Round up of 2015

Well it has been an interesting year, to say the least. It's been a year of reflection and reconnection for me. Also finding the courage to make a major decision half way through the year has brought me closer to myself and back onto a path I would like to continue and follow through in 2016 and beyond. Being mindful every step of the way and trying to keep a healthy and balanced life.

In 2015 I also found my way back to creativity, joining an awesome design team for Lost Coast Designs and Carmen Veranda Stamps with fellow Inkadinkadutchie ladies has definitely contributed to that. And being an Ambassador for the Swap-Bot site and connecting with wonderful people there year after year is amazing. By the way, I forgot to share my Ambassador profile piece that was published on the swap-bot blog early december here.

I wanted to share the mail art pieces I made and sent over the year here as a creative round up of the year.You can flick through the album below to see what I've sent out over the year.

Wishing everyone a safe NYE and wonderful and creative 2016!

Namasté,

Tarah

Merry Christmas!

It's been a bit busy here nearing the years end and I haven't had the time to sit down an properly write something. BUT I wanted to wish everyone a merry christmas! A shot from our year round toy tree :) Hope you all are enjoying these festive days with your loved ones.

 

Talk to you all soon!

Namasté

Tarah

 

Craft review- Teresa Collins Stampmaker

I had written this years ago, but I still wanted to post it. It's a craft machine I had wanted for so long, used lovingly and then got discarded. I wanted to take it up and use again and found this review I had written about it from years ago. With a few adjustments, I decided to still post it because it can be helpful to others whom have (or want) this machine. 

A while back (so a few years back actually) my lovely husband gave me a really wonderful birthday present, the Teresa Collins stamp maker by Imagepac/Photcentric. And what this machine can do? Basically turn any image you have into a clear stamp using photocentric UV light technique! So naturally as stamp carvers, we were really excited to get this machine to see if we could turn our stamp making into the next level. After seeing TC reviews on you tube I knew I wanted it! And I can tell you I was so excited to test it out, as it looked so pretty and sleek and so easy to make stamps with! We ordered this off a Dutch website and after several months of waiting, the machine finally arrived. I was in ready to make some stamps…but first had to pass a few hick ups. 

First being, the machine was not made with an EU compatible plug, you have to buy a plug converter for it. Our machine came from the UK so we didn’t have any problems with the voltage the machine uses, as that is basically the same, so we just had to buy a simple plug for the EU-NL socket. But be aware that if you are in Europe and the machine comes from the USA, you need to buy a whole other convertor to make it work with the electrical system. My poor heatgun that I bought from a vacation in the USA comes to mind. I put in just a simple plug, turned on my heatgun and poof the thing broke instantly huffing a cloud of smoke. So my first tip would be, chose to buy a machine compatible to your country’s electric voltage network. We couldn’t actually choose ours, but by a happy coincidence, it was a UK machine… thankfully! NB: Photocentric now offer the machine with a EURO plug, so problem sloved!

So when the correct plug was fitted, instructions read and understood, an image I wanted scanned and printed… and I was ready to rock that machine! But sadly my first few tries, actually my first 5 tries were a total DUD (yes a whole pack of mini A8 gel packs… wasted!) I was so heart broken! They made it looks so easy on the videos, why in the world couldn’t I get my stamps out right?! I was really doubting my ability to work with the machine! My first stamp was a complete solid block, the second one had a little imprint on it but still solid, the 3 stamps after that did have an outline of the stamp I wanted but still very blobby looking and just didn’t stamp right. I really thought I had done everything to the letter of the instructions! So utterly devastated I was thinking ‘well this isn’t for me, I can’t work with this machine, it’s a waste of money!’ so I put it away and didn’t look at it for a whole month. 

The failed stamps - booo!

My husband, who really encourages me in all my craft endeavors, told me not to give up so quickly, and that it SHOULD work the way it was advertised, so chin up and look for help/support sites to see if you can fix the problem (and I really didn’t like the idea that his gift was starting to collect dust in the closet …). And so I did! I found an excellent support group on yahoo about the TC stamp maker. It was founded by someone who purchased the stampmaker and had some similar issues. There were photocentric/imagepac staff members on that group too for help and advice. And really, if it wasn’t for them, the machine would still be in my closet & not being used!! So extra special thanks to Linda Warholl from photcentric UK who contacted me, helped me with the issues and even sent me replacement gelpacks for the ones I effed up! Top notch customer service!!! 

