FEBRUARY 2017 TIC, TAC, TOE CHALLENGE AT THE HOUSE THAT STAMPS BUILT

Hello blog friends!  

Are you loving these new challenges at The House That Stamps Built?  I know I am, especially the new Tic, Tac, Toe challenge.  That's what we're doing this week and we hope you'll play along.  

The way you play this challenge is to pick one item from three grids going either vertically, horizontally or diagonally and create a project or a card.  

So, as you can see, I chose an item from each grid in the top horizontal line.  (Valentine's or Love, watercolors and die cut).  The stamp is RI #1204-I "Love".  I stamped it in two soft green dye inks attempting to get a "drop shadow" look.  It didn't work as well as I wanted so I added some white gel pen to try and highlight it a bit.  The water color background was created using Distress Inks and my dies are "Tessatina Border" by My Favorite Things and "Twine and Bows" from Pretty Pink Posh.  

Come on over and play along with us this week. You can get all the details on how to join at THE HOUSE.  

And check out what the other Rock Stars have done for tons more inspiration.  

Deonna - Donna - Heather - Joy - Laurie - Patti J - Shirley 

Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty week!  

PLAYING WITH YUPO PAPER

Hello Junkies!  

I've been having some fun playing with yupo paper.  If you don't know, yupo paper is a "plastic paper", (now that's an oxymoron).  It's non-porous and in our world of papercrafts it's used mostly with alcohol inks and markers for making backgrounds.   I've found several tutorials on YouTube and thought I'd get out my plastic gloves and see what I could create.  

(You definitely want plastic gloves while playing around with a variety of alcohol inks, it can be very messy, and I found, when the alcohol ink got on my fingers, it dried the skin around my cuticles.) 

You can heat set yupo paper with your heat gun, but you must keep it moving and not hold it in one place too long, otherwise, (remember this is plastic), you'll have a shrinky dink card.  (I know this to be true, LOL).  

The inks you'll want to use for stamping on yupo should be Stazon or Archival Inks.  In my card, I used Ranger black Archival ink.  Beside the alcohol inks, you'll need some 91% alcohol for helping you move the ink around the paper.  

Also, you'll want to seal background piece, when you're ready to use it.  Alcohol inks, can be reactivated unless you seal it.  I used a light coat of Kamar Varnish, which I purchased at ACMoore craft store.  

My card uses TJ Stamps #S661 "Growing Wild" and #SDX083 "In My Prayers".  

Here's another example of playing with yupo that I posted on my blog last week.

For one more day, you can grab the Technique Junkie February release stamps at a 15% discount. You don't need a code, it will calculate upon check out.  Easy peasy.  

I hope you get some crafting time today - it's fun there.