It’s Been a While: Pinta Perla and Felt Tips
Wow! Try to build up a new business, and lose sight of time. Gosh, It’s been ages since I’ve posted, or worked on parchment! But, never fear, I changed that today!
Today, after months of setting my desire to parch aside, I said “no more” I am spending the day with my grids, patterns and tools. But, what to do??? Since I had been doing quite a lot with the brush late last year, I wanted to pick that up again. Holy cow, but I’m out of practice. So I finally decided to start back up with a pattern using the Pinta Perla and Felt Tips technique.
Start by tracing the pattern with black ink and your mapping pen. Before you put away that black ink, lets start adding some shadows. Thin lines, please! Having not done this in ages, I went a little crazy in a couple of spots, but all in all, not too bad for not having parched in about 5 months.
Once you are done with your shadowing, it’s time to get out your pinta perla white, a tile or pallet, water and your No 2 brush. Just a drop of pinta perla mixed with a drop of water, and we’re ready to make our lines. In this pattern, I applied the pinta perla from the outside edges towards the center on the flower petals, following the shape of each petal, and using the very tip of the brush. 
It’s a little hard to tell here, what with the embossing done, but I think you get the idea. I added a few lines for the center as well, embossing along and over my perla lines to bring them out.
Once this is dry, it’s time to pull out the felt tips. Choose your colors and starting with your petal color, rub a little on your tile, and water it down. You want a very light , barely visible wash over each petal, using the round and round method. Once you have your first layer and it is DRY, you will start adding layers — your felt tip/water mixture becoming more felt tip and less water for each layer, applying the darker color in the more shadowed areas. Do the same for the leaves, and the center of the flower, with appropriate/chosen colors. Make sure you allow the parchment to dry thoroughly between each layer!
Now that your coloring is done, it’s time to turn this all over and start your embossing.
To finish this off, I chose to use a border pattern from one of Pergamano’s multi-grids.
It was fabulous being able to spend the time working on parchment again, I sure have missed it! And I think I did pretty well, for having been away so long. Hopefully, I can get a better handle on my time and make sure I set aside some time to work on my parchment, and thus this blog, on a more regular basis again.
I hope everyone is doing well, and I wish you a lot of success with this technique. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!
Cards: Baby Card
Hi all and welcome back!
Today I am going to show you the baby card I made that has been sent along with the baby booties I made not too long ago. This is a Linda Williams pattern that was in the October 2010 issue of Parchment Craft magazine.
As I have a habit of doing I did make a few changes, but the original pattern is pretty much as it was designed. My one major change was writing the saying on the front in blue ink instead of using a scriber to emboss the words.
In the magazine, Linda provides a second pattern for a baby girl, should you need a girls card. Which is wonderful, as I said in a previous post, 2011 looks like it’s turning out to be the year of the baby!
What was nice about this card, is that it is a very distinctive card, yet quite easy to accomplish. A little dorsing, embossing, perforating and cutting, and you have a gorgeous card that the parent’s will treasure!
An Apology
It wasn’t my intention not to pay attention to the blog for so long, but a number of life issues that had to be taken care of arose. Of course, Murphy’s Law made it so everything happened all at once! Isn’t that always the way!
As my schedule is still extremely crazy, it looks like it will be a few more weeks before I can get back into a regular routine. I hope you will all understand. The featured photo (not very clear) was a baby card I made for my daughter-in-law last month. It is a Miki Green pattern, and uses the hockey stick for embossing.
In the meantime, I hope you are all busy parching away. What sort of projects are you all working on?
Cards: Circle of Life
Hi all! While I have been doing some other projects, which I hope to be able to show you soon, I had to take a break and make a sympathy card for a friends whose father passed on. Last year her mother passed, and I had created the cala lily card.
This time I followed my former teacher’s idea and created a circle of life card. The circle represents birth – life – death, and the butterfly represents rebirth.
Materials used:
- rainbow parchment paper
- parchment paper
- Pergamano grid #13
- felt tips
- polychromos pencils
- Black Micron pen (.005)
- your choice of butterfly pattern (zillions can be found on the web or from other patterns)
- embossing tools
- 1-needle and 2-needle tools
- small flower stamen
- black ink
- glue
- your choice of card stock
Working with the rainbow parchment choose one or two circles on the Pergamano grid, emboss with the micro ball tool. Cut out and set aside.
With your regular parchment paper over your chosen butterfly pattern, trace with the Micron black pen (.005). Turn over and fill in the wings and body from the back with felt tip pens. On the front add shading to the wings and body with your pencils. Turn over again, and emboss. Perforate around with your 2-needle tool and cut out.
Fold the stamen in half and dip into your black ink. Set on a piece of wax paper to dry. I dipped twice, just to make sure the black ink covered the stamen well.
Dab a dot of glue behind the body of the butterfly, and place the folded stamen in-between the body and the rainbow paper. Let dry. You have a choice of using a few dabs of glue to hold the rest of the circle to your card stock or you can use the mini-brads as I have.
Voila! You have created your own Circle of Life card! It is also a very quick and easy card for those sudden occasions.
Hope you are all having a great day!
Challenge
Hi all! I’m back once again, this time I have a challenge for you! First, you may notice that I’ve done a little redesign to the blog. I hope you all like it, and find it is still pretty easy to get around these posts. The header is from the daffodil card I made last year, the photo seems to have gotten lost when I made the changes. Sigh.
For the past few weeks I have been practicing with the hockey stick. You know that funny looking tool that many of us bought because it looked so cool but had no idea how to use it! At the time I bought my hockey stick, all of my boys were playing ice hockey and being the ultimate hockey mom, I could not pass up any thing with the word hockey in it. I have read several tutorials on using the hockey stick, one most recently by Josie Davidson in the December issue of Parchment Craft magazine.
Well, one thing lead to another and in my attempts to get control of using the hockey stick, I found this rooster (at least I think it’s a rooster) in a book I had, that was part of a larger pattern.
This is a jpeg image, and I have left it alone so that you can play with the size (right click on the image and select “save as” before you play with the size and print it out).
Here is a completed rooster, embossing done completely with the hockey stick. It’s a horrible rainy day, and this is the clearest picture I could get. I chose to cut out the rooster after embossing it.
So, how do we work with the hockey stick?
The simple answer is to hold the tool like you would a hold any of your ball tools. When embossing a large (largish) area, such as a petal, or in the case of our rooster, the feathers, the curved part is flat on the parchment paper. Begin stroking as you would with your ball tool. The biggest difference between using the hockey stick and a ball tool is that on the first few strokes, you will barely see any changes to the paper. But, keep at it, and you will notice the paper starting to stretch and change to white.
You can also use the hockey stick for fine lines — turn it around so that the tip of the hockey stick is touching the parchment paper and make your lines.
Now that I have given you a brief overview of working with the hockey stick, lets see what you can do with it! Once you have finished your hockey stick project, don’t forget to send it to me so that I can put it up in the Readers Gallery. Good Luck!
Update: We have our first completed Bird Challenge, submitted by Barbara Hilary-Taylor.
