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.
Designer of the Month: Welcome, Tina Cox
Welcome back to Designer of the Month. This month, I am very pleased to interview Tina Cox. Tina has been designing for a number of years. She brings to her patterns some truly innovative ideas, as you can see by the featured photo (pattern found in the February 2007 issue of Parchment Craft magazine). So, without further adieu, lets give a big welcome to Tina.
CEP: Tina, welcome to DotM, I am happy you have agreed to answer some questions for us. I like to start out asking a pretty simple question, how did you get started in Parchment Craft? Was there anything specific that drew you to this art?
Tina Cox: Hi all. I started parchment craft in 1995 … I did not do any hobbies before I started parchment craft but one day I happened to pop into an art shop I was walking past, “just to have a look!” I saw a beautiful card done in just white work which left me mesmerised and I wanted to learn how to make that. At the time there were not many tools or patterns available so I only bought, well, everything!!! “Just to have a look!” can get very expensive I realised there on because I would pop into other art and craft shops to only see (of course) if they had anything else I could use to learn the craft. For a year and a half, I tried to learn as much as I could on my own, then finally found a tutor near me and passed my Pergamano tutors course in 1997.
CEP: Was there any specific inspiration for you to start designing your own patterns?
No there was nothing specific I can point at but I realised very early on I was not good at reading instructions and wanted to do things my way from the patterns that were available, either change the colour or change the border or make the project in white work rather than colour … and of course, when mistakes were made, the pattern needed drastic alterations to hide the holes or blob of colours!
CEP: Many of your patterns seem to have a mix of traditional and modern elements in them. How do you get the ideas to mix the two?
Tina: I started with the traditional techniques in parchment craft but a few years down the road card making was becoming very popular and I loved the paper punches, rubber stamps, embellishments that were in the market. I wanted to decorate all my parchment projects using the other tools available in the card making world. I bought every butterfly and flower punch that was available at the time!!! When I design, most of my patterns consist of the basic techniques in parchment craft but jazzed up for completion with embellishments such as ribbons, gems and lots and lots of glitter powder.
CEP: It would be lovely if you could explain a little about your design process. Do you start with the border and add to that, or what?
Tina: I normally start with what my main object will be. So, for example, if I am doing a pattern pack with a butterfly theme, I will design my butterfly first than frame a border around it and the main card. At the back of my mind while I am designing the butterfly, my brain is constantly thinking of ideas of how I will put it all together, for example do I want just one butterfly or maybe 3? Do I want to paint the butterflies or do them using various white work techniques. What sort of mounting and laying methods shall I use today? Does this card really need a ribbon? How many gems can I add to this project? But my last thought churning in my head is always, It needs glitter.
CEP: What has given you the most pleasure in parchment crafting?
Tina: All the friends I have made through this craft and the finished project. There is a great satisfaction in seeing any of the creations from the beginning to the end. It never amazes me what can be achieved from a piece of paper that most people see as just tracing paper. When I show a finished project to my friends and family and see their smiles when they get one of my cards or gifts made from parchment paper, it is a treasured gift for me. It makes me want to continue and do better. Through parchment craft I have met some of the most amazing people.
CEP: Finally, I will close with one last question. If you could give one piece of advice to my readers about parchment crafting, what would that be?
Tina: Please, please, please don’t give up. Parchment craft gets better and better through practice. Today what you think you will never be able to do, 2 years into the future, with practice, you will do without thinking and create some of the most beautiful projects you will treasure, look at and say “I did it.”
Thank you so much, Tina! For those of you that may not know, Tina has been really busy creating new pattern packs, which you can find here, so I really appreciate her taking the time to answer these questions. Do keep an eye on on that space for new work!
Projects: Baby Booties
Last year was the “year of the wedding,” so this year must be the “year of the baby.” So far, I have two baby projects to make (and cards), this is the first.
Today’s project is a pair of baby booties, done in parchment, for my niece who is due in April. If your friends generally come here from Facebook, I must apologize. I have not posted this project on my Facebook page and probably won’t until the baby arrives.
She knows that she will be having a baby boy, and the nursery is being decorated in various shades of blues. So, I dorso’d a half sheet of parchment with a lovely shade of blue.
The pattern itself is from one of the older Japanese books that I have. It was also one of the less feminine bootie patterns that I have on hand. This particular pattern uses a minimal number of tools, for those of you that are just do not have all the tools on hand — your embossing tools, a 4-needle tool, and a 2-needle tool. I also used the large and small sun tools, but if you don’t have those, you could use your small embossing tool.
I did have a bit of a time putting these things together, partly because they are quite tiny, and my 36fingers are a bit big and don’t move so well. But, I did finally get them together.
One of the neatest ways to show off your little booties is in an acrylic ball. I found one at my local JoAnn’s for 99¢! This is how Nelly shows off her little booties, and it really is a wonderful way to help keep this keepsake safe.
Now I have one other baby item to make for my daughter-in-law, who is due about a week before my niece. The next project will be pink as I will have a granddaughter! Until next time!
