Ink and Acetate and Glue – Oh My!

First, a quick update on my son Matthew.  He was at the ER for only 2 hours last night – they said his breathing was okay, gave him some cough medicine and sent him home – yay!  We were able to head off his asthma attack with a dose of Prednisone at home and regular nebulizer treatments before it got really bad.  But he is still home from school today – he is not feeling well and has had 2 treatments so far today.  Poor thing – he hates to miss school!

On the plus side, it snowed last night and I didn’t have to clean off my car this morning to take him to school! 🙂

My crafting goal today was to work on my submissions for Take Ten magazine.  Several weeks ago, the editor called me and asked if I would send in some more card samples using the acetate-and-tissue technique (you can learn that technique and lots more on SplitcoastStampers in the ‘Resources’ section.  They wanted 10-15 cards using the acetate technique and grouped into color groups of about 3-4 for each color.  The deadline for the next issue is February 1st which is quickly approaching…

So I finally sat down today to play.  I grabbed a whole bunch of transparencies, a whole stack of tissue paper, all of my ink refills and some stamps.  Boy, this is a MESSY technique! 

Unfortunately, I was almost out of Crystal Effects (poor planning on my part), but I did as many samples as I could until I ran out.  I played with all kinds of different color combinations, different styles and several different stamp types until I got a nice mixture – here’s what I ended up with:

These will take while to dry.  Then all I have to do is take these elements and make them into 10-15 beautiful, original, show-stopping cards somehow.  Hmmm…we’ll see about that!

I won’t be able to post my finished cards here on my blog if they are going to be published, but I can show you those that I decide not to send in.  Here’s one of the pieces that I know I’m not going to use:

I like how it turned out in the photo, but in real life, it’s much darker and you can hardly see the starfish.  But you get the idea – glue, re-inkers and glitter on the back of a transparency with a backing of tissue paper.  I also have to trim off the excess tissue paper around the edges. 

I used brown StazOn for this one – but it just didn’t come out dark enough to send in.  I may make a card with it just to have as a sample – but it didn’t fit in with the rest of my color combos.

The stamp used in this photo is actually one from Stampington.  I used several stamps from them for these projects – I figured that if I did, I might have a better chance of getting published in their magazine!

So…while those are drying, I get to mount some new stamps!!!!!  My Stampin’ Up! pre-order from Leadership arrived today – can’t wait to go play with my new stuff.  Wait…I don’t have time to play!  Oh well…maybe just mounting them and adding them to my stash will be enough satisfaction for now.

And speaking of my stash…my stamp shelves are now completely full!  I don’t know what I’m going to do – I either need to find more storage or sell some of my older sets.  I’m such a collector, though – I don’t know if I could part with any of them.  I’m sure that as soon as I do, I’ll realize that the stamp I just sold was PERFECT for some project I need to do…

Oh, well – I need to figure something out – there’s no room for my new stamps that just came today….