Cricketleg Creative

“Fun with Dies” Challenge

Challenge Cards, Handcrafted Cards

Hey, this “Fun with Dies” Challenge is the part 2 from the “Alcohol Inks” Challenge, basically. Two birds, one stone.

We last left our heroine (me) with lightheadedness and some kind of ugly first tries at alcohol inks. But now you get….the rest of the story!

If you read that last post, you’ll know that I decided to die cut my rather unsightly first alcohol ink attempts hoping that this would make them usable.

And it did!

fun with dies challenge

I much prefer the look of the one color plus gold mixative, but the others aren’t too bad. Artsy fartsy and all that. So after die cutting them, I chose background papers and built then cards based on the mood and colors in the die cuts.

Here are my double-duty entries into both the “Alcohol Inks” Challenge and the “Fun with Dies” Challenge. And since ’tis the season, I made them all Christmas themed.

Merry & Bright Wreath

This is my least favorite of the five. I love the die itself, but it’s larger than a standard A2 size so I don’t use it very often. I allowed it to be trimmed short on one side and just positioned it flush with the card top fold as if I had always intended it to be that way.

Hey, work with what you got!

The colors on this one ran together so much that it made for a rather busy color combo so I kept the background papers simple and solid. I did, however, use trim the red cardstock with some scraps from the experiment. I also used those scraps to back the sentiment.

merry and bright wreath

The Ornament

Using a die from a recent Hero Arts kit, I made one of the alcohol inked cards into an ornament shape. This was pretty busy too, but looked kind of high end and glam so I paired it with a gold and white patterned paper and a simple gold trimmed sentiment.

ornament card

Merry Christmas Wreath

This wreath die cut, unlike its cousin in the first example, actually does fit the A2 card size! Huzzah! I thought this one looked nice on some cardstock from a recent Simon Says Stamp kit that I then trimmed with gold metallic tape.

merry christmas wreath

Joy

This card turned out just lovely. I used one simple leaf die to cut the cardstock at random places that had a lot of color variation in the teal ink. I arranged them into a wreath shape onto gold metallic cardstock.

Using an alphabet die set, I cut out the letters for the word “joy” from the leftover scraps. The overall effect is so much prettier and more elegant in person. Hard to photograph the metallic papers for me.

joy wreath

Peace

My favorite one. It’s not what I would normally design. But the overall look of this card….yeah, I just really love it.

I paired this orange-red and metallic gold alcohol ink experiment with some patterned paper from a Simon Says Stamp card kit. Die cuts were used to create the branches and the word “peace.” And I used some gold scrap from the Joy card to trim the edge by the word “peace.”

And that’s it, y’all. I flirted with death (why am I so dramatic about the fumes?), lived to stamp another day, and now have five entries into both the “Alcohol Inks” and “Fun with Dies” challenges.

Now, I’m off to write my memoirs about my near-death experience. Pretty sure I’ll be on a TED talk soon, so be on the lookout for that.

Y’all take care!

“Alcohol Inks” Challenge

Challenge Cards, Handcrafted Cards

Simon Says Stamp challenge for this past Monday is for using Alcohol Inks! (And this will be kind of a part one, so stay tuned for next Tuesday’s post to see how it ended!)

Each Monday and Wednesday I look forward to the announcements for new themes. I’ve really come to appreciate the creative challenge it offers me.

However, this past Monday I was disappointed. Alcohol inks? Yes, they are cool. Yes, I want to try them. No, I did not have any.

So I decided I wouldn’t participate. It’s fine. I can try alcohol inks another time I guess.

Psych!

Well, I really did think that but when I was buying paper supplies for a church youth activity, I spied this little alcohol inks starter kit from Ranger at my Hobby Lobby.

alcohol inks

Hmmm. With the 40% off coupon I figured it was worth a shot. It comes with all that you see in the picture (regular price was $24.99). All I really needed were some colors, the blending solution, and appropriate paper. So the rest was bonus. This would give me a chance to play! Maybe I could enter the challenge after all!

A Word of Warning

Um, they don’t say to work in a “well ventilated area” for nothing, folks. I made myself sick.

The kit comes with 5 notecards to use. So I figured I’d quickly play with the five notecards and I was in my craft studio which I thought was a fine place to work.

Nope.

After three cards (and mind you, I worked quickly) I was feeling dizzy and, um, just weird. I stepped outside for a few minutes and breathed some cool autumn air. Then stepped back inside to quickly finish the other two cards. (Note to self: in absence of blower thingy, don’t use a drinking straw and then huff and puff your way through faking having a blower thingy.)

Then I spent three hours resting in bed till I felt normal again.

Yep. Be careful. Next time I will likely work outside. I don’t know if I’m super sensitive or what but I do NOT want to feel like that again!

I do, however, want to keep practicing with alcohol inks!

How It Went Otherwise

The basic technique is very fun. Lay down some blending solution, some ink, more solution, move it around, play, add the mixative, play some more. Not super complicated.

I can’t say that I loved my results. I don’t have one of those little blowers that effortlessly moves the color around so my end products are less “ethereal” than I would have liked. But hey, it’s my first time.

Three of the cards have all three colors plus the mixative (the metallic gold). Two cards have just one color plus mixative. Meh.

The cards, I thought, were a loss. A worthy experiment, yes. But for a card? Ick.

Then I thought that maybe I could just die cut some shapes out of them. Maybe they’d be prettier then?

alcohol inks challenge

Lo and behold, the next challenge was announced and it was “Fun with Die Cuts.” Well, there you go. That’s my answer.

So for the first time since starting the Simon Says Stamp challenges (see my very first “batch” entry here), I decided that I would enter the same 5 cards for both the Alcohol Inks Challenge and the Fun with Dies Challenge.

What did they look like? You’ll have to wait for my next post on Tuesday of next week!