and honestly, i don't know what is going on with me these days but i've been crazy pants over techniques lately. i watched a cool tutorial video several months back where this lady was making faux snake skin with a paper towel...well, with my obvious aversion to anything snake related and the fact that there is nothing snake skin-ish about my style...i wanted to tweak it a little. like mr. tim gunn says, 'make it work'. and i did :]
after playing and adjusting and experimenting with tons of inks, here's what i came up with (i should warn you, it doesn't look remotely like the sample in the video...)
i swear on everything that is holy that this is a piece of paper towel...cool right?!?! so now for the how to (i made a journal and an embellishment using the same technique, fun!)
here's what you'll be needing:
clear embossing powder, utee, stamps, scissors, super juicy ink pads, versamark, paper towels, and a heat gun (if i forgot something, let me know and i'll edit- it's past my bedtime, lol)
ink your stamp up really good (the more ink the better, true story) and stamp the image onto your paper towel. cover with clear embossing powder, tap off excess and heat emboss. i wanted to repeat my image all over the paper towel (using a small stamp was a little tedious) and i found that as long as you use a super thick, super juicy ink pad, you can get away with doing all the stamping at one time and then heat emboss everything.
here's a pic of the first stamp...excuse the nasty appearance of my acrylic block...it's sinful i know and for the record i've tried and tried to get that crud off of there, lol. (sidenote: any genius crud removal home remedies would be super appreciated)
once you've heat set all the stamped images, using your versamark, ink the entire area- really well...you want it saturated with versamark. now cover versamarked area with utee (ultra thick embossing enamel), tap off excess and heat set.
in the above pic, you can see where i added the versamark (this is with one layer applied)...it's starting to get translucent-ish...i like mine really thickly coated so i repeated the utee step a second time so it looks like this...
you can't really tell by my photos but it's super glossy and translucent :] now to make a book out of it...
using a bind it all, i punched a set of holes in the top and bottom (i just line the edge of the paper with the outer edge of the bind it all (no measuring for this girl, lol), do the same with the papers and the back cover piece. bind it with a wire and it should look a little something like this...
ok, so as promised...the embellishment how to. i'm not gonna go through the whole process because it is pretty much the same idea just on a smaller scale. i started by cutting 3 circles freehand (i like them a little wonky). do the whole process on each circle. now through lots of goofing around- i mean research- i discovered that white ink looks super cool on the white paper towel. i highly recommend having a go with the white ink...i think it might be my favorite. anyway, complete the technique on the circles and then stack and stick a cute brad in the middle and you have yourself a super cute paper towel flower. here's a pic of mine...
fun right?!?!
okay, one last thing and then i have to go to bed...my retinas are screaming at me...
the little one had back to school night tonight and got to meet her teacher and her new classmates...they are so freaking cute i can't even stand it!
alright, goodnight lovelies!
