Tips & Techniques Thursday: Stickles & Paper Flowers

Hello to all of the other Stickles Lovers out there, it's so nice to know I'm not alone and it’s a real honour to be asked to share something with you all at All That Stickles!  For those who don't know me, my name is Kate Palmer, though I'm much better known as Sparkle Tart, and I live in sunny Queensland in Australia, with my husband and two little Birman cat terrors.  I love to share on my blog and YouTube channel and create a wide variety of projects suitable for all sorts of art and craft.   I love papercrafts and creating and I mostly love and adore sparkly things (in case you couldn't guess that from my nickname).  Today I thought I'd show you a neat little technique for colouring your own flowers and Stickles is the final step needed to take these from simply gorgeous to super stunning.

What you'll need:  

• White or cream mulberry paper flowers
• Copic Markers: R39, R35 , E31 & E35, and Copic Colorless Blender Ink (Various Ink refill)
• Lindy's Stamp Gang Starburst Spray in Creme Brulee Cream
• Stickles - Pewter
• Heat Gun

What to do:

Begin with a white or light coloured paper flowers (I like roses and gardenias because they are easy to colour). Choose 3 or 4 colours of Copic marker (for the shabby chic look I chose a dark and a light brown and 2 reds (mid tone and dark).  I colour up a few different sizes at once so that I have a small coordinating bouquet ready.

Colour 1/2 of each petal with your lightest colour (mine was E31) working from the outer edge in towards the flower centre - make sure not to colour the whole petal.  It should look like this when done.

Next using the darkest brown (E35) apply a thin strip of colour to the outer edge of each petal  - I just run the side of my marker along the edge of the petals.

Then with the lightest red R35, apply a thin strip of colour to the outer edge of the petal BUT don't cover up all of the dark brown - add colour quite sparingly.  Again I just scrape the side of my marker along the edge of the petals.  It should look a little like this.

Lastly with the darkest red R39, apply a thin strip of colour to the outer edge of the very top petals only - leave the petals closest to the leaves without this colour.   

The next step is to apply a few drops of Colorless Blender to each petal - add the liquid to the outer edge of the petals - the fluid will wick towards the flower centre and drag a little colour along with it.

Dry the flower with a heat gun / embossing gun - this will take up to 45 seconds depending on how wet the flower is.

Drying with the heat gun will not only evaporate the belnding fluid, but it also results in discoloured edges to the petals (they darken considerably) giving a beautiful result.  You could leave it here but you'll be missing the glitz!

Soak each flower with a pale or colourless mica spray - my favourite is Creme Brulee Cream, which is a Starburst spray from Lindy's Stamp Gang.

Dry the spray with a heat gun or embossing gun.

It should now look a bit like this.

The final step is to add Stickles of your choice to the petal edges, you can add as much or as little as you like, but this secret ingredient really makes the flowers sparkle.  I've only added a hint of stickles, though believe me you can see the glittery goodness from every angle!

Leave it somewhere safe to dry, and they should look a little like this...

For all the visual learners out there you can see the whole process from start to finish in the clip below:

Aren't these beautiful!  Now don't just limit yourself to the colours I chose, experiment, try mixing colours, even mixing up your products - any way you try it it's likely to look stunning.

I hope you've enjoyed this idea - and can use this in your creative projects. 

May your day sparkle,

Kate P. 

Tips & Techniques Thursday: Stickled Butterfly

I was so honored for Ashley to invite me to share with you today as a guest blogger.

I'm Tracey Sabella and have been scrapbooking since our church started a monthly scrapbook night back in 2007. The group no longer meets, but I came to realize that scrapbooking is a wonderful creative outlet for me. I live in Ohio with my amazing husband. We'll be celebrating our 31st anniversary later this month. All four of our adult children live nearby, and are the subject of most of my scrapbooking. I design for ScrapThat! Kit club, Really Reasonable Ribbon, Scrapbooking Everyday Miracles, and was selected for the 2013 Donna Salazar Design Team. You can view my work at my blog, Garden of Grace.

I would like to share my Stickled Butterfly Tutorial featured on this birthday card created for a friend who celebrates her birthday on St. Patrick's Day.

