I now know everything I have done incorrectly with embossing powders in the past.  Maybe not everything, I’m sure I can make a ton more mistakes before I’ve mastered it.  I’m now committed to making all kinds of things with embossing powder just to prove I can.  I’ll probably even burn myself in the process since I haven’t done that yet.  I have a plan though, and if it works, it will be in a video.  If it doesn’t, you’ll never hear about it again.  I’m thinking I need to come up with a secondary plan that involves the Vagabond (which I haven’t mastered), embossing folders (which I haven’t mastered) and embossing powders (you know the rest.)  I may even throw in a couple other things that I haven’t mastered just to be on the safe side.  What else could there be?  Trust me, if there is a crafting technique, I probably haven’t mastered it.

I do have a plan though and that should count for something.

I can’t believe it is March already.  The winter has really flown by.  I dread winter and as I age, I dread it more with each passing year.  It’s not the snow necessarily, it’s the way the world has no color.  It is grey (or is it gray) here from mid October until the middle to the end of April.  Honestly, it is a very drab world.  By the way, I did the research on gray vs. grey and here’s what it says.

Gray and grey are different spellings of the same word, and both are used throughout the English-speaking world. But gray is more common in American English …

And now I know.  So I have roughly 45 days until there is any sign of color.  I’m hoping our groundhog had a clue and it is less than 45 days. I swear this is the first time I can remember that the groundhog said we would have an early spring and I’m pretty sure the committee of “groundhog whisperers” got together before the big day and said something like, “Well we’ve had a really easy winter and our temperatures have been high so maybe we decide this will be an early spring.  All in favor?”  If you remember Fred Flintstone and the fraternal order he belonged to.  So I picture this group having groundhog-like fur coats  and making groundhog-like noises to agree to the motion.  This is the moment when you realize that I have way to much time on my hands.  Way too much.

 

I must be a little bit dumb.  I can never get embossing powders to work the way they are supposed to.  I have heard that I put the embossing buddy powder on after I stamped the image, but this isn’t  the first time I’ve had trouble with embossing powder and I only used the buddy when I did, so people wouldn’t ask me why I didn’t.  I normally forget to use it entirely and still can’t get my embossing powder to stick.  I’ve used new embossing ink and still bad embossed images.  If you saw the video of the steampunk journal, you saw the embossing powder didn’t do well on that either.  I had two different occasions where the embossed image was not very good.  It involved two different powders as well.  I was crafting in my basement for almost a year and although I run a dehumidifier, I wonder if somehow it made my embossing powders go bad.  I’m confused when everyone on the internet are able to emboss with no difficulty, and mine almost never look good.  What to do?  It’s a dilemma.

I made the card that looks like it has water in it.  I’m really happy with the results.  I never know if I’m going to end up with a horrible mess when I venture outside the normal stamp and ink process.  I kept my mess to a minimum and it looked pretty impressive when I was finished.  The only reason I’m so proud is because I made one of these for my nephew last year and I filled it with way too much gel.  I’m surprised it made it through the USPS without any mishaps.  It’s a fun technique and one I mentioned when I was taping the video on my crafting journals.  I had intended to do a video using this technique, but wasn’t sure when.  I got a request from a viewer, so I made the card.

I’m still wondering what went wrong with the embossing I did on the Just for You card.  I don’t understand why it works when I use the embossing marker, but doesn’t when I use the embossing stamp pad.  (It was a new pad by the way.)  I’m sure someone knows what went wrong, but I’m still in a quandary about it.  Maybe it’s me.  I’m cursed.  It’s possible.  Especially since I lost one of my Misti magnets.  Those things should never come off of the Misti because they are so powerful.  Where it went continues to be a mystery to me.  Maybe the reason it disappeared is because I just ordered five more Misti magnets.  You never know..Or maybe I’m cursed, we’ll wait and see.

