Thursday should be tips and techniques

I have been holding these back until today until they were officially launched by Paul Church on Hochanda today.  I really love this new plate from Linda Williams for Clarity Stamp (https://claritystamp.com/collections/as-seen-on-tv/products/lindas-heart-sampler-br-a4-square-groovi-plate?variant=29312116457520)

Having watched the shows so far today, the design team have done a fabulous job and produced so many different ways of using this lovely plate.  I chose to work on small cards (cheaper through the post) and had real fun with them.  With this first one, I took a part of one heart and extended to create a slightly larger border with the criss cross design.  I was aiming at something to suggest tartan and coloured the border before perforating and snipping in between.  I backed it with one of the Clarity designer papers.  It took a while to find the right backing for all of these.  

When you have spent a long time and a lot of care working on a piece of parchment, never rush to stick it down.  So many pieces have been ruined by using the wrong backing paper.  If you use a very light colour behind the parchment, you risk totally losing all your embossing work as it disappears into your backing.  Spend time placing your piece on top of different types of background  Many experts suggest that you should choose your backing before colouring your work, but that does not work for me.  My brain is not that organised and my pieces of work tend to develop as I go and finish up miles away from the original idea..  That is just the way I work.

I love the design in the centre of this heart and it reminds me of quilting   I kept totally to the whitework as I did not think it needed any extra colour, particularly with the narrow frill round the outside.  I really love the frill design.  Remember that there are two parts to embossing a frill.  You need to decide which part is sticking up and which is going to the back.  The bits that go to the back should be embossed from the front, but only very lightly and with a thin piece of cellophane between the ball tool and the parchment.  That  prevents the parchment getting shiny on the front which can look ugly.  The bits that are coming to the front are embossed, as normal from the back.  Make sure you work right from the outer edge inwards.  There should be no gap between the outer edge and your embossing, but fade it slightly as you go towards the inner edge.

I like this next one a lot as it gives me the impression of more depth.  I coloured, perforated and picot cut the small heart before backing it onto the designer paper.  Most of my perforating and snipping is done using the fine grid and tools.  As a personal choice, I do not like the bold grid and tools, and with something this small, I feel that the bold grid is too big and would overpower such a small piece.  With a really good light such as my head torch, which I can focus exactly to where I need the illumination, I have no problem seeing what I am doing, despite developing cataracts.  While I am talking about light, strong sunlight is not a good situation and I really struggle to see anything clearly enough to snip or perforate in the sun.

This blue card is a marriage between the corners from one of Linda's hearts and one of Josie Davidson's plates.  It is backed on Shenandoah paper in blue, but I used two different shades of blue pencils to add extra colour,  You really need a needle point pencil to do this successfully, and keep your sharpener ready to resharpen those pencil points, especially if you are colouring on the front as I did here.

These next two were kept simple with just basic whitework.  I did not think they needed any further embellishment so they are ideal for anyone just starting out on their parchment journey.  The only thing that is slightly more advanced is how I did the borders.  I chose a couple of multi needle tools to edge them.  I cannot remember which tool this was, I just grabbed three different ones to play with.

I further decorated the border with a sun tool and a tiny dot in the centre.  I really like the effect you can get with this arrangement with very little effort.

 

On this one, I edged it with the small semi circle tool and put a dot in the centre of each semi circle to finish it off.

Then we come to my favourite of the ones I have done so far.

Again, I have done a lot of perforating and picot cutting, and the border is my favourite multi needle tool, the semi square.

Hope you like what I have shown you today, and get your multi needle tools out and play with them   they really lift your work and are not hard when you get the hang of them.  Don't be afraid to just play and experiment.  Have fun.

Friday/Saturday - Finishing off and something new

Some of you may have seen my post of Groovi Worldwide last week, when I showed my mishaps with one piece of parchment.  It all started when I went over to Hazel Edwards' class at her home last Saturday.  She had done some lovely samples to give us ideas, using the Silent Night plate as a base.  I was there all day so had plenty of time to play.

The first card went fine, although, in retrospect, I should have strengthened the colour.  It is a little on the pales side, but I can adjust that by adding some colour on the front of the church.

Then after lunch, I started on my second card and it all went to pieces.  Too much chat and not enough concentration, which led to elementary mistakes.

I embossed the border, then decided to do the perforation of the grid.  Mistake One - I forgot to turn it over so that meant that the embossed border ended up as de-bossed.  OK, I can accept that, not too much of a disaster until I started on the centre panel.  Mistake Two - The words were now backwards.  Right, stop, and have engage brain, if I can find it!

I was detemined not to throw anything away and to use every bit.  So I picot cut the centre panel out and then tidied up the inside of the frame.  

Then I created a new border for the panel.  It has not shown up too well on this photo.  I put a coloured piece behind the centre panel but that just has not been picked up on this scan..  a

Anyway, that is the centre panel saved with a new border.  That left the original border to be used on this next card.  I used a piece of Shenandoah in green at the back of the whole thing.  I had already embossed the border plate onto the green parchment, which threw up the border lines more strongly.

 I had intended to use my rubber to remove colour from the green behind the church and the trees, but, in the end, I decided I did not need to do that.  With the green on the trees, i was really just strengthening the existing colour.  and the brownish hue of the building seemed to come through quite well.  The ground in the front is just embossed with tiny dots from the fine grid.  Then the whole thing was mounted on an a piece of Shenandoah paper.  I chose to use the bright side as it seemed to throw up varied lights in the sky.  All my colouring on this was done from the back with extra in some places on the front.

Then I decided I was in the mood to play a bit more, so I did another, using two different pieces of parchment.   Again, I embossed the border on both pieces of parchment.  This time the border gridwork and the church were on the normal white parchment, with the background picot cut out.  By laying it over the blue Shenandoah parchment, I was able to place the moon and the stars just where I wanted them.  Fortunately, the white embossing on the top of he church was strong enough to be able to place very tiny dots of Perga Glue to stop it moving and curling.

A big thank you must go to Hazel for running such a lovely class, and for a very tasty lunch, not forgetting all the coffees made by Steve to keep us going.