"A Friend Knows You"

Stickled Butterfly Tutorial

Often I'm looking for just the right embellishment and don't have the right size, shape or color in my stash. Here is an easy way to add a lovely butterfly to your project with a few items most of us have on hand. 

Supplies: 

Supply List:

~ Sizzix Big Shot or other die cut machine (Not pictured)

~ Scrap of paper 

~ Donna Salazar Wonderful Wings Spellbinder die. You could also use a different die, a punch or electronic cutting machine image.

~ Clear Rock Candy Stickles 

~ 2 pieces of covered wire or flower stamens for antennae 

~ Adhesive backed pearls 

~ Selection of inks in the colors of your choice. For this butterfly, I used Ranger Distress Ink in Scattered Straw, Tea Dye, Rusty Hinge, and Vintage Photo. Not pictured - I also used Black Soot to color the green wire for the antennae

~ Adhesive - I used glossy accents (Not pictured)

Step 1. Cut butterfly from paper scrap.

Step 2. Color butterfly with inks. Start with the lightest color across the entire butterfly and then add the next darker color staying closer to the edge of the wings each time so you get a ombre effect from the body to the tip of the wings.

Scattered Straw

Plus Tea Dye

Plus Rusty Hinge

Plus Vintage Photo

Step 3. Squeeze distress stickles generously on the entire butterfly and spread out with your finger or a paintbrush.

Step 4. Allow to dry. I let mine sit overnight. You can use a heat tool with Distress Stickles since the glitter is glass; however, I find that the medium the glitter is suspended in tends to bubble when heated, and I prefer to air dry for this technique. 

Step 5. Color the wire pieces with ink in the color of your choice. Curl the ends of the wire. I used round nosed pliers, but you could wrap the end of the wire around a toothpick. Glue the wires to the back of your butterfly. I use glossy accents as my adhesive. If you do not have covered wire, you could also use flower stamen. 

Step 6. Place self-adhesive pearls down the center of the body. You can see that I used different size pearls here than for the butterfly in the card, so just use whatever pearls you happen to have in your stash.

Step 7. These butterflies are quite flexible and you can fold up the wings and gently curl them to add graceful dimension as seen in the close-up on my card.

You can change up these sweet sparkly butterflies to coordinate with your project by using different ink colors as well as altering the size or shape of your butterfly. The sky is the limit.

I hope you will try this out. Stop by my blog,

Garden of Grace,

to let me know, and I'll be glad to stop by to see your Stickled Butterfly. 

Tips & Techniques Thursday: Distress Stains & Stickles

Hey Stickle-lovers! Today we are SUPER excited to feature an amazing blogger and crafter, DoBea from Plum Poppy Studio. She has an AWESOME tutorial using Rock Candy Distress Stickles with you today! Hope you enjoy as much we we did. :)

First off, I am so excited to be Guest Designing for the All that Stickles blog today! I feel honored that these sweet ladies contacted me about the following tutorial, especially since I think it is such a fun one.

In order to get ready for this technique, I started off gathering all of the supplies that I was going to need for this project:

Ornaments stamp set {I like to used open stamps without much detail.}

Watercolor paper

Distress Stains {Weathered Wood, Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans}

Broad Nib Water Brush

Fine Detail Nib Water Brush

Archival Ink {Will not bleed when used with water}

Rock Candy Distress Stickles

Ink Palette

I then went on to get my ink palette ready to work with:

I try not to have too much water on my water brushes, as it can get soupy real fast:

The first color I used was Weathered Wood. I used the wider flat water brush and dipped it into the palette where I hold small amounts of my Distress Stains. I then filled the body of the long ornament in completely.

Next, I then used the same brush dipped in Stormy Sky and filled in slightly more than half of the ornament:

And then with Faded Jeans, I filled in about one third of the ornament.

Next, I used the smaller tipped water brush with a very small amount of Black Soot to give it a grey top and bottom of the ornament.

Here is a look at the filled in ornament before the Stickles:

After the paper was dry {helped along with the Heat It tool}, I squeezed out a bit of Rock Candy Distress Stickles onto the darker part of the ornament:

And then spread it around with my finger a bit:

Once the Rock Candy was dry, I cut out the ornament and attached it to my card.

And viola!! A watercolored look to a Christmas card!

