Creative Chemistry Day 10!

Tonight we got received our very last technique from Tim Holtz for Creative Chemistry 101.  The lesson was all about adhesives, sealers & dimensionals.  The technique taught us a little bit about Distress Stickles.  I have to admit.  Even though I have about 9 different Distress Stickles colors from a big lot of stuff I bought on eBay, I've never used them before...  or rather...  never known how to use them correctly before.  I tried to use them like regular stickles once and didn't like how it turned out, so I never tried them again.  Now I know...  you need to spread them out in a thin layer and they look beautiful!

Here are my last tag and square:

y) Distress Stickles Technique

This has been such an amazing journey!  I'll be finishing up my butterfly display with all the squares over the weekend (hopefully...  it's Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week, so I'm swamped with work this weekend) and will post pictures soon!

Creative Chemistry Day 9

Today we learned about Perfect Pearls. 

I had a LOT of difficulty with my homework, specifically with the Perfect Distress Technique.  I've seen Tim do this technique before and not gotten it right.  For whatever reason, when I mist the water over top of the distress ink and pearls, the pearls just spread out and the distress ink doesn't wick right.  I'm going to have to keep working on it.

That being said, I really love the way all my mists combined.  It's so cool to see the glimmer that you can get with perfect pearls.  Right now I have only the metallic set, but I just ordered two new sets and I can't wait for them to arrive.

I wish that my pictures did a better job of showing off the pearlescence of the tags!  They're really beautiful in person.

v) Perfect Distress Mist, w) Perfect Distress, x) Perfect Splatter Distress

See you tomorrow for the LAST DAY of new lessons from Creative Chemistry 101.  I don't know what I'll do...  I'm going to miss this!

Creative Chemistry Day 8

Well, today is Day 8 of Creative Chemistry.  Only 2 lessons left.  :-(  Our lesson today was about paint.  We learned the properties of Studio Paint, Paint Dabbers & Crackle Paint.  I think this may have been one of my very favorite lessons so far.

Here are my tags & display squares:

s) Dabber Resist, t) Crackle Paint Resist, u) Shattered Stains

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Creative Chemistry Day 7

Welcome to Day 7!  Today we learned a little something about heat embossing.  This was definitely a helpful lesson for me and I was immediately able to identify a few things I've been doing wrong for a long time (flicking the back of tags to get excess powder off, and trying to use UTEE to emboss images).

Here are my tags:

p) Nostalgic Batik, q) Rusted Enamel, r) Distress Powder Resist

 I really had a lot of fun with all of these techniques and was pleased with my color pallet today.   I wish the vibrant colors showed up better in the pictures.  I already ordered 2 new colors of Distress Powder and I can't wait to use them with the last technique.

Hope all my classmates had fun today, too!  See you tomorrow!

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 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 Days 1 & 2

Yesterday I started the Creative Chemistry 101 Class with Tim Holtz from www.onlinecardclasses.com.  This is a class that covers the science behind a lot of Ranger products, especially the Distress line, and gives techniques for how to use them.  You can still sign up at any time.  I'd definitely recommend it if you want to know more about a lot of the techniques that you may have seen Tim use in other blogs and videos.

On Day 1, we learned about terminology, inks and surfaces.  It was very helpful information for anybody who works with inks, even if they don't use Ranger products.

Today, Day 2, we began the first product, Distress Ink Pads, and learned some techniques to use them.

Here are my tags with the 3 techniques and an extra tag that has all of the techniques combined on it:

For the 3 Technique Tags: The left-most tag is the Blended Distress/Spritz & Flick, the center is Wrinkle-Free Distress, and the right tag is the Brushless Watercolor.  I wanted to make sure that I didn't do a lot more to the tags so that I can use them for inspiration in the future, since Tim has provided us with a PDF with instructions to glue on the back of the tag.

Here are some individual shots:

Had some trouble with the Wrinkle-Free Tags...  or maybe I did them right and just don't really love the technique.  I've tried this technique (where you push your tag into ink on your mat sprayed with water) before and had just as murky results.  Tim's always looks so great, though!

That's all for now!  I'll let you know tomorrow how Day 3 goes--it's about Archival Ink!