So after two days of trying to make a card with the caulk embellishments, I finally came up with a card that was video worthy.  I had one video that I used the ferns on, it was not attractive and Rich agreed, so I scrapped it.  I made another card that also went into the trash so this was three strikes and you are out.  I actually am pretty impressed with it.  It was the first time I had tried four step stamping and I was a little hesitant.  Especially as there are no instructions included in the packaging about do you start with light inks and go darker or dark to light.  With some serious mistakes, I decided it is light to dark.  The stamp set I had was great though and I really liked the rose.  I have the matching die set so will definitely be using these again.

I spent most of the day in Pittsburgh and bought a ton of things at a huge Dollar Tree and then found a Michaels that was selling off most of their Martha Stewart paper products including her large score board and a ton of her punches.  I found a punch that I had to have and even though I’m not crazy about her punches, this one works really well (hard to believe).  It is a row of cherry blossoms and leaves and cuts like a ribbon.  I know I didn’t need another punch, but this one really spoke to me.  I got it home and immediately tried it and it is the best Martha Stewart punch I’ve ever used,t and it was $6.99.  For an edge punch, it was a great bargain.  All in all, it was a great day.

The Oscars are on television right now and although I love the red carpet, the rest of the show runs way too long and I’m too impatient.  I worked on a card when I could be watching Oscar. Darn.

I used the texture paste stencil project I did with latex caulk and it came out really well.  I really struggled with how I was going to use it but in the end, I think the card came out fine.  It’s not my best work, but it’s not my worst either.  I’m trying to come up with an idea of what to do with the caulk doilies and ribbon, but that’s a thought process for tomorrow.  For today, my video is in the bag and I’m ready to go to bed.

In retrospect, maybe I should have used less paint when coloring the caulk to fill the molds. Or maybe it was a case of impatience killing the project.  Regardless, the caulk did work well when using re inker and with no coloring, but the molds that had caulk with paint mixed .in, weren’t really a winner. I had a really difficult time getting it out of the molds and tore the caulking to the point they were unusable. It did still feel tacky when I was removing it, so if I had maybe waited another twelve hours, they might have been savable.  The caulk does make really interesting lacework when used in the molds and I will continue to practice until I have a system that definitely works.  A weird side note.  I must be really truly and completely out of shape because my arms are killing me from scraping and scraping and scraping to ensure all of the holes are filled and there is no excess on top of the molds.  Isn’t that kind of pathetic? I need to start lifting weights and by weights, I mean the puppy.  I’m not giving in on this project as I see real potential for it.  It does really look great when used on a stencil.  I know the paint works for this.  it does make the stencil really hard to clean, but it’s a small price to pay when you get such great texture.  Back to the craft room for another round of how many coloring agents will I need to try before I get the right mix?

I was inspired to try a new project today so I went crazy with latex caulk and some cake decorating molds to make lace looking embellishments.  They aren’t dry yet, but it was extremely messy and much more labor intensive than normal texture paste.  I had more caulk on me and my trowel than I had on the project.  I’m not really sure if the consistency I had was correct.  From the information I have gathered, you can color the caulk with acrylic paints or re-inkers, just about anything.  I chose to try both paint and re-inker on separate pieces. The paint required more product than the re-inker to change the color of the caulk, so it made it runnier.  I’m not sure if this will negatively impact my end product, but I’m hoping it doesn’t.  I used a regular stencil with it and it was really hard to clean, even though I cleaned it immediately after taking it off of my cardstock.  I have to say, I was really impressed with what it looked like directly after taking off the stencil, but I’m not sure how things will change once it dries.

Every new DIY comes with it’s own unique quirks and we’ll have to wait to see what the finished product looks like.  The molds might be really terrific, but they are very shallow, and I had a lot of problems with air bubbles so I’m hoping I was able to fill the air bubbles and that they won’t impact our final result.  Time will tell.  This might be a really great video, or end up as a deleted fail much like my Perlier bead fiasco. You didn’t know about that?  That’s because it was deleted like all really huge fails.  It’s a rule of nature.  If the end result is so bad that it makes my hot glue embellishment video look good, it gets deleted.   Some things are too embarrassing to be videotaped.