okay, here’s the last of them – for awhile at least!
i wanted to see if SMOOCH would work on acrylic, and it does – you just have to either be patient – or impatient! LOL! sound contradictory? it is a bit. if you are patient, you can paint SMOOCH on acrylic or glass and just set it aside to dry – for up to 2 days – depending on how thick you laid it on! if you are like me and are impatient, then you can take your chances with a heat gun. a heat gun definitely speeds up the process, but you have to be careful not to MELT your project! the main thing is to keep the gun at least 6 inches away from your acrylic, keep the gun moving, and use a heat and cool method. you can’t keep the heat gun on the piece constantly or it will melt. so you need to heat a little, then cool, then heat and cool, until the ink is dry or almost dry. you can tell you are getting somewhere when the ink starts to take on a matte appearance rather than a glossy one.
i wanted to try altering one of the ghost birds from heidi swapp. awhile back, i had tried embossing on ghost shapes, and it worked, but again, i had to be careful NOT to melt the little birdies, and had used the heat and cool method successfully to emboss patterns on them. so i started with that, i didn’t just want to try coloring the birds, i wanted to create a pattern to color first.
so… here’s what i did:
1) i first used an anti-static bag on the side of the acrylic i wanted to emboss (i embossed on the front, and inked on the back)
2) then i stamped my design – in this case a swirl pattern – using TOP BOSS tinted embossing stamp pad.
3) then i embossed it using TOP BOSS black embossing powder. be careful to follow the above mentioned heat gun “rules”. emboss one small section at a time, and don’t overheat or the acrylic will melt or your embossed design will melt and run!
4) when the piece had cooled, i flipped it over and filled in the designs on the back with SMOOCH. and of course, since i am IMPATIENT, i used a heat gun to speed up the drying process.
5) when cool, i adhered the pieces to my card. i used BEACON 3-in-1 dabbed in a few spots to adhere the blue birds, and 3D dots to adhere the yellow bird. these 2 adhesive types did not show through, you may have to experiment if you use different adhesives.
6) my letters started out white, i inked them red using COLORBOX warm red chalk ink, the applied the polka dots using a black Slick Writer.
7) the “yourself” comes from a MY SENTIMENTS EXACTLY set, and i stamped it using COLORBOX blackbird chalk ink.
7 1/2) i used tiny pearls from kaiser for the eyes. {8) always puts a smiley face on my instructions, so from now on, i think i’ll use 7 1/2!}
[rockyou id=136567000&w=426&h=320]
and i also promised a snippet of a peak of another project, i can’t show the whole thing though – at least not yet! it did involve inking on acrylic and yes, the acrylic is from PRIMA…
thanks to everyone who stopped in to take a look at these projects!
tami sanders * paper crafter 