Technique Club Fun

Hello again, stamping friends!  I hope you’re enjoying your weekend 🙂

I wanted to share some of the fun we had on Friday night; the last Friday of the month is when my Technique Junquies Club meets.  We get together, and I show the club members at least 2 new techniques; inking, stamping, paper folding – all  that kind of fun stuff!  Not everyone could attend (we missed you, Lynn & Debbie!), but those ladies can catch up another time.

The first thing I showed them how to do is the ‘direct to paper technique’.  This is where you create a background or a scene, by applying the ink pad directly to your cardstock, without the use of a stamp, sponge or other type of applicator.  It’s just you, your ink pad, and the paper!

These ladies are no slouches when it comes to learning new things, so we went straight to creating a scene – in a good way! LOL!

When I was creating my sample to show them, this is how it looked – kind of a hot mess!

I used Post-it® notes to hold my cardstock down to my grid paper, as well as create a 1/4″ clean edge around the scene.  This picture shows all the ink colours applied.

In this picture, you can see that I’ve added the ‘reeds’ image from the Wetlands stamp set, in the foreground.  This helps give some depth and perspective to the scene.

These are ALL of the ink colours we used!!  That’s right – 9 colours, if you include the Memento Tuxedo Black used to stamp the reeds.  You can also see that I didn’t burnish down the edges of my sticky notes – some of the ink bled on the edges of my cardstock.  Oh well – it looks more ‘artistic’, right?! 😉

Here are all the ones we did; starting at the left side: Amanda’s, Susan’s, mine.  We each did 2 scenes; funny thing – we all prefered our first attempts over the 2nd!  I just love seeing how, even though we all did the same technique with the same colours, each one turned out a bit different.  And that’s what I love about this technique – but it can be frustrating, at the same time.  You’ll never have the exact same results twice!

You can see on my (top right) sample how I compensated for the bleeding ink; I used a ruler and my Black Stampin’ Write Marker, and drew a heavy line around the scene, making it look like it has a black mat under it.  (we used and Old Olive cardstock base, then a Lost Lagoon panel, then the Whisper White image panel to create the card).

It was a lot of fun, and everyone was impressed at how relatively easy it is to do, and quick, too!  I know I’ll be making more cards this way; I can think of lots of different scenes, and colours to use 🙂

Since Easter is coming up next weekend, I thought I’d have our next project to relate to that – so we made these adorable bunny boxes!

Aren’t they cute?!  Perfect size to fill with some candies or chocolate!  From l-r: Amanda’s, mine, Susan’s bunnies.  Susan decided that hers looked like “a demented bunny”, so she left the velcro closure off and declared him ‘buck-toothed’!

Of course, every bunny has to have a tail! 🙂  We used the Tombow Multi Liquid Glue to attach cotton balls for tails.  So cute!

So now you know where you can find our little group, on the last Friday of each month….stamping, getting inky, and having fun!  Of course, tea, coffee & cookies always come afterwards.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into our Technique Junquies Club!  I had fun sharing with you.

Until next time – happy stamping!