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Faux Mosaic Tutorial

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Jan 19, 2009 in Cards, Crafts, Today's Photo

Lynn in St. Louis, who coordinates the weekly technique challenges SplitCoastStampers, saw a few cards in my gallery using the faux mosaic technique and asked me to put together a quick photo tutorial for this week’s challenge.  

The sad part is, my craft room is SUCH a mess, I had drag my supplies out to do this project on my dining room table (today’s chore is to clean up my craft room – it’s always such a mess after the holidays).

This technique is really easy and there are so many ways to do it – just have fun and be creative with your mosaic!  The basic idea is that you create paper ‘tiles’ and use embossing powder as ‘grout’ to create a mosaic that can be used as a background or accent on a card or scrapbook page. 

Supplies needed:

  • Double sided tape (you can use Stampin’ Up!’s Sticky Strip or the same type of red-lined tape sold in sheets either in the craft store or Pennywise Arts – or even just regular double sided Scotch tape)
  • Embossing powder
  • Heat gun
  • Cardstock and/or patterned paper

To start, cut a piece of cardstock to size for the base of the mosaic (it doesn’t matter what color – the cardstock won’t show).  If you are using a sheet of red-liner tape, cut it to the same size as the cardstock.

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Then peel off the white part of the tape sheet and apply to the cardstock.

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If you are using Sticky Strip you can just cover the entire piece of cardstock with strips, removing the white liner for each piece. 

Remove the red portion of the red-liner tape, exposing the sticky side.

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If you are using double sided tape, just cover one side of the cardstock entirely with the tape, exposing the sticky side.

Now you have a very sticky piece of cardstock – set it aside (careful not to handle the sticky portion too much to keep it clean).

Next, create the ‘tiles’.  You can either stamp a piece of cardstock and cut it into randomly shaped pieces:

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Or…start with patterned paper and cut it into either randomly shaped pieces or similar size squares.  If you’re really OCD about your crafts, you can cut the pieces into the exact same shape and size – I’m more free-form with my projects.

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Arrange the pieces onto your sticky paper.  This is where you can get creative – you can arrange them into a random pattern or space them evenly…it depends on the look you’re going for.  For this card, I was looking for more of a vintage tile wall look, so I kept the pieces mostly the same size and spaced the sort of evenly, but not exactly.

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I even overlapped the edge pieces a bit – I just trimmed them off from the back:

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Next, sprinkle embossing powder over the sticky side of the entire sheet.  It will settle into the spaces between the tiles, acting as ‘grout’ between them.

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Shake off the excess:

P1150020And heat emboss:

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If you want your tiles to be shiny, you can add Crystal Effects to each tile:

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But be prepared – this take a LONG time to dry.  24 hours later, and it still looked like this:

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Being impatient (and wanting to show you a completed card), I did another mosaic using black embossing powder instead of silver.  Here’s my finished card:

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Different colors of embossing powder will give you much different results. 

Here’s a card I made using gold embossing powder (the tiles were made of glossy paper colored with ink and a brayer):

image 

And another one using silver, but with randomly shaped pieces:

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And a much more funky card using plain colored cardstock and white embossing powder:

image

Thanks for the interest in this technique, Lynn – I can’t wait to see what everyone on SCS creates!

 
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Quick Cash Card

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Dec 24, 2008 in Cards, Crafts

I just threw together this quick card for a last minute gift…a cute (and quick and easy) way to give cash.

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One more quick post…

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Dec 17, 2008 in Cards, Family Stuff

Just one more quick thing that I’ve been meaning to post…I don’t like the Christmas cards I sent out this year.

I meant to make handmade cards like I do every year.  I purchased copies of our beach pictures with “Merry Christmas” written in the sand and planned to use faux sand that I purchased at the Creating Keepsakes convention last summer on the card fronts.  I created the photos with a fuzzy glow effect from Photoshop so that no one would notice that my kids were wearing beach clothes instead of their Christmas best.

But now that I’m working, I ran out of time and energy.  As I was ordering other photo gifts online, Mike convinced me to just order photo cards instead of making them.  So I did, but I used the same fuzzy glow photos I had ordered for my handmade cards.

So now it just looks like I chose an out of focus, weird picture on our card.

I was disappointed in myself, but had already purchased them and had no time (or money) to make (or order) replacements.

So for those who got our Christmas cards, I apologize…

 
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Happy Thanksgiving – Plus, Even More Card Ideas!

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Nov 27, 2008 in Cards, Crafts, Today's Photo

Happy Thanksgiving! 

You know – I’m still not finished posting all of the cards I made for the ‘Shop til You Drop’ event a few weeks ago.  I’m going to just finish posting all the remaining cards today because…well, I’m pretty bored with posting them day after day – and I’d like to move on to something else.  So today, I’ll throw the rest of the cards out there for you…

I think I made over 20 designs with 2 of each card for that event – all made in one weekend.  I could have made my Christmas cards with all that work and have been done by now!  After all that effort, do you think I could actually use THESE as my Christmas cards?  Would anyone even notice a big orange lion on their holiday card…

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Maybe a pinwheel?

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This technique is really cool – the petals are made from folded tab punches!

How about some butterflies?  This started out as a CASE but morphed into something else…

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I love the paper piercing to go along with the ‘journey’ definition.

Let’s see…what else did I make?  This was my make-and-take card (another modified CASE from Stampin’ Success):

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And for this one, I copied was inspired by a color combo I saw in a magazine:

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And I made a few baby cards too:

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C’mon!  Those could pass for Christmas cards…baby Jesus?  Right?  Okay – maybe not.

So here’s another couple of actual Christmas designs sorta CASEd from the Stampin’ Up! Holiday Mini:

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Hmmm…now that time is running out, I may use one of these simple designs for my own card…let’s see if I have any creativity left inside me…

 
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A Few More Cards

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Nov 26, 2008 in Cards, Crafts, Today's Photo

Just a few more cards – these were CASEd almost directly from Stampin’ Success – with a few variations to work with my stamps sets and supplies:

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Card(s) of the Day

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Nov 25, 2008 in Cards, Crafts, Today's Photo

I still have quite a few of these new cards left after my ‘crafting frenzy’.  Unfortunately, turnout at the ‘Shop til You Drop’ event was not quite as I’d hoped.  I put a LOT of effort into this event!  The good news is – I’ve got lots of cute holiday crafts to display this year and a WHOLE bunch of cards just ready for any event that comes up (and I got a fantastic chair massage while at the event, too!).

So here’s a card CASE’d just about directly out of the Holiday Mini Catalog:

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I had fun watercoloring this one – and I was thinking of using it as my holiday card this year.

A few more cards that were almost totally copied right from Stampin’ Up! promotional ads:

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Love those holiday rub-ons!

 
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Card of the Day

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Nov 23, 2008 in Cards, Crafts, Today's Photo

Here’s today’s card:

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Card of the Day

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Nov 22, 2008 in Cards, Crafts, Today's Photo

Here’s today’s card:

PB110012

 
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Card of the Day

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Nov 21, 2008 in Cards, Crafts, Today's Photo

Here’s today’s card:

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White flower is embossed with white embossing powder.

 
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Card of the Day

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Nov 20, 2008 in Cards, Crafts, Today's Photo

Here’s today’s card:

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Center flower is raised with dimensional adhesive and has Dazzling Diamonds glitter in the center.  Watercolor crayons were used and image is embossed with black embossing powder.

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