And now I hear you ask, how did they help me? Well, they made me understand what I did wrong with my first few tries, how I could correct the problem and now I’m using the machine am making kick ass stamps in indeed 15 minutes tops! No no, I assure you, they did not pay me to tell you this ;) So what went wrong with my first few tries? One thing was for certain, that not the whole instruction package was included with my machine. Just one printed sheet with instructions. So that was a bit of a downer to find that out! But I found the whole instructions on the support group, with images to explain. One thing I didn’t do was ‘flash’ the gelpack for 3 counts and you also really have to stick with the timing of it all. The golden tip was that EVERYTHING but the image you wanted to be made a stamp out of needed to be blacked out. So make sure that no light from the sides is filtering through, because that will fill your pack solid. Yes, I had light strips filtering through my first few tries. Also my negative wasn’t printed dark enough (had printer stripes in them) so the UV light shone through and filled the pack solid. 

The second try went a whole lot better. The time stamps are the negatives provided with the stampmaker itself. The lady is a drawing from a sheet of  stationery I have. It's The Swirly Girly I based my hand carved stamp on. I scrubbed too hard on her hair and that came off, but the tries after that, you have a feel of how hard you need to scrub.

To avoid further problems like this in the future, I made a checklist for myself and maybe you’ll find it useful as well;

• Leave a dark aria around your image (at least 1cm) if you use photoshop (your canvas size set to 13 cm by 9 cm but the image must be no bigger than 11 by 8 cm) The imagepac negative printing program (which is on the CD that comes with the machine) already provides this for you. I prefer to print the image straight from photoshop, because the imagepac program sometimes deforms the image to a smaller scale, and sometimes it also pixellates the picture. With photoshop you can work on a higher resolution that can avoid pixellation. 
• Print your stamp negative set on grayscale, setting on photo and paper choice ‘Epson matte’ for a smooth printed out solid black negatives (for Epson inkjet printer SX100 series) 
• Make sure no light comes through from the sides between your gelpack and negative sandwich inside the clamp. 
• Flash the pack for 3 COUNTS not 3 seconds
• Be exact with timing, so 3 minutes exposure exactly (use a stopwatch/timer on your phone)
• Wash the gel off with a soapy brush in luke warm water, firm but gently with circling motions. I really, really hate the gel! It sticks, it smells and it’s just so hard to get rid of off your hands. Wear gloves! Use enough liquid soap! Keep scrubbing until all the bits patches of gel are out, but not too hard!
•  Expose the cleaned image in a tray with water for 2 minutes (non exact exposure is okay in this step but never longer than 3-4 minutes) – the longer you expose in this step the less ‘tacky’ the stamp will be.
• Gently dry your stamp and cut off the excess around the image.
• Adhere cling mount on the back and the stamp is ready! The kit provides a stamp handle and cling for that handle, but I prefer to just adhere UM cling mount to my stamps so I can use them on other blocks – not a fan of the big handle of the acrylic block provided... The stamp can be a bit too tacky at first, but like every cling stamp, you have to ‘break them in’ a little. You can also use an eraser and rub gently on the surface of the stamp. Dab it clean with a damp cloth and it should be less tacky. 

And there you have it! After initial trial of error and well… terror, I managed to make some pretty awesome stamps from my own carved and edited images! Some of them are so detailed and have quite fine and delicate lines. And I can indeed make them within 15 minutes! See another in depth review by Rachel Johnson of Swap-Bot here. 

I made these supernatural themed stamps for this specific themed swap.

Hope you found this review useful!

Thanks for stopping by!

An inspiring workshop at Posthumus Amsterdam

On saturday the 21st of november I was lucky enough to join a very popular workshop at Posthumus stamp store in Amsterdam, the Christmas layout workshop given by Miranda Degenaars. Her workshops are always very popular and sold out within hours. But the day before a message on Posthumus facebook page said that someone had canceled due to illness, and they had a free spot. So I grabbed that chance and got to join in.

