techniques, techniques and more techniques

(Warning: long wordy post to follow )

Not sure if it was just me but seemed there were *lots* of techniques being taught & demonstrated at CHA this year. Most were distressing techniques, but not all of them. In any case, I was able to experiment and try out new products and learn new ways of doing things. Here's a quick recap:

I did a quick mk-n-tk at the Tattered Angels booth. We used their "Glimmer Mist" sprays with their masks to create our own custom backgrounds. Our demonstrator pointed out that using Glimmer Mist on older papers is a great way to give them new life. As the project progressed, I also found out they can help you tweak the colors of your papers if they're not quite matching the way you'd like. We were also showed how the masks can be used as a pseudo stamp right after they've been used since they're loaded with excess spray -- great idea! Plus there are clear stamps that match up with the masks so that you can stamp onto your spray altered papers once they've dried. One more thing-- besides using a heat gun, using a foam sponge brush to manipulate the spray (depending on the look you're going for) will help remove excess liquids and help speed the drying process.

Marah Johnson was in the Creative Imaginations booth demonstrating alcohol inks with metallic spray paint. I missed the actual demo, but it sounded like a very cool technique so I'm going to try to find a video online.

The next stop on the "technique train" was the Heidi Swapp booth where Heidi was demonstrating her new "invisible" products --papers and such with resist images that are revealed after they are altered with distress ink (or other products?) You can see a video here.

Tim Holtz, the King of distressing techniques (and related products) was spotted in more than one booth either in person or in the form of his ever-present inks, tools, etc. I've been intrigued by his "grunge board" products for awhile, but until now I haven't acquired any because I wasn't quite sure what to do with it (other than the obvious paint, ink, glitter). However, after learning a cool technique at the Idea-ology booth, I can't wait to get my hands on some grunge board. The technique was a sort of built-up layer of steps, with a "removal" step. After mask/paint/stamping/distress inking the grunge board was wiped with a baby wipe to remove some of the ink. It's a wonderful "removing" distress method, that leaves the prior steps of paint and stamping exposed (and the distress ink). The finished product was terrific!

KaiserCraft had a cool little wood board book that was assembled in a clever manner where patterned papers created the "hinges" that held the book togehter. I'm thinking this little trick would be great on chipboard books too and can't wait to find an excuse to use it.

At Maya Road, I got to do a make-n-take with the lovely Lisa Pace. There was more playing with spray products --the Maya Road sprays are very different than Tattered Angels. Depending on how heavily they're sprayed on will result in a rich, deep (matte) finish. We used a light coat on bits of coffee filter to make the sweetest little layered flowers.

The last technique I really enjoyed was hand crafting flowers from paper. We used magazine pages to create our flowers (mums, I think). At any rate they were so cute and I can't wait to give this technique a try with patterned scrapbook paper. Interestingly, this demo was outside the scrapbooking area of the show in the general crafting area. This was a good reminder to not forget the general crafting side. In fact, the very next day we went back and made a cute little heart ornament/pendant only to find out that our demonstrator was the designer of one of the newest Cricut Cartridges!

I love all the fun things waiting to be uncovered and discovered at CHA.

m is for...

Well, M is a lot of things, but in this case M is mostly Michelle. This is a journal I recently altered. I thought it would be fun to put a monogram "M" initial for its owner and then think of other words that the might suit a scrapbooker's journal. (Click on a the photo for a closer view of what words I ended up with).

This technique would be fun on a layout too either framing a photo, or even an embellishment like I've done here with the monogram letter. You could use it on a tag or do a series of deco shapes with various words using the "theme" letter. The possibilities go on and on.