Using Your Smooch: Part 5, Inkblots

As I played around with my Smooch, I remembered how interesting Rorschach-style things can happen when you fold wet, painted paper. Shimmery, Smoochy Rorschach tests! What a concept!

So here's what I did:

1. Take a half piece of regular heavy white card stock or watercolor paper. I used PTI's white card stock in this example.
2. Score a fold in the middle, and fold it, then opened it on a waterproof surface. I used my cutting mat, which is easy to clean.
3. Paint one side of the inside of the folded paper with plain water until it's soppy wet, and then quickly add watered-down Smooch with an eyedropper on the saturated side of the paper.
4. Press the dry half of the paper down onto the wet and rub gently over the whole piece with your fingers or a bone folder. Inky water will ooze out the sides. Do not be alarmed.
5. Open the paper, and see what happened!

The more water you use, the more colors blend and flow. I used lime and dark green Smooch, and the lime ink seemed to sort of separate into lime and yellow, which really added a lot of interest here.  I think it would become a muddy mess if you used more than three colors, though. And remember that complementary colors (those opposite on the color wheel, like red and green or yellow and purple) combine to make brown.

If you tilt your head to the right and you have a dirty anatomically-inclined mind, you might see a uterus in this Rorschach image. Or not. Maybe I'm just weird.

Anyway, I made a whole bunch of cards using this 5.5" x 8.5" piece of shimmery yellow-green paper. At first, I used relatively larger pieces, so let me share those three cards today.

This first card allowed me to use a couple of giant blingy stickers to anchor the strip. I like how the crisp, angular lines of the "ribbon" of color are softened by the blended colors and large round shapes of the bling.

The largest piece of background plays up the wonderful drippy lines that look like some surrealistic rain storm. Did you know that the color green symbolizes hope? That made me reach for this sentiment from CASual Friday's Breathe set.

Of course, some war poet from WWI turned green's symbolism on its side when he wrote about the green glow of mustard gas in the trenches. Not very hopeful.

But I digress.

Finally, I wanted to do something interesting with this strip and thought cutting a free-form curve might do the trick. After affixing the two pieces to the card, I reached for a sentiment set from Clearly Besotted that has LOTS of sentiments, and realized that the division between the two pieces might perfectly represent the feelings of separation caused by loss of a loved one. For Christians, the idea is that we're separated from our loved ones only until we rejoin them in heaven, at which time things all fit perfectly back together again.

And there you have my first three cards with this particular technique. The remaining pieces were used in much smaller doses, and I think the results are superbly LateBlossom style. But you'll have to wait until tomorrow and Friday to see those.

I'm such a tease!

Substitution Tip: You could really use almost any paint or dye-based re-inker for this technique, including something like Glimmer Mist, although don't spray it...use the eyedropper to get lots of color in each squirt. Little dots of sprayed color will not spread like big, wet globs will. Just remember that the more water, the better, so don't be stingy, and don't use too many colors at one time.

OLS#7: Wave the Flag

We're taking a sorta kinda break from Smoochin' to play along with the One-Layer Simplicity Challenge hosted by Heather this month: Wave the Flag. We're supposed to make a card inspired by our country's flag.

I'm all over this. I made three one-layer cards inspired by the good ol' Stars and Stripes of the United States of America!

First up. No stamping, just bling. So fun! You have no idea how happy this card makes me.

Next up...stars embossed on a Smooched background (see, I worked the Smooch into this post!). I masked the edges of the card with washi tape and then sponged Smooch over the whole exposed area. After letting it dry completely, I used the embossing buddy (a fabric bag full of chalk, basically) to pre-treat the area, and then I stamped and embossed the stars and sentiment from Hero Arts Year Round Sentiments set. It still needed a little something after that, so I added some of the star bling.

Finally, I used my new MFT set to create a red-white-and-blue, postage-themed love card for Operation Write Home. Sandy at OWH says that the troops request more love cards than they get, so I'm trying to fill the need!

I hope you'll play along with the OLS challenge this month! It's so much fun to wave your flag!

Using Your Smooch: Part 4, Weaving

After yesterday's sponging technique of creating a single-color gradient with Smooch, I decided to try sponging with natural sponges and different colors. First, I created this panel using purple and blue inks with a combination of pouncing the sponge and rubbing it onto watercolor paper.

As you can see, the blending wasn't exactly smooth (whether this was sponging error on my part or simply that the inks don't respond to this style of blending, I don't know). Not quite satisfied, I let this panel sit for a few days while I contemplated what to do with it.

