Two Projects, Three Challenges, and a Cool Technique

I know I said no more challenges or swaps until I finished some old projects, but I couldn't resist this month's tag in Tim's 12 Tags of 2012.  It features the beautiful faux porcelain technique, and it found me in the mood to haul out the melt pot.

I don't like copying Tim's tags exactly, so I just concentrate on the techniques, and my tag includes the faux porcelain flowers (I also used Primas, plus some others found in my stash), as well as the tissue paper background.  Instead of a spool, I placed my bouquet in one of Wendy Vecchi's art parts....the flower pot, which was gessoed, inked with the new peacock feathers distress ink, dusty concord and (also new) shaded lilac.  It was then stamped with one of Wendy's fab backgrounds with berry purple archival ink.

The sentiment is a Wendy stamp.  Next, a close up of the flowers.  The small ones started out purple, but the others were white, and I tinted them with two of the new distress inks.....shaded lilac and squeezed lemonade (which is a great yellow) before dipping them in the melted UTEE.  Please click on the link to Tim's blog (above) to see the step by step details for this technique.

Since digging out the melt pot and actually using it is not an everyday event around here, I wound up making way more flowers than I needed, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to participate in the current challenge over at the Wendy yahoo group.  The theme is ATCs and the only rule, other than sticking to the theme is to use at least one of Wendy's stamps.  I did that, and more, and also included more art parts than you'd think would fit on a 2 1/2 x 3 1/2" piece.

The scallops, leaves and vase are all art parts.  Actually the vase started out in life as the base for a lamp, but I easily sliced off the lampshade.  I used pretty much the same colors on it as I did on the flower pot and added a dusting of lemon sparkle perfect pearls (which goes so well with the touches of squeezed lemonade distress ink I used throughout the ATC. 

I tried faux porcelain flowers once before with less success.  The difference this time, I think, is that I really filled the melt pot with UTEE.  It works much better if you can actually submerge the flowers into the UTEE.  It still requires a little finesse, and Tim's blog has some helpful hints,.

As luck would have it, this week's challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show is "anything goes."  So, I'm submitting the ATC there as well.

And now, back to working on some of my unfinished "masterpieces," LOL.

The 12 Tags of Christmas -- Day 11

I was trying to keep up with Mario's tweets last night, and did manage to see the photo of the melting pot in Tim's studio.   Well, I can take a hint, so before I conked out for the night I was very brave, and pulled mine out of the closet, fearing an avalanche of art supplies.  I escaped with said pot and no injuries.

Later on, after reading Tim's blog a couple of times and watching his video on shrink plastic and UTEE, I felt ready to begin.  This is a technique I've wanted to try for a very long time.  Well, you know that warning, "be careful what you wish for......"    I'm just sayin'.

To be fair, clearly Tim was NOT trying this for the first time last night.  There is a definite learning curve, but if you follow the directions in the video you'll eventually get something.  If you don't have a melting pot or UTEE, you can use shrink plastic the usual way and you'll get a chunky embellishment, but it won't have that smooth, glassy look that the UTEE gives.

I used the two little snowflakes and the ornaments on my tag, but believe me I did lots more than that.  In fact, I used up an entire sheet of shrink plastic.  Some of the results are destined for the land fill.  One thing I noticed....Tim had no trouble releasing the still hot pieces from the metal tweezers he used to lift them out of the pot.  Me......my UTEE piece and tweezers were united for all eternity, and I had to re-melt them again and again just to release them, which resulted in.....pieces you will not be seeing on this blog.  But I will  say that once color was added a lot of the flaws seemed to disappear, and I was left with only noticing how nice and glossy the pieces were.

Tim used a retro Santa for the stamped portion of the tag,  and I much prefer vintage, so I went that way.  I thought he needed a little bling, so I added some stickles and crystals.  And you can see how shiny the ornaments are.





The mini snowflakes actually came out the best, but then again, they were the last ones I tried.

Here are two that were fairly successful, but just didn't work on this tag:

And to leave you with a laugh, what follows is a perfect example of what happens when you ignore Tim's warning NOT to try to trim the cooled off and hardened piece with scissors. 

Bad photography aside, this poor little reindeer lost all four legs and a tail.  He actually looks better blurry.

Only one tag to go, and then what am I supposed to do at 3:00am???  And no, I'm not taking suggestions on that.