Here is a closer look at the Rock Candy:

And a couple more cards using this technique:

Thanks so much for letting me share this fun technique with you!

DoBea

Tips & Techniques Thursday: Neon Stickles

Happy 4th of July! A few weeks ago I (Ashley) shared with you how to combine the ombre trend with Stickles, and today I have some info for how you can combine Stickles with another popular trend in the crafty world - NEON!

While I'll admit I haven't completely jumped on the neon train, I've seen a lot of neon projects out here in the blogosphere and thought it would be fun to make one of my own, along with showing you how Stickles can be added to your stash of neon crafty supplies!

While going through my Stickles collection, it looks like Glam Pink, Tropical Tangerine, Yellow, and Firefly happen to be the most neon-like colors. 

Now, you ask, what can I do with these neon Stickles? Well, lots of things! Just like you would make any sort of crafty project, you could use neon as a color combo to make a card, layout, and much more. In fact, Sweet Stamp Shop has an awesome post featuring some neon cards along with other neon products that would work great along with your Stickles! 

I used my neon Stickles to make a CAS card. I Stickled up some CANDi pieces (tutorial here) and heat embossed the 'Just because' sentiment, which is from Sweet Stamp Shop's Packaged Pretty stamp set, using white embossing powder. I did it on a separate piece of black cardstock so I could adhere it to the card using pop dots.

Firefly, which happens to be one of the neon Stickles colors, is the theme of our current linky party! You have until tomorrow night (Friday) to link up any project made using Firefly Stickles! There's some great inspiration already linked up if you're looking for some ideas. :)

Have a great day and a safe and happy 4th of July!

Tips & Techniques Thursday: Glitz Stickles

Happy Thursday! Ashley here today with a fun product you may have never heard of before - Glitz Stickles!

Glitz Stickles are a special, Designer Series of Stickles by Suze Weinberg. Even though they're extra sparkly, they're hard to find and out of stock at a lot of online stores. Fortunately, there are a few online shops that carry them, but we'll get to those a little bit later. 

Glitz Stickles come in 6 colors - Champagne, Grape, Mermaid, Ruby Slippers, Sequins and Tiara. 

I tried taking some samples of these on paper to show you, but because they're so shiny, when they catch the light they almost all look pretty similar, and in reality, they're not. The bottles below give a good indication of what each color looks like, and I also included a bit about each of their characteristics.

Champagne

Champagne resembles Golden Rod, except it has more shine due to the extra colors of glitter. 

Grape

Grape almost reminds me of Starry Night with its purple base and blue flecks of glitter, but there are pink and silver flecks of glitter in there, too, which makes it stand out. I wonder if this is what inspired Grape Ice Stickles?

Mermaid

Mermaid is a really pretty turquoise glitter with flecks of red and purple glitter. It's almost a more blue version of Holly. 

Ruby Slippers

Ruby Slippers is a beautiful red glitter with flecks of pink.  It's more of a "berry" color than Xmas Red is, and would look really nice on holiday projects and Valentine's Day projects as well.

Sequins

Sequins contains the most colors of glitter I've ever seen out of all the types of Stickles.  It reminds me of Pink Stickles, but with lots of other colors mixed in, like gold, silver, blue, and purple. A great celebratory glitter.

Tiara

Tiara most closely resembles Platinum Stickles, but is a bit darker and offers more sparkle. If you're really wanting a lot of bling on your project, this would be perfect!

Now that you've seen how beautiful and sparkly all these Stickles colors are, I bet you want to get your hands on some, am I right?!

Amazon - Limited quantities of Ruby Slippers, Champagne, and Sequins. Prices vary

Bargain Pack - All 6 colors, $2.25 for each

Blockhead Stamps - Grape, Mermaid, and Ruby Slippers for $2.00 each

Inspiration Emporium - All 6 colors on sale for $2.09 each! Regularly $2.49

Pez-A-Doodle - Grape and Sequins for $1.50 each

Myself and another DT member both ordered from Bargain Pack and the Stickles were in great condition, not dried up or anything. :) With some extra hunting I'm sure you could find more sites that still have them for sale!

Have you heard of Glitz Stickles before? Do you have a favorite color? We're curious!