Finally, I decided that it might make a really cool woven project. Cutting it into strips and switching them around might make the lack of smooth gradient blending here less of a problem.

Weaving Instructions

1. Trim the colored area into an even rectangle. Then cut it into strips of the same width. These are 1/2" wide.

2. Begin weaving in the center and work out. I wanted a 5 x 3 grid of weaving.

IMPORTANT TIP: This was actually the second weaving I made. For the first, which used three colors, I just randomly wove. The results were sort of strange looking...unbalanced. For this two-color weave, I carefully planned how the colors balanced, removing strips that didn't quite work, switching them around, or replacing them altogether. The final results, as usual, are far more pleasing when you put some thought and planning into them!

3. Lift each loose tab and place a dot of glue under it to hold the whole thing together. Flip the whole weaving over and repeat the gluing on the bottom tabs as well. This makes the entire piece very stable and easy to work with.

4. Once the glue is dry, trim the loose ends off. I left 1/8" tabs all the way around the weaving. Another option is to fold the loose ends under the weaving. This will give more of a "basket" effect, but it also makes the entire piece very bulky.

5. Mount the weaving on a card with either glue or dimensional tape. As you can see, the colors glow and shimmer on the white base, and the poor job I did blending colors doesn't much matter now. I love how the purple and blue seem to move your eye around in a dreamy, soft, soothing way, so I used a "thinking of you" sentiment. It just seemed to fit.

This is a great technique to use when you create a background paper that doesn't quite work as a whole. Cut it up and try weaving it!


Supplies
stamps: Clearly Besotted
ink: VersaColor imperial blue
paper: Michael's 110# card stock
accessories: Smooch, natural sponges, glue, dimensionals

Using Your Smooch: Part 3

We've looked at using Smooch ink to add dots to an image as in Celtic manuscript painting and to embellish parts of stamped images, and today, we're going to use it like watercolor paint.

I mucked around trying a variety of watercolor wash techniques using brushes and met with limited success. The ink tended to look blotchy and weird. When I tried using a sponge and a LOT less water, however, things got much prettier:

 I made two panels of color on one piece of watercolor paper. Here's how to get the look.

1. Put a generous amount of two shades of the same color of Smooch in a palette well and add a few drops of water with an eyedropper. I used the light orange and dark orange on the left and light pink and dark pink on the right.

2. Using a make-up sponge wedge, pick up some of the watered-down ink of the lighter shade and rub it all over the paper using a sideways, back-and-forth motion.

3. Quickly, before the ink can dry, pick up a fresh sponge, dip it in the dark shade, and rub up from the bottom of the lighter shade, blending as you go. As you can see, I picked up too much of the dark orange and lost the fade that shows so clearly on the pink. So watch it. Some of the colors are REALLY strong. 

I decided to use these panels as large backgrounds on cards.

Of course I went autumnal with the orange background, adding an old and very pretty PSX leaf (in a visual triangle) and a sentiment from Papertrey's Signature Greetings in timber brown Staz-On ink. It was pretty, but the card lacked something, so I added some brown bling.

And yes, that card base is SU chocolate chip. I used colored card stock for a card base. Because this looked really weird on a white, cream, or kraft base. Believe me. I tried them all before resorting to chocolate chip. I like it!

But not enough to do it too often. It sorta doesn't feel like me.

The pink card, however, is epically me.

This tall, thin card fits some ready-made envelopes I bought at Marco's Paper. I wanted to show off the fade of the pink (it's even prettier in real life!), so I paired it very simply with a Papertrey Signature Greetings sentiment in Hero Arts Soft Granite and added the bling for a bit of focus and to direct the eye to the left of the card...where you open it. Without the bling, there was no real movement for the eye, no sense of direction, and the card definitely felt like it was missing something. The bling fixed the problem.

Bling usually does make everything better, don't you think?

Substitution Tip: If you have shimmery watercolors (like Twinkling H20s), I imagine they would work just as well with the sponge. Standard watercolors and acrylic paints would likely work, too, although I imagine you'd have to work really fast with the acrylics if you want to blend them...they dry fast and waterproof.

Supplies
stamps: PSX, Papertrey
ink: Staz-On brown, Hero Arts soft granite
paper: watercolor paper, Papertrey white
accessories: rhinestones, Smooch, make-up sponges

Using Your Smooch: Part 2

Utilizing free-form dots around images like the Irish monks did may not be for everyone, but a second use of Smooch definitely is. Using the Smooch applicator to embellish or highlight parts of a stamped image is easier because you have a guide. You just cover the parts of an image you want to highlight.

Here are two different examples of this much easier technique.

