Sunday, June 19, 2016

Stampendous Melt Media Embossing

I saw this gorgeous creation on the Stampendous blog:

Amazing, right? So I read the tutorial, watched the video and tried to adapt it.  I wanted to make a title for my beach album.  I bought all the stuff: embossing powders, the teflon craft sheet, deep impressions embossing enamel....



I cut out BEACH using the Life's a Beach cartridge.  I had a little trouble using a thicker chipboard and it took several tries and adjustments but I managed to cut them at 3.25.  I stamped them with versamark...:


sprinkled them with the embossing enamel (my grandfather was a dumpster diver, and he saved all sorts of useful things from the trash.  I have over a hundred of these plastic take out covers and they make great, disposable trays for messy projects)....


I placed them on the teflon sheet in a frying pan and covered them, as I'd seen Fran do...



they liquified beautifully! I sprinkled on the colored embossing powders from the beach pack and tried to smear and blend and then it all fell apart.  Getting them off was so hard, they stuck to each other and as I tried to pull, the embossing powders were sliding out of place.


I was able to warm them back up and get separate letters but they were no where near as nice as I had been hoping for.  In the process, I burnt myself twice, once touching the pan and once when a blob of hot embossing powder stuck to my finger.


I saved the scraps and some of them blended the way I wanted my letters to blend.  The big pieces peeled easily off the teflon mat and I scraped the little ones off with a Pampered Chef scraper.



A little blob of enamel melted on the teflon sheet and I think it'd make a great dew drop on some future project.



So it was time for trial number two.  I figured my problem was I had too many edges, as the tutorial was done with one big, round piece.  So I used my Gypsy and linked the letters in BEACH to form a connected word.  I made them a little bigger, too, about 4 inches, and used a lighter chipboard and they cut nicely.


I inked them up with the versamark and sprinkled with the embossing enamel and found a new problem...


they didn't quite fit in my frying pan!  I had to angle it to get it in my electric fry pan.  I repeated the embossing process and added some of my scraps, was a little more generous with the blending and swirling.


I even added extra sand and didn't blend it all the way for a more realistic, sandy beach look.  It's not perfect but I think it'll make a great title for my beach album.

So for next time, I will not try to do letters!   I will not be afraid to blend.  I will add in more leftover pieces that melt nicely on the teflon mat.  And I will be careful not to burn myself!

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Gingerbread House Layout

I put together another Mosaic Moments style layout.  I used this pattern for inspiration:


The background papers came from this cute stack from Michaels:


I cut the gingerbread house from Create a Critter 2 and the letters at 0.75 from Nate's ABCs. Here's the left side:


The journaling was printed on Recollections ink jet printable glitter paper, also from Michaels.
And here's the right side:


I tweaked the pattern a little on this side to better fit my photos.  And to add more photos, I layered them on the left side, bottom left corner:



That way I got three in one!  Usually, to layer like this, I use the flip flaps from CTMH, but as the photos were an off size to fit the Mosaic Moments pattern, that wouldn't work.  I just used a folded piece of cardstock in between the photos.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Mosaic Moments Layouts

Mosaic Moments Layouts

I felt like my pages all were laid out the same and I was browsing Pinterest for new ideas and found the Mosaic Moments system-clean, simple, and you can fit a ton of pictures on one layout.  So I bought the dies and made this: 




I used papers from Stampin Up (Delicate Dots and Flirtatious, with the coordinating solids) and cut accents from the Cricut New Arrival cart.  The letters are from Jasmine.