Welcome back to another FF@F'ish. And what a week it's been.
Many of you know that I resigned from
Stampin Up last year. So much has been going on in the Hampson's Hovel that I just could not cope with keeping up with being a demonstrator to the best of my ability. Same thing with my Jamberry Consultancy. I'm not starting up Jamberry again for quite some time but I still love my stash of products so you will no double see many different manicures in amongst my photos on here.
I've had a break but felt the pull to come out of retirement and take up Stampin Up again. So here's my new shop site address! http://wirgie101.stampinup.net/ Got to love my husband too. He said "you know you really miss it, I think you should join again!" So as of today I have!!!
Soooo for my first post as a Demonstrator in 2018 I thought I would share with you one of my favourite things to do. And what's that? Make my own flowers with a popular punch, The Pansy (page 209 of the annual catalogue) and dye them with those rich colours of Brusho Crystal powders (page 26 of the current Occasions catalogue)
All you need is that punch, a spritzer full of water, something to protect your work surface (packing paper and the silicone mat come in very handy) I use a lot of water and heat in this process. Water colour paper, a brad/split pin to hold the layers together, paper piercer to push through all layers at once to put the brad through, Brushos "Gamboge" (it's an orangy yellow) tooth pick and something like long handled tweezers to stop your flower from blowing away when drying with the heat gun. Don't worry if you don't have Brushos yet, you can use your re-inkers on the spritzed mat too.
NOTE: many people say to pierce the lid of the Brushos with a push pin and leave the push pin in so you don't have to take the lid off the Brushos. I have not done this. I've worked with highly pigmented powders for quite some time so I am very careful taking the lids off. I have tooth picks stored in my box of brushos with washi tape in roughly the same colour wrapped around their ends, one for each colour. I use the tooth picks to pick up the powders and tap it onto my work. Works for me.
Punch out your flowers, I ended up only using 4 or these as the paper gets rather 'thick' when you saturated them each with loads of water (spritz both sides) then squish them up as per the above photo. Layer them together and push onto a paper piercer then put the brad through. Doing this flattens the layers out a bit so spritz a bit more (depending how fast they start drying out) and squish them again.
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I then got my silicone mat, spritzed water on it and with a tooth pick I dropped on Brusho Gamboge powder and mixed it though the water. I smooched my flower through the mix. I kept adding more Brusho and water as needed til I got my flower the colour I wanted.
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I cleaned off the mat & took to the dyed flower with my heat gun. Now this isn't a precise art. It takes time to get the flower to dry and you will need to move it around/over/flip it. As it dries out you will see that it also 'fluffs' up the petals, this is an affect I want, it gives the flower that added extra thickness, love water colour paper for doing this, it's very sturdy paper. Long handled tweezers are good tool to have to help with this step.
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You can see the size of the finished flower in the right hand photo. I love those paper tape measures you can get for free from Ikea, very handy for photographing LOL.
What did I created with my finished flower? I've added some punched out leaves with a leaf punch (#144667) some of my #LoveItChopIt double side patterned paper pieces, a hand dyed luggage tag that I've alsohand drawn some hearts on with Multi Purpose liquid glue. I let that glue semi dry then pressed on some gold foiling I had in my stash. My sentiment stamped on water colour paper in Early Express, my hand dyed in Old Olive seam binding, touch of gold paint pen around the edges, a little bumble bee stamped, coloured and cut out, leaves touched up with clear Wink of Stella and tadaah! Shows off the flower beautifully.
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I hope you liked seeing how I create my flowers. Honestly they really are so easy once you have the 'knowledge' and get the knack of it. You have to play and experiment and this is what I've done over many years of paper crafting!
Here's a photo of some I made back in 2012, aren't they gorgeous!
Til next time,
Happy stamping, colouring and creating!
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