The care, feeding and organization of distress inks

My major creative project this week was caring for my distress ink pads. I have worked for years to collect many of the distress ink pads and the reinkers. I consider them my "go to" inks. During the holidays I realized many of my pads were very dry. Finally I decided it was their time for considerable attention. So I treated them to their day at my craft room spa LOL!

Care and feeding- I cleaned every pad removing any glitter and frayed threads then reinked each one.

Organization- I generally work with my ink pads in tall stacks. Unfortunately the manufactures labels are not the actual color of the inks. Some time ago I began labelling the bottom edge of my ink pads with strips of paper colored with a blender tool and stamp as well after seeing the idea at the 2 Peas stamping forum.

Making color chart- I also sponged a piece of a label for each color and put it on a color chart that I download from the Ranger website.

Organization- After I was done I realized that it would be helpful to numbered the inkpads so I could quickly keep them in color order and insure I had not misplaced one during my work. Similiarly I numbered all the reinkers. Items that are missing numbers in the photo are still on my shopping list.

I plan to also label my distress stains and markers. When my project was completed I copied the color chart to track future purchases.

Thanks for stopping in! Have some fun creative time today! ...Jan

Six Crayons and a Candle for your 70th year!

This week I created a special birthday card to honor and celebrate a special stamping friend’s 70^th birthday.

 

As I thought about appropriate images for the card this week’s challenge topic at Simon Says Stamp & Share , “embrace the old” replayed in my mind. Finally I grabbed a new stamp-a box of 8 Crayola Crayons from Stamper’s Best and decided I wanted to embrace the old with the new.  Wow what great memories flood me, of the smell of new crayons and all perfectly sharpened…at least until they got into my hands LOL!

So I started by creating a multi-media background, one of the current new twists. For the background’s bands of crayon colors I used Ranger’s distress stains and the vibrant colors at the bottom of the background are Ranger’s Dylusions sprays.  Stencils are making a comeback.  I enjoyed them in my childhood and smiled with the memories as I grabbed a new stencil and added dots to the card’s base.

Glossy and sparkling accents are newer products. But I learned to manipulate paper at an early age to make flowers look more realistic. So I bent the candle and rounded it to give a realistic dimension and placed it on thin pop dots.  The final touch was the decision to stamp seven stars across the sky’s rainbow in crayon colors to honor my friend’s years of creativity and celebrate this special year!

Beginning 2013

Winter Wonderland

Yes, I think I live on the road where the Christmas card  photos are taken of snow covered trees. It truly is awesome to walk below these towering beauties!  Of course that is unless the trees are throwing off those huge blankets of snow J

Preparing for a new year of creativity

·      Yea, I now have a new camera…but I need to read the manual and learn all the new features.

·      I continue to work on organizing of my art supplies continues.  My next task is to focus on organizing my wide variety of inks and coloring products. This includes a serious reinking of each distress ink pad.

·      Daily during January I am taking an online FREE Jump Start series of mini-videos featuring techniques to inspire creativity. http://nathaliesstudio.com/2012/12/2...umpstart-2013/   In the 1^st day’s video Nathalie shared how to emboss tape and today was about using stencils.  

 

Current projects:

      There is a fabulous group of ladies in Maryland who this year are making 350 fleece blankets for wounded soldiers returning to the United States. For the past four years I have stamped a stack of single sided cards for the ladies to write personal message to the soldiers.  The boot stamp is from Stamper's Best.

 

 

 

Winter's Frosted Window

 

I just finished this snowflake tag for 2 Pea’s January tag swap. The tag base is stamped with a music background and inked with several shades of blue.  I created a clear acetate tag overlay to  create a feeling of a window. Stazon was used to stamp on the acetate and pearlized acrylic paint covers the edges for a feeling of frost with sparkling stickles. The acetate is raised with 1/8" foam to add more depth to the tag.

After watching today’s Jump Start video I am jazzed to try out my new Dylusions sprays and stencils. I will share my experimental results soon!  How about you?  Are you starting 2013 with some new creative projects...please share what projects you are excited about!

Thanks for stopping in!....Jan