Miranda had made four layout designs which we could choose to make in the 3 hours there. The one that really stood out for me was the one with made with all the Zenspirations Impression Obsession rubber and clear stamps (designs by Joanne Fink) What we get to make was this A4 sized stamped work.  It was just beautiful! 

This is the design I signed up to make and *gulp* it was a tough one. Miranda did say that we probably would need more time to finish this project than the time was given at the workshop. She was not wrong! But I started on the daunting task anyway. 

The project consists out of a back layer and a bunch of loose cut elements, 15 to be exact, to give the 3D effect. So we started with stamping and embossing the loose elements first. 

Because there was so much embossing to do in this project, we needed to get that done first before we could get on to the coloring. After the loose elements were done we did the embossing for the back ground of the piece.

I love how the 'poinsettia' mandala and 'circle dangle' stamps on the right are superimposed. We used a mask for the mandala and then stamped the circle dangle rays over it. The border stamps on the bottom and top are among my fave of the bunch. The black ink used is versafine black and the gold embossing powder is by WOW embossing. 

At this point all the gold embossed elements were done, so it was time to color stuff in. And this was the most relaxing part of the workshop. Everyone was quiet and highly ZEN on their coloring.

We used Tombow Dual brush pens and a kuretake water brush pen for the coloring. Since it's a Christmas theme, a lot of red and green colors were being used to color in the elements. Not everything was colored in, and we left the back ground accents black and white mostly because all the cut elements (remember those were a whopping 15!) were all being colored and that's where the accents of the piece lie.
By this time the allotted time for workshop has nearly come to an end and I did my best to get all the pieces colored there because I didn't have the right colors of Tombow brushes at home. But at home I cut all the pieces (with help from my husband, because there was just too many to cut) and assembled the piece together with a flurry of 3d foam tape squares to give it that raised look.


And this is the end result. I forgot to color in the 'Merry Christmas' square at the workshop so that's why those colors are a bit off, but with every thing else, I am quite pleased! Now to find a nice frame for it!


A few other ladies at the workshop chose to do another layout which was even more daunting than this one and it's the one below.




Look at that amount of detail! Amazing! And I do love that color scheme. But this was a bit too 'busy' or 'crowded'  for my taste. But I do love the paisleys behind the flowers. I have an idea to try something with loose paisleys like that for a LCD /CV layout. 

Thanks for the inspirational day, Miranda and Posthumus gang! 
It was a delight to be there.
Hope this inspired you readers as well to work with embossing powder and tombow markers.

Thanks for stopping by.

namaste

Today is reminder to always be thankful

Today my American friends have a national holiday, Thanksgiving and though it's not a world wide celebrated day, I do appreciate the sentiment of what it means to give thanks. So it's a good moment to pause and remind yourself what you're thankful for. In the wake of terror of what happened in France a few weeks ago now, in these terrible and strange times we live in, it's so important to be grateful for the things you have in life. I for one am thankful for a fact that sometimes can be taken for granted; Freedom. To live, laugh, read, write, choose, create, breathe, love... We have the freedom to celebrate life and no one has the power to take that away from us. So today is good reminder to always be thankful. 

The above card I have made for Goulet Pen Company's month long Thanksgiveaway celebration/write in contest. See their blog for a lot of inspiring and heartfelt letters. If you want to join in, you can until november 30th :) 

Thanks for stopping by.

namaste

Monthly planning with sakuralala's 365 stamps in Traveler's Notebook

A while back I entered a giveaway on instagram for the cute Fall 365 stamp sets by sakuralala and I could not believe my luck that I was actually one of the winners!! These babies arrived in the last week of october and they are just fantastic in real life!

The Fall Collection consist of clear stamps sets: alphabet Fukuro, Frame, School, Aki and Daily. The little stampers are just perfect sized for planners! I decided to give the monthly planner thing a go to properly use these stamps. I already have a dated weekly planner for work stuff in my Passport Traveler's Notebook so I decided to try the open monthly planner refill 017 for fun stuff in my new Blue Edition Traveler's Notebook which my husband gifted to me (he knows me so well!)  