First up, this abstract flower was made with one of the leaves from Papertrey's Mighty Oak set. It's stamped in Memento teal ink and then embellished with lime Smooch.

The close-up picture brings up two very important points. 1) Smooch ink is opaque, so when used at full strength, it provides very dense color coverage. That allows you to cover up an underlying color completely. 2) Smooch is water-based, meaning that if you don't use a waterproof or at least water-resistant ink, it will make the ink bleed unattractively. Memento is waterproof enough to tolerate this technique, but if you've stamped with a non-waterproof dye ink like SU's classic inks, you might make a mess. Just sayin'.

Don't you love how the lime makes the teal petals so much more interesting!?!

Next up, we have a card that lets the Smooch take center stage. I stamped the polka dot border in Memento sky blue, which is a VERY light blue. Then, I covered all the dots with a rainbow of Smooch colors. The dots are irregular, but I love how that irregularity adds some whimsy and sense of movement to the otherwise very static design.

Substitution Tips: If you like this look but don't have Smooch, the best product I know of to substitute is Sakura Stardust pens. The colors are opaque and perhaps a bit more shimmery than the Smooch, the roller-ball pens are easy to handle, and you can purchase several colors for very little money. The clear Sakura Stardust pens (my personal favorite) are not opaque, so whatever color you stamp gets a make-over with a silvery, glittery sheen.

You could also use an opaque paint like gouache or acrylics and a small brush, but that would take practice and skill with a brush to pull off neatly.

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Mighty Oak, Polka Dot Basics, Birthday Basics; Gina K thinking of you
ink: Memento
paper: Papertrey Ink
accessories: rhinestone, Sharpie marker (to color the rhinestone), dimensionals, corner rounder, Smooch

Using Your Smooch: Part 1

In addition to trying to use all my stamps through the Use-Your-Stamps Challenge, I'm also trying to use my other stuff as well. I realized that I have a bunch of Smooch but haven't used it much lately. It was time to pull those adorable little bottles out and see what I could do with them.

Like I said, adorable. Smooch is opaque, shimmery, water-based ink. If you don't have Smooch, you will be able to adapt some of these techniques to other supplies. I'll try to point you in some constructive directions as we go.

The applicators that come with the bottles are perfect for making dots...which made me think of Celtic book illumination, of course. Remember, my masters degree is in medieval literature and I got sucked into paper crafts via calligraphy and medieval-style illumination.

Weird, I know.

So of course thinking about dots in art made me go Celtic, because Irish manuscripts are often full of dots...usually red ones, but of course I went more, um, subtle. Mistakes are less noticeable that way.

Is that artistic cowardice? Perhaps, but I like the results nevertheless.

The cross stamp is an old one from Stampabilities. I colored the lines and knots with a Bic marker (tranquil teal) and then added an outline of silver Smooch dots. In one area, the dots got too far apart, so I went back and tried to add some, and the results were not good. If you try this, do not make my mistake. This will look hand-done unless you're a robot, so go with the flow and let the spacing look like a human did it.

Also, if you are of a certain age and your eyes aren't the best, reading glasses will help. My contacts are bifocals that work great most of the time, but I still found myself going cross-eyed here and grabbing my reading glasses. So much easier.

Alternative Approaches: Tiny paint brushes can be used to put down paint in dots, but having tried this back in my illuminating days, I can say that it's definitely easier said than done. Some pens will work, but the dots will likely be bigger than the ones shown here, unless you use a fine-tip technical pen. I have some and have never used them. If you try it, please let me know if it works. ;-)

Supplies
stamps: Stampabilities
ink: Memento black
paper: Papertrey White
accessories: Bic tranquil teal marker, dimensionals, silver Smooch

Using a Couple of Toni's Die Cuts

Toni and Joyce were kind enough to send me a bunch of die cuts...since I have neither dies nor a die cut machine. I started playing around with Toni's set the other day and came up with this pretty-in-pastels card!

I deliberately made the popped piece just a tiny bit smaller than the grass, so blades would hang off the edge. Too much overhang, and the card is too delicate for practical use. But just a bit adds interest.

BTW, the yellow is softer than my photo editing software would allow...not so lemon-y, more butter-y.

I loved the soft colors on the textured card stock, but the card needed a little something to balance it out and add some bling. In my Yellow Embellishment Drawer, I found a little baggie with Swarovski crystals in it. They are so pretty and iridescent!

Many thanks again to both Toni and Joyce for sending these for me to play with! I'm having so much fun!


Supplies
paper: no idea
accessories: Swarovski crystals, dimensionals