More cards made with stickers

I bought this bundle from hungry jpeg a while back  they say that bundle has ended but not sure if the link I have provided would work for purchase.  Anyway, their bundles are awesome and there is so much in them.  Buried way down in part 2, in a file called floral compositions, I spotted an image I particularly liked.  It is shown in this card.  The original image is beautiful, but I pumped up the gamma , maybe I should say down not up? In the software I slid lever to left to darken a bit, then adjusted the lighting a d contrast before tracing, printing and cutting, I love the way these look on white cardstock, I wrap the stickers over top of card so I get part of back decorated, as well as adding a few to inside, and, of course decorating the envelopes makes a birthday enjoyable the moment the mail arrives.

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Here are a few more I made over the  weekend :

quick video on tracing images for print and cut stickers

The whole process of making and using these stickers would take many videos, and I apologize that the video above may not be perfect, did not have time for editing, etc, but there might be some info in it that could be useful.  In the video, I am showing how to trace the beautiful images in the HungryJpeg summer design bundle, in particular, the Vintage Garden images.  You get so much in these bundles for the $$, and best of all, you can use them in items you make without concern about copyright, I have sold a few of the cards I made using these images.  Anyway, for those who might want a little insight into the process I use in making these images into stickers, here is a quick, very rough presentation.  Perhaps I can continue showing additional information in the whole process, we will see.

Making cards using stickers

I have been having a ball making cards using great flowers and foliage, print and cut on full page labels, then arranging them "artfully" on cards.  They are turning out great.  You can see them here.
I love all of the images I have bought from Hungry JPEG, and most of the ones I have used are from here, and here.  Here are a few pics

video silkscreening logo1

The above video  might be helpful for those who want to use silkscreens on their pottery.  Actually, this commission piece enabled me to use almost all of the techniques I have learned, The plate itself was made from a lowfire white clay slab, impressed with a foam texture  that I made using my Silhouette Cameo.  Click here to see original posting showing finished plate. 

In the linked posting, you can see the foam cut I made to create the shape and decoration of the plate

One thing I didn't mention in that entry was that I did all the glazing and decorating on greenware "and" single fired the whole thing at cone 04.  I wanted the front of the plate to be whiter than the clay body, so used white underglaze on the font of the plate, then silkscreened the spanish sentiment on top of the white underglaze, then used clear glaze over the whole thing.  

I have made hundreds of foam cuts on my Silhouette Cameo to use with my clay and in other hobbies,

you can see many of the foam cuts here

Stickers and cards and Cameo

Some time ago I was inspired by an image I saw for a card wish I had credit info for this, but can't seem to find where I saw it several weeks ago (maybe months) :

I had been excited to try to make some similar to this, since I had purchased a bundle of great illustrations from Hungry JPEG, really some great images and gorgeous bundles of illustrated bouquets.  The link to the bundle I purchased is here

When you see the image I used, you can see how much it resembles the above inspiration.
Anyway, I tried several attempts at making stickers to do the job.  Several posts ago, I mentioned how much I love the full page labels I have gotten from OnLine Labels.  I have the 8.5" x 11" size as well as the larger 12" x 18" since I have a wide format printer, I wanted to have this size as well.  I started out with some success which motivated me to print and cut lots of stickers, but I kept messing around until I could not get a close cut and couldn't unravel which "clever (lol)" tricks I employed as I went along.  Needless to say, I got things to cut badly (I will have another post on that, I was going to trash the whole thing, but then found another way to use the messed up cuts --more on that later).

Then there was a thread on Yahoo's Silhouette Users Group with several suggestions on how to correct this problem.  The best solution, as usual, came from Kay Hall here:

So today, I decided to tackle the project "again."  I used the Silhouette Software and traced outer edge of image, grouped them with the print version of the Hungry JPEG image and printed them "from a saved PDF file, of this layout:

Here is the printed version from the PDF file I had saved, opened and printed

Now I can peel off the stickers and arrange them on a kraft card and envelope I made.  The object was to be able to see the Kraft paper through the tiny openings of the finely cut sticker and I think I am very happy with this Finally!!  I was able to fold the stickers around the edges and to the other side of both card and envelope.  I won't go into all the other "failures" but with Kay Hall's instructions I could keep it simple and got the job done.  Hope this helps anyone struggling with making stickers using label paper.  Here also is pic of my settings, using the Silhouette blade "but" I have it set at 8, not 2 as shown on this screenshot.

