Purple Salt


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Keeping Track of Copic Blends

Have you ever used your Copics to create the ‘perfect’ card and then not remembered exactly the colour combos you used?  I do it all the time!

I thought I had solved the problem by taking a picture with my iPhone of the coloured image along with the colours I had used -

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But that didn’t work so well as I often used too many to photograph.  So I tried taking pictures of the image with labelled post its –

 

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But that was time consuming!

I was so pleased to see that X-Press Graph-X is now producing a Copic journal filled with blending cardstock.  Kathy on the design team also produced fantastic templates that we can use to record the colours used along with an area to do blended swatch.  These will be perfect for trying out new colour combos and keeping a record of favourites.  Check out the link to them here.

At the moment the Copic Oz blog is running a competition to win a new journal so I thought I would try out the new templates :)

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My completed card –

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Music Mini Book

In the last post, I showed you the base pages for my mini book swap which were created with my gelli plate.  Here is the finished result!

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The theme was music and each page was based on the size of a CD – something that seems to be fast disappearing with the popularity of digital music!

 

Now for a close up of the decorated pages.  Some were stamped with the Darkroom Door music images from the Harmony plate, others left blank.

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The gelli prints were perfect to stamp on as the acrylic paint went on very smoothly and left a lovely matt finish.

 

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I particularly love the verse on this one – especially as my hubby and sons are musicians!

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The scrape of blue was applied before I did my gelli prints using a gift card & paint.  Same for the orange/yellow on the other pages.

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The last one gives you an idea on how the pages were folded – into quarters and then each side folded inwards so that you get a quarter shape. Each quarter was glued to the next until the book was formed.  A simple black cover competed each book.

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Leave me a comment if you have any questions or would just like me to know you visited!  I love to read them :)


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Gelli Plate Play

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Have you seen lots of Gelli plate prints popping up in blogs and on Pinterest lately?  I got mine ages ago but didn’t really play with it much until recently.

I am working on a mini book swap and thought Gelli prints would be a perfect starting point for my pages.

Aren’t they colourful?

You can find out more information on Gelli Plates here.  I bought mine from The Thread Studio in WA but you can also get them from Blue Bazaar now.


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Change is good

During March I did the Bloom Your Blog class over at Jessica Sprague and I cannot believe how much I have learnt! I had already done a few Photoshop classes and felt reasonably comfortable creating headers etc but this class taught us so much more.

I am still fine tuning the changes to my blog format but I’d love to hear what you think of the new look Smile!

A post isn’t complete without some eye candy to enjoy – this card was done with a Penny Black flower image, embossed with white and coloured with Copics.

 

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Flying Lessons

Over recent weeks I have been busily soaking up the wisdom of Kelly Rae Roberts in the magical Flying Lessons online course.  It has been fabulous and although I got terribly behind in keeping up with each lesson, I have been learning lots and making new friends.  Kelly Rae is an amazing teacher!  I’d like to tell you to do her ecourse but this one was the last Sad smile – you can purchase her ebook here. 

I have so many ideas; some are already in action – I opened an Etsy store ages ago but never did much, now there is actually product there.  I am also selling my handmade cards in a local store, Handmade High Street.  It is a huge learning curve and things aren’t happening quite as quickly as I would like (read..stuff isn’t selling too well yet!) but it will happen.

All year, Brisbane based group BrisStyle has been running a series of seminars aimed at creative small business people and I have gone to as many as I was able.  The information gained was invaluable and I have met so many lovely creative people in the process….people who’s work I have admired for ages….people who are living their creative dream!  BrisStyle will be running seminars again next year so if you are in Brisbane and want to catch them, check out their website here sign up for the BrisStyle newsletter.

In other news, I created the Christmas card kit for Papertrenz.  It was so much fun!  If you live in Brisbane you can get your kit in store – or give the girls a ring and they will send one out to you.  (over $40 value for just $35 and makes 8 cards, 2 tags with leftovers) 

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I also had an exciting guest design team invitation recently – more on that in the coming days!  (have to keep you interested somehow)

I thought I would leave you with a recent Christmas card –

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Christmas Countdown

Is it just groans from the dog at my feet that I am hearing when I mention Christmas?  Have you started on your Christmas card list yet?  I have, but only just this week.  I’d like to share a couple that I have made already -

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The first two use the new set of Tim Holtz stamps – they make it so simple to create a great Christmas card really quickly & easily. The Christmas tree was stamped with Hero Arts chalk ink & highlighted with a little Kindy Glitz. The soldier was coloured with distress markers – less time consuming when the palette of colours is limited.  I take ages to colour this type of image with my Copics.

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This last one is really simple – an embossed front overlaid with a lacey tree stamp (SEI I think) & a greeting from Darkroom Door Christmas word strip. A few diamontes and it was done.


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Mixed Media Challenge – Shapes

Special - Robyn Wood

In recent months I have been closely following the blog for Aussie Scrap Source, an Australian wholesaler. I have found it is a great way of seeing what new products are coming into the Australian stores – as well as being a fabulous source of inspiration!

A series of posts on mixed media techniques has been running recently and now they are inviting readers to enter a challenge each week. This weeks challenge was to create something using ‘shapes’ as a starting point.

I decided to use a Crafters Workshop stencil (mini pomegranates) to provide the ‘shapes’ for my challenge entry. Here is a little more detail:

  • The base is a 7” x 5” flat canvas which was covered with tiny pieces of ripped dictionary paper. Once dry this was painted with a wash of pale blue/aqua/white acrylic paints.
  • The stencil was placed on one side of the canvas and spritzed with marmalade glimmer mist – I towelled it off a touch to lighten the colour.
  • Each of the ‘pods’ was outlined & embellished with a white Molotov marker.
  • Extra dimension (and ‘shape’) was added with a Tim Holtz chicken wire stamp.
  • My ‘She Art’ girl was paper pieced using Bo Bunny papers – the butterflies on her skirt tie in nicely with the stamped butterflies & tissue tape/washi.
  • A couple of Tim Holtz Papillion butterflies were stamped & coloured & bent a little so that their wings are sticking up.
  • Final touches are an old Making Memories word plaque & some sequins.

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