NB: they are sold out every where but Misc Store still has a few of them left! 

Thriftfinds Thursday - Inky goodness from across the border

On a recent impromptu trip to Antwerp for my wedding anniversary last weekend, we came across a few fun pen stores: Penworld, Kockx and Pen and Pencil. They are definitely worth the visit! I found a few vintage fountain pen ink gems I want to share with you here.

At Penworld I found the Caran d'Ache blue in a J. Herbin bottle. They are pre Colors of the earth series and I was lucky enough to find a turquoise bottle not too long ago at de Roos in Heemstede, NL. 

Also at the same store, in a little corner tucked away, I found these super cute mini baby bottles of sheaffer skrip inks. 

They are the size of those tiny baby bell cheeses, super cute! I do love cheese, but I rather have these inks than those baby bells though. Just saying in case you were wondering ;)

Then over at Kockx which is the oldest fountain pen store in Antwerp (and also has a lot of exclusive and expensive pens) I found the montblanc violet ink. I am very curious how this compares to the lavender purple. 

I can't wait to swab these on my Maruman Mnemosyne word card tabs. 

What is your latest lucky vintage find?

Thanks for stopping by!

namasté

Mailart Sunday: Typewriter fun

This month's challenge at Inkadinkadutchies is mail art and this is what I made for it.

Stamps used: 

Postcard Backgound  and Typewriter from Carmen's Veranda and Pencil border and Loopy Calligraphy from Lost Coast Designs.

Materials used: 

home made ecoline spray in amber and moss green. Lemon Zest Dylusions spray. Kaleidakolor autumn leaves stamp pad, Versa fine vintage sepia, memento tuxedo black. Diamine Golden Sands shimmer ink. White craft paper. 

How I made it:

On the front I stamped the typewriter with tuxedo black, then masked it. Then stamped the postcards background with versafine vintage sepia, made sure that the pattern covered the whole envelope. The back I stamped with loopy calligraphy and the pencil borders with the autumn leaves stamp pad. I love the color gradients shown. 

I chose ecoline inks with similar colors of the ink pad and sprayed them on the envelope by using mini misters.Together with the bright yellow of the Lemon Zest Dylusions ink spray they made a nice blend. I then splattered some Golden sands ink on it and heat dried it with my heat tool. took away the mask of the typewriter and colored parts of the typewriter with the same amber and moss ecoline with an aquarel brush. Then made a cut through the typewriter to fit in a piece of white craft paper for the address and glued it in place.  

Tip: before mailing off pieces like this, always seal it with a sealing spray, so it doesn't bleed through when it comes in contact with water. 

Hope this inspired you to join in with this month's challenge.

Namaste

Shopping Highlight: Traveler's Pop Up Store at Misc Store Amsterdam

From october 24th to november 24th there is a Traveler's Factory pop up store at Misc Store Amsterdam. With great goodies from Traveler's notebook and other midori items some of which are exclusive to Japan only. The picture above gives you an impression of what you can find there and you can browse through my flickr album to see the close up pictures of exclusive goods there. 

This weekend 7th and 8th of november they have a special "Traveler's Company Caravan make your own spiral notebook" event!  An array of delicious papers to choose from to make your very own unique notebook! It's definitely fun to do and I'm planning on standing in line tomorrow :) 

Maybe I'll see you there? 

namaste!

Happy Fountain Pen Day 2015!

Today is the first friday of november and that means it's time to celebrate a beautiful and versatile writing tool, fountain pen! This day was brought to life 4 years ago and it's been a popular event among fountain pen enthusiasts all over the world! For more information check out Fountain Pen Day site.

My collection of Omas fountain pens, one of my preferred brands of pens.

So what can you do to celebrate fountain pen day? 

