Hello all.
Michelle here from Adelaide, South Australia again.
Okay... so here is the technique that I have been playing around with lately that everyone has been chasing... hehehehehehe..
Beware though.. this is a little bit of a post on the long side..
So grab a cuppa and pull up a chair..
I promise you won't be disappointed to see how easy it is to go
from this
to this
with just a few easy tips and trick and LOTS of Helmar goodness!
Okay... so I start the process with a base of either a 12 x 12 chipboard sheet or if you are a bit of a scrooge like me a recycled A3 postage rigid envelope cut to size.
To this I adhere old book pages, some from old children's books (hence the blue image in the photo) to the base of the chipboard using a glue wash I make up of 3 parts Helmar Acid Free Glue and 1 part water. I spread it all over the chipboard and then put the paper down.
Then put another layer of glue wash on the top of the book page. I then use my Helmar Glue Spreader to get rid of any air bubbles and make sure all the glue is spread evenly.
I then take 1ply pattern napkins (important that they are only 1 ply so that the writing shows through when adhered so remove excess layers as needed) that I have cut up randomly and adhere using the same Helmar Glue Wash.
Be gentle though and use a brush to put glue on. I put a layer of glue wash over the top of the napkins too and am not afraid to layer the edges of each other either. I have also made sure that if there was an image that I wanted to show that I didn't cover it with the napkins.
When the whole piece of chipboard is cover it will look something like this. I have let the excess book page and napkins go over the edge of the chipboard to ensure that they are adhered right to the edge.
Next I trimmed away the excess napkin and book page when the base is dry (I do dry mine with a heat gun as I am very impatient and time poor). Just remember to hold the heat gun above your work about 25cm to prevent glue bubbles).
I then gave the whole chipboard base a light wash of white paint and Helmar Glue Wash using a foam brush making sure that is is only a light wash of paint just to tone down the brightness.
Once it was dry I inked the edged of the whole base both on the edges and by using a sponge to gently rub ink on top edges in the corners using some Ranger Ink.
I then gave the whole thing a light coat of Helmar Krystal Kote Fixative to prevent the ink from smudging. Using a clear acrylic script stamp, Stazon ink and my hand as the ink pad I stamped the edges lightly to give random bits of the script stamp.
From another scrap of chipboard (or postage envelope in my case) I made up a leafy scroll template which I coloured with permanent marker.
I then lay this directly onto my layout base where I wanted it and applied texture paste directly over the top using my Helmar Glue Spreader.
I dragged the texture paste around until I was happy with it and as you can see the template I made up is only just visible.
I then used a pair of tweezers and gently removed the template. Set both pieces aside and allowed the texture paste to dry completely.
While I was waiting I got to work on the butterfly embellishments.
I spread my Helmar Glue Wash all over an A5 size piece of overhead transparency sheet.
Next I adhered the napkins to the sheet, making sure that I was adhering them GOOD side down (or the image will be wrong way up when you turn it over!).
Then I adhered it while still wet to a book page and used my Helmar Glue Spreader to remove any air bubbles. Allow to dry then too. (I did use my heat gun.. but only on the paper side and on LOW!)
Once the template I made above was dry I sprayed it several time with glimmer mist of a few different colours and let it dry. I then gave it a coat of Helmar Krystal Kote Fixative over the top to take off the shine and fix the colours to the texture paste.
When the transparency sheet was dry I stamped butterfly images on the plastic transparency side using Staz on ink. I made sure to pick areas of the coloured image that suited best too!
I then cut them out by hand and they ended up looking like this.
Using another scrap of my postage envelope or chipboard and some scraps of book page I adhere the book pages to the chipboard using some Helmar Acid Free Glue. I then used some alpha templates to create my title.
Once they were cut out by hand, I sprayed them several time with glimmer mist of a few different colours and let them dry. I then gave them a coat of Helmar Krystal Kote Fixative over the top to take off the shine and fix the colours.
The last steps were fairly simple... just to assembled all the elements with a bit of help from Helmar 450 and Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots to give lots of dimension.
I added some recycled vintage metal buttons and some garden twine with ease using some Helmar 450 and my layout was done in no time.
Here the whole layout. I had so much fun playing with this one that I created many more bases quite quickly for the cards I created for the Helmar Fathers Blog Hop.
I love the way this came about and have many plans to get creative with many more napkins and my Helmar Glue Wash in the future.
Why not give it a try.
The possibilities are endless.
TFL, Michelle Wallace x
