Playing with Perfect Pearls

I gave the St Augustine Stamp Club a challenge: to play with Perfect Pearls and bring in the results to share at our next meeting. I took time out from working on my next year's December Journals to play - because I am running out of time to meet my own challenge.

This first tag is made using a blending tool for the background (preserves); drying it thoroughly (because distress inks work great for grabbing onto the mica); brushing on the PP (pearl, plum and violet); brushing off the excess PP and finally setting the PP by misting the air and wafting the tag through the mist.

The purple tag is done the same way, but I went for a tone-on-tone effect. I stamped the background with versamark; pounced on violet PP; brushed off the excess mica and set it with a mist of water. The edges were inked in either distress (left side) or versa and then pearl PP was brushed over the edge.

For the next tag (on the left and on the top of the right), I used a blending tool to add distress ink to the tag (mahognay) and then brushed on PP (heirloom) all over the tag. Next I inks a background (Hero Arts) with VersaMark and stamped the tag. This "kissed" the tag and the versamark removed the PP.

The second tag (on the bottom of the right) came about because I now had PP on my background stamp. When I went to clean the stamp with spritzes of water, I reconsidered and decided to stamp with it first-so I again blended Mahogany distress all over the background of another tag; stamped the wet stamp onto the tag and dried it with my heat tool. Not as sparkly, but I love the bleach look.

For the blue/green tag on the left, I blended the background with jeans and peeled paint. I swiped honey onto a craft sheet along with some gold PP. After misting the craft sheet with water (so the ink beaded up and blended with the PP), I inked the background stamp with this mixture, stamped the tag and dried it.

The stamp was still full of mixture so I misted it with water and stamped it on a tag that had been blended with honey (and photo on the edges). For good measure, I swiped the tag through the mess on the sheet before I dried it for some extra glitz.

I still had lots of mixture on my sheet, so I blended denim and stormy sky on a tag, dipped a brush into the mixture and flicked the mixture onto the tag. There was still stuff left, but I  was done with gold so I just wiped it away.

The next tag had a thin colorwash background from peeled paint. It was dried thoroughly and then I stamped the image with moss and then brushed on kiwi PP over parts of the image. After brushing off the excess, I sprayed it with water to encourage the moss to run out from under the pearl. I want to play with this technique some more - I am not real excited with the look. I am thinking to use more color contrast between the ink and PP to achieve a more exciting look.

I tried for the faux enamel look on my next project. I started with a die cut piece of chipboard that I lightly painted with a black dauber and let dry. I used versamark and PP (blue and green patina) and set it with a mist of water. I went back to the versamark (use an older pad - some PP did transfer to the pad) and then covered the pieces with a thick coating of Utee. I began the melting process from about 10-12 in away to prevent the loose pieces  from blowing away and then came closer with the heat gun as the utee melted. This process was repeated again until I had enough depth of PP color and achieved the rounded look. I love how the mica seems to float in the utee.

The tag for this die cut happened because I had leftover PP on my craft sheet from the enameling project. I blended china and honey on a tag, misted the leftover PP with water and dragged the tag through the mixture. (It sparkles nicely in real life.)