Here are a few suggestions from the FPD blog:

1. Write a letter to someone with your favorite fountain pen and ink. Under your signature you can write the pen & ink you used. 
2. Go through your stationery collection and use some of those you have saved for a special occasion. Surprise a friend with that vintage paper. 
3. You can make up a FPD “intro to fountain pens” pack for a friend like this. 
4. Post on your favorite forum or blog by writing it out with your fountain pen. Then take a picture of it and post it. Again, under your signature write what pen & ink you used. 
5. Instead of typing Facebook status updates and tweets on Twitter, write them and upload a picture of them (mention the reason that you’re doing it at well.) 
6. Take one of the pens you don’t use anymore and send it off to a friend with a handwritten note. If you don’t have any pens you want to part with you can shop one of the online retailers and have it sent direct to them. 
7. Make that the weekend you have your pen club meet up. 
8. Turn off your computer and put down the phone and spend some time writing. 

These are really great suggestions and I for one am going to celebrate it by ogling my pretty pens and of course writing with them (pretty much what I do every day, LOL!) 

Another suggestion I have is: introduce a newbie to fountain pens. Lend or give someone who has never written with a fountain pen before an inexpensive FP so they can see if it's something for them to give a go on the long run. Hey, I got my husband hooked on using fountain pens and he was an avid rollerball user. Now he won't leave the house without his Lamy's and Pilot VPs :) 

Also keep watch on the FPD blog for giveaways and deals by the many sponsors of this events! Some pretty sweet raffles going on for great Fountain pens and also many offer sales and discounts on their (web)shops!

So, what are you doing to celebrate fountain pen day? What ever it is you're doing, make sure you have inky spots on your fingers, otherwise it doesn't count ;) 

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

namaste!

Pens and Ink: Omas Blue Angel with Organics studio Nautilus Blue

On a recent trip to Akkerman in The Hague I was tempted yet again by a gorgeous LE Omas Alba. This time a stunning blue cocktail, named Blue Angel.

Blue seduction in a box.

But what had my heart racing even more was the fact it was fitted with a beautiful stub nib! I definitely could not pass this up.

The ink I chose to accompany this beautiful pen, is sadly now from a discontinued line. Organics Studio Jules Verne Nautilus blue, is the adventurous deep ocean blue that certainly matches the depth of the blue in the pen very well.

The nib writes excellent and is quite a looker too! I had to give it a good rinse with luke warm water to clean the feed from factory oils, but after that it just writes like a dream!

What is your current fave pen and ink combo at the moment?

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste

Mailart Sunday: Having some fun with diamine shimmeritastic inks!

In my last post I showed you the writing examples with Diamine Shimmertastic ink samples, Mishka from Bureau Direct so graciously provided and today I wanted to show you some mail art I made with the remaining drops that were in the sample vials. No drop was wasted! [This post is going to be image heavy]

I started off with making my base back grounds first. I drizzled some drops with a pipette and tapped the inks strait from the vials on the page and sprayed water all over the pages with a mini mister, so that the colors would blend over. Then I dried the pages with my heat tool.

It's important that you use good absorbent yet sturdy (watercolor)paper for this. The paper I used is the Maruman Zuan B5 sketchbook which I got at my recent Pen Store haul. It's 126.5 grams of great quality water color paper and with the inks and water spillage I have doled out, it hold up pretty well! No bleed through on the other side as you can see above (the smudges on the right side is from excess water that pooled over) And warping of the page after drying is minimal.

When the sheets were properly dry, I added some more shimmery ink drops on them by using a syringe to create random spatter patterns. I also diluted the ink a little bit in the ink vial to get more 'mileage' out of the last few drops. This way you also create some color variation, a light ombre in the color scheme. When I was satisfied with the amount of droplets, I dried the pages with my heat tool again. This time, when dried completely as shown in the picture above, the added drops are much brighter and the shimmer is more pronounced. Now to turn these pieces into mail art!

I took 2 of the background pieces I liked most and stamped Joy Crafts Old Letter Rose 2 and Old Letter Butterfly (by Noor design) on them. By this time I had run out of Shimmering inks but a good friend of mine gave me a full set of these in sample bottles so I could play with them more.  I colored some accents in the rubber stamp image, like the rose, butterfly, postage stamp etc. by using a pentel color water brush to make the image pop out more.

I used blue lightning to accentuate pieces in the rubber stamp, wings of the butterfly, postcard header, cancellation stamps and the postage stamp.

With the rose I used red luster to accentuate the petals of the rose a edges of the leafs and corners of the 'post card' header. I also diluted the Magic Forest color in the leafs to accentuate that part more.