Part 2 of "foiling using Alleen's Tack it over & Over"

Received my fine liner bottles and couldn't wait to try it out!

Foiling without laminator on fabric and cardstock and foam

I have been experimenting with several techniques for foiling on different materials.  I will have several posts on how my experiments turn out.  There are several YouTube videos on using adhesives, like double stick tape, and Tombow glue, but I wondered if Alleene"s Tack It over & Over would work,  Here is a video showing these experiments:

Latex resist on tiny terracotta pots from Dollar Tree

I have been playing with an experiment using little flower pots I bought from Dollar Tree 3 for 1$.  I wanted to use latex resist to decorate them.  The first video is here.

amazing what hot glue ceramic bits and gold/silver leaf can produce

Some time ago, I had made a whole bunch of disc beads from ceramic, low fire clay which I then colored using several colors of Gilders Wax to produce the pretty disc beads you see with a hole in the middle --I didn't use them all so you can see what they looked like at the bottom of the top picture

above.  They have been hanging around for quite a while and I did not feel like making the necklace I had originally planned on making with these.  Then recently, I went back to making some wider silver and gold bangle type bracelets, see pics below. 

Then I thought some of the plain earrings could use a little gold and started adding it to earrings I already made (and of course using my hand colored papers for boxes and leftover bits to decorate card:

 Also I had experimented with using some of my painted deli paper to make bangles with hot glue as well, see this posting and this one. and this one too.  I did several videos showing how I made the bracelets here. 

Since I have been making lots of ceramic bits and they are piling up waiting for me to do something with them, 

it was only a matter of time til I integrated them into the glue/silver/gold foil techniques.   

Here are some pics showing some of the ceramic earrings, etc with gold/silver embellishments, now my brain is working to use more of these in interesting bracelet ideas.  I like the bracelets with the glue as bangles, so easy to put them on just before heading out the door, they are lightweight, and don't bang on tables or hurt your arm.  

Sketching in Pencil on Watercolor Paper using Silhouette Cameo

I have been wanting to try this and it works!  I am trying to improve my watercolor skills, these designs are not my own, I regret I cannot provide originators, but I was able to pull into Silhouette program, convert to cut lines, then sketch with #2 pencil on watercolor paper.  The birds have been colored by hand (no brainer really), but will work on the foxes later as an exercise to improve my techniques.  I had started making a list of the reasons one would use the Cameo sketch function instead of just printing designs with printer.  It wasn't until recently that I discovered thanks to the thread on silhouetteusers@yahoogroups.com which triggered the addition of using erasable pencil, which you couldn't get with an inkjet printer, anyway, here is my list of when/why one would use the sketch function instead of a printer,

here are just some of the reasons to use the sketch function:

--You can use metallic inked pens/pencils (something you can't do with printer) If not metallic, printer does just as well producing colors, etc

--You can use 12" wide media, which most printers (Unless you have a wide format printer) can't do--also you can use longer media in the Cameo as well.

--You can use a wet embossing pen to sketch onto stuff, then add embossing powder and heat with heat gun to get interesting raised effects/colors.  Don't think a printer can do this.

See my experiences doing this here: 

http://paulinesstuff.blogspot.com/2014/10/more-experiments-with-those-ranger.html   

--Now I can add sketching with pencil!  which can be erased later, unlike a printed image.

And here are some videos showing machine sketching on watercolor paper

And here is the Cameo sketching very detailed design of foxes (again, not my design), which I will work on in the next few days, really impressed with ability of Cameo t do this:

and here is a picture of the finished sketch:

A tank top with just too many stains----I love it now

This tank top just had too many stains, and I just saw a you tube video on circles, so with my inktense blocks, some water and some textile medium I went to town, black circles came from end of a TP roll dipped in textile paint, smaller dots from the wooden end of a foam brush,  I will be able to wear it under any color shirt.  I love it, and had fun making it.

