the center is the Reflections Texture Fade Technique and the right is the Archival Resist Technique.

Had some supply issues that really prevented me from rocking this lesson the way I'd like to have.  I only had soft gloss paper instead of glossy cardstock for the two techniques that are on black backgrounds.  I also only have 2 colors of Archival ink...  black and green.  This was the first time I've ever tried Archival ink at all.  I've added more colors of Archival and Glossy cardstock to my wish list.  But despite all that...  I'm pretty pleased with how all 3 tags turned out and I know I'll use all these techniques again in the future.

Here are some individual shots:

I've tried this technique on soft gloss paper before and the effect is still pretty nice.  The alcohol inks still do all the blending effects that happen on glossy, but the finish is much more subtly shiny.

No idea what happened to the color in this photo!  It's the same green background as the others.  The colors are much more vibrant orange in real life.

See you for Day 4!