I also used the water color brush to create depth in the Rose petals. Make sure you use a water proof rubber stamp ink, I used memento rich cacao and tuxedo black, because your image can wash away if you don't. You can stamp over the dried image again to give the image its crispness back.

A couple of close ups of the pieces so you can see the shimmering accent better.

The last step was to glue the pages to card stock and I rounded off the corners with a punch.

And there you have it! I hope this inspired you to mess around with shimmery inks and rubber stamped images too :) And in the end your fingers will probably look like this

And you will find glitter EVERYWHERE! But that is part of the fun ;)

Thanks for stopping by!

Namaste

Inky Goodness: Diamine Shimmering Inks

Due to the generosity of Mishka from Bureau Direct, I received a few samples of the new Diamine shimmering inks in samples to try out. And wow, these are really great inks! I had the chance to pick colors I like and I picked the above ones. FYI: all the samples have been written with a vintage Waterman 12 and flexible Ideal #2 nib on Muji dotted notebook paper which is similar to Midori MD paper.

Purple Pazzazz is a lovely deep violet color with a golden shimmer to it. The ink color reminds me a bit of Montblanc's lavender purple (old formula) that also had a hint of gold sheen to it when the inks pools up. I had a bit of trouble getting this color washed out of the feed of my pen, because the color is so rich and saturated. But eventually it does washes out completely.

Blue Lightning is the one I was so excited to try out! Turquoise and a silver shimmer?! Well the ink gods (aka Diamine) have been very good to me with producing this one! I developed an instant crush! I do wonder what base color diamine chose for this though, since it has similarities to Montblanc's Honoré de Balzac Dandy Turquoise... but that one has more red sheen to it.

Golden Sands is definitely the underdog in the line up, but I think this one will appeal to many. It does remind me of beautiful desert in like Dubai or something... Gorgeous golden brown color with a golden shimmer. This ink also shades really well and I love how it looks in italic nibs like I have in my Pelikan M205 congac.

The shading and shimmer pool together really well.

 

Magical forest... I gotta hand it to Diamine, they sure know how to name their inks! This one is very aptly named as well. This was a surprise ink thrown in by Mishka and I was very pleasantly surprised! A gorgeous shade of emerald and the shimmer in there is also green. A very pretty pearly combination. This would look good in my TWSBI Diamond 580 green edition with 1.1 nib... oh yeah!

So I will definitely get some bottles of these and am very curious how the other colors look IRL. If you want to see a more in depth review of these inks, check out Gourmetpens review on these! Also if you are feeling bold, Leigh Reyes has made an excellent post on how to Shimmerfy your own inks!

I have made some mail art with the ink samples I received and in the next Mailart Sunday post, I will show you  how those turned out. 

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste

Paper Goods: Maruman Mnemosyne Word Cards

Last week I got ill with a really unpleasant flue type thing and was stuck at home for a good while. So I thought I'd spend my time doing what I like to do best, organizing and cataloging stuff. Yeah it was almost like being at work ;) I wanted to make a better and more comprehensive chart of all the inks I have in samples and bottles. The color chart wheels I made with Le Typographe ticket books are fun, but limited to the set of pages in those booklets. When I heard about the Mnemosyne Word Cards on the Goulet Q and A while back, I knew these would be perfect for what I had in mind.

This was my set up: In front of the telly, while watching some Graham Norton episodes on you tube... And then it was swabbing time! 

The cards hold up ink really well, great drying time, no bleed through and minimal feathering!

Q-tips are great for swabs, and I made sure I hit the edges of the cards and used a vintage semi flex pen, by Onoto de La Rue to dip and write the brand and ink name.

The booklet has 100 sheets with 156 grams of water color like paper. Because there is no bleed through, you can also opt to use the back of the cards. I will use it to write information on the type of ink on (ie if I have just tried a sample or a bottle) 
And three ink sample trays in, I already filled one of these booklets! I am currently busy with booklet number 2 and the sad news is that I heard these word cards are being discontinued, so I stacked up on them to make sure I can still use them for future swabs.

Hope this gave you some idea's on how to make your own ink swabs.

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste