Let it snow

If you have been scrapbooking for very long you can probably look through your books and find trends in your techniques. You know, the paper tearing phase, the eyelet phase, the brad phase, the black-and-white phase, the bling-n-ink phase. You get the idea. Some of these things become part of your personal style, some don't.

I've been in an ink phase for quite a while now.

When I first started using ink in my scrapbooking, my hands were always covered with different colors that would not wash off. Friends and even total strangers would come up and say, "What is wrong with your hands?" like I had some sort of contagious disease and they might need to grab their kids and run. I thought that with time I would learn how to use the ink without getting it all over myself. I was wrong. I still get it all over my hands. So if you see me with normal, clean hands, you better tell me to get busy because I probably am not scrapbooking or paper crafting enough.

One of my favorite inking tools is the Ranger Inkssentials blending tool. The package says it gives better control of your ink -- "no more inky fingers!" which might be true for you, but totally isn't for me -- but even though I still get ink all over myself, I don't know how I ever lived without it. It has foam pads that stick on with Velcro, and they work great to blend and apply ink. I keep one pad for each different color. It's so easy and fun to use that I ink random things just to be inking. (Paper, gems, my craft table, my fingers, my sleeves, the floor, the cat...)

That's how this snow sign came about. Karen showed me the cute little Bazzill snowflake chips, and I thought, hey...I could ink those!

The Bazzill chips are white, textured on one side, and they take ink very well. I added lots of sparkles to them and then hung them on wire I had beaded with seed beads. I spiraled the wire to give it a little bounce. The Bazzill chips also come in trees, candy canes and light bulbs. There is also a very cute little gingerbread chipboard house at the store that is calling out my name!

I wanted my project to feel wintry so I used lots of cool blue ink, white paint, blue Bazzill card stock, and one of the newer Bazzill Just-the-Edge borders. I put gems and Hero Arts pearls randomly on the sign around the letters to look like ice or glittery little snowflakes. I really like the way the pearls look, and I love how they can be colored with Copic markers (and the gems can, too).

One thing I thought about but didn't do -- though it could look really cool -- is to use some Stickels to make a little "snow" on the sign.

For the lettering, I used various chipboard and Thickers brand letters. They are all painted white and have Broken China colored Ranger ink on them to add some depth. The "W "is from the Tim Holtz line of grunge board, which is really cool to work with because it is completely flexible and you can paint, ink, or sand it. Each box is full of several different fonts and sizes. If you haven't seen the grunge board yet you should really check it out. I'm sure there are more ways to use it than I have discovered -- if you have a fun technique you use on it, leave me a comment, I'd love to hear!

~Malinda