Easy Foiling

Hello Crafting Family. I have a bit of news to share. For those of you that enjoy foiling this might be very interesting.
In the past, you have had to use toner paper to die cut things you wanted to be foiled or you had to buy phrases pre-made and then foil them. Well, that is over.

If you have a laminator, and transfer foil you can add foil to your images without toner paper or printing using a laser printer.

NOTE: this technique works better with outline stamps but I was able to get a decent foil with Stampscapes Prickly branches.

Anyway if you're interested, all you do is stamp your image and heat emboss with clear embossing powder. While doing this get your laminator going so it will be nice and hot. Add your foil to your stamped embossed image and send it through the laminator and BAM you have a foiled image. This technique is gorgeous when you use stamped images of large outline flowers. Even your stamped sentiments can be foiled. How cool is that!

The two machines tested were the Royale Laminator and the Minc foiling machine. We discovered the best settings for the Royale laminator was 3 and for the Minc, the best setting was 2. Using these settings each machine worked perfectly.

I was so excited I created a quick clip of my newly foiled stamp and thought I would share. Here is the quick clip. You may need to click play twice.

Thanks for stopping by.

Be safe, stay healthy and craft happy.

Sending hugs from Texas

~Lesia a.k.a. Mema

WaterColor Jazz

Hello everyone. I am so excited about this new product I just picked up and I want to share with everyone. I could never master water coloring although I did try, so finally, I just gave up and would dabble using distress inks and my Nuvou Mousse but none was real watercolor.

But all that has changed with these Kuretake Zig Clean Brush pens.  These pens are awesome and even my attempts look almost like a professional did it. No, I haven't mastered these pens but using them for the first time gave me results I never expected and a lot of hope for my future.

Below is my first attempt at watercolor. I thought it was good enough to warrant a card. 

I used a sentiment and images from Altenew "Beautiful Day" stamp collection. My watercolor paper is Strathmore Bristol Smooth Surface and my coloring media was Zig Watercolor pens.

I would like to enter the following challenges:

Crafting With Attitude - #38 Anything Goes (4/29)
QKR Stampede - #293 Anything Goes (5/3)
Polkadoodles Crafting - Wk#17 Anything Goes (5/3)
Simply Papercraft - #57 Anything Goes (5/26)
Creative Fingers - #145 Anything Goes (5/3)
Colour Crazy - Wk#17 Anything Goes (5/10)
Brown Sugar - #277 Pearls/Mother's Day (5/7)

That's all I have for tonight. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you come again real soon.

Sending hugs from Texas

~Lesia

Quirky and Funny

Boy have I been busy stepping outside my comfort zone. First I got involved with scenic stamping using Stampscapes stamps and glossy paper, then I moved on to creating with alcohol inks and Yupo paper. 

But I didn't stop there, nope I moved into the paints (so outside my zone) and I must say I really do like the Nuvo embellishment mousse and pearl drops. 

Another product that caught my eye is the Dylusions paint series by Dylan Reaveley in conjunction with Ranger. The paint is vibrant and fluid and created specifically for journal page creations.

Well, I am a card maker so I had to figure how to use this paint to create my cards and that wasn't hard.  All these inks are so versatile and can be used in so many ways. I created several cards and would like to share a couple with you. I used digital images from my stash and colored them with Spectrum Noir markers.  The sentiments I used are all by Dylan Reaveley.

Although these cards are far from my usual style and so outside my comfort zone, I still hope they will inspire you and maybe even bring a smile. 

Both card backgrounds were created with Dylusions paint and stencils. I used a gel pen to add little bits here and there.  The sentiments are by  Dylan Reaveley in conjunction with Ranger. I love these sentiments because they are quirky and funny. 

So there you have my latest adventure in the world of crafting and paper.

I'd like to enter the following challenges:

Crafting With Attitude - #38 Anything Goes (4/29)
Simply Papercraft - #56 Anything Goes (425)
Jo's Scrap Shack -#229 Anything Goes (4/19)
Creative Fingers - #144 Anything Goes (4/19)
Polkadoodles Crafting - Wk. 15 Anything Goes
Crafting With Friends - #65 Anything Goes (4/24)
Colour Crazy - #15 Anything Goes

Thanks for stopping by and come again soon.

Sending Hugs From Texas

~Lesia