Inspiration and combination of ideas

I just watched Ceramic Arts Daily video featured today showing Liz Zlot Summerfield's  technique of making templates which include the bottoms.  I just remembered that after watching it last year, I created a similar template, only I used a foam template made on my Silhouette Cameo machine which "also" included a design which would be in bas relief (out, raised design rather than in), and thus created a box which when cut and rolled onto with foam template had designs on all four sides. I use packing tape to keep the design bits in alignment so they create a raised rather than indented design. Thought I would share that today,

The following picture is the piece drying.

This is box after glazing:

The tiny Xyron sticker maker makes easy work of getting adhesive on those tiny bits

Thanks to Amazon's speedy delivery, I didn't have to wait long to achieve the ideal solution to organizing those tiny bits with adhesive ready to use at any time.  Here is a quick video showing how it works:

What to do with all those pretty little bits

In my post here, I talked about the great way the punch board envelope maker could also make boxes.  I went a little nuts making these cute handpainted boxes from 12"x12"scrapbook paper that I had scraped paint on backsides creating textures, etc. I was thinking they would be cute boxes to put the ceramic earrings I had been making ---BUT now I was left with all those bits punched out by the punch board. Here is a video showing how I am using them--

Messing around with techniques---ceramic pottery

I had this piece laying around and decided to try the bubble technique after I had drawn the cat with black underglaze, then I put a small amount of blue underglaze in a very small container, added a bit of water and a bit of Dawn dishwashing soap, inserted a straw and proceeded to blow bubble onto the piece, after drying, I clear glazed, then fired at 04 (white earthenware clay), here is the result

I like the effect and will try it again.

video on how I use a gift/key card to paint textured backgrounds

made this video on how I like to paint the white back of scrapbook papers to use for boxes.

Painted scrapbook papers making boxes with the envelope maker

Ok, I have been wanting to make cards for gifts, but wanted unique papers, I also wanted to experiment with boxes made using my Envelope Punch Board (which I love) (by We R Memory Keepers.  I could use my Silhouette Cameo, but sometimes using this inexpensive tool is quicker.  I saw this great You Tube Video which explained how to easily make boxes instead of envelopes to hold several cards to make as gifts.  Easy, just find the card size, and decide how thick you want the box, 1" seems about right and you can quickly make a box for sets of cards, or a box for cards that are thick.  She used scrapbook paper that was printed on both sides, I do not have any, but thought, I could make this much more interesting if I painted the back side of the cheap 12x12 paper I bought ages ago on clearance sale at Michaels.  I have been wanting to do some anyway.  This is the pack of paper I have:

Pretty boring papers, but I am concentrating on the white backsides here:

So I quickly grabbed some old craft paint, a gift/key card and a handful of texture sheets

Then, placing the plastic canvas under the paper squirted paint onto paper and swiped paint with the gift card, then slid some of the texture plates underneath again and did it some more until I was satisfied with the look.  Paint dries very quickly because it is so thin.  One distinct advantage to this method is it is quick and easy with very little cleanup.  I do have gelli plates and love to work with them, but it is a little more work and with more things to clean up, brayer, stencils, masks,, etc.  This method gives great results in a very short time.  Since my work table was near a window, the two sheets I did dried in minutes.

Then using the You Tube video linked above proceeded to make two boxes:

Here is another couple of shots showing the side view thickness of the boxes:

I almost had looked at ordering plain white 12 x 12 cardstock to paint like this, then to use in my Cameo, or as envelopes, didn't realize I could just repurpose the pack of that cheap scrapbook paper to do the same thing.  This is a very inexpensive and quick way to get nice background lightweight cardstock which can be embellished further, I could also run through my wide format printer and print on top of the painted side, see some of my previous experiments doing this with my painted gelli papers here.

One tip I learned making the boxes is not to score to hard on this cheap scrapbook paper, a gentle scoring works better,