Bookmarks XXXVI: To Sail Beyond the Sunset

I accidentally discovered a technique while making this bookmark, which means that although the bookmark is imperfect (oh horrors!) I might be able to do some cool stuff in the future.

See, I covered part of the bookmark with clear embossing powder before stamping on it. You can't see the clear embossing in the picture, but you can clearly see the difference between the part of the stamp on the embossing and the part off of it.

The stamping on the embossed part looks really awesome and watery. It's perfect for the ship's reflection. (Reflections are great for reverse stamping -- I wanted it to be a bit broken up anyway!) It's less perfect on the ship itself.

If I'd know this was going to happen, I would have put the ship right at the horizon, instead more towards us. Then only the reflection would have had the wateriness. Heck, maybe I would have put more sunset ink down in the water beforehand, because if I could get the wateriness there, it would be a gorgeous effect.

This was done with pigment ink, so I'm a little surprised it didn't just stick nicely on top of the embossing powder. This looks more like what I'd expect of a dye ink? I'm guessing the effect has to do not just with the glossiness of the embossing powder, but the texture -- except over the lower half of the sun, this was not a heavy coat, so it has a more up-and-down texture as individual grains spread and melted together but didn't form a uniform surface.

I definitely had to heat-set the ink here. Would that be unnecessary with something like a StazOn ink? Probably. Would I get the same effect with something like a StazOn ink? Well, if the glossiness is responsible, I probably wouldn't. But if it's mostly the texture, I probably would. This calls for more experimentation.

It's unlikely that this is some kind of breakthrough technique. If anyone knows of tutorials or technique posts about stamping on top of heat-embossed areas -- not resist techniques, but ones where the ink is supposed to stay on the embossed area -- please link them for me.

Has anyone noticed that sunset colors are pretty much fall colors? And that there are quite a few fall color based challenges hanging around? It's very poetic, since we might think of fall as the sunset of the year.

For example, look at DYSU's inspiration picture for this week's challenge "Warm Colors" and tell me it isn't just as sunset-y as autumnal:

It also strikes me that while this bookmark doesn't have anything to do with "sweaters" or "harvest", it does rather fit the "melancholy" word from the Loves Rubberstamps inspiration words:

(Of course, it also uses "red" and "yellow".)

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• Do You Stack Up? #92: Warm Colors
• Pause Dream Enjoy #40: Purple & Orange (It's a reddish purple, but there's definitely a lot of purple and orange going on here.)
• Hiding in My Craft Room #66: Black, Orange, & Purple (plus a bit of red, I admit)
• Card Crafter's Circle #43: Autumn Colors (this is a bookmark, not a card, but the rules say tags etc. are okay so I think this fits)
• Loves Rubberstamps 20: All About Autumn (mainly using words "red" and "yellow", but also a bit of "melancholy". Uses Gourmet Rubber Stamps' Ship, which Loves Rubberstamps would still carry if I hadn't just bought it off them.)
• DL.ART Thankful Thursday: Halloween/fall colors or an owl or both (just fall colors)
• MilkCoffee: Welcome Fall (fall colors, fall as the sunset of the year)
• Little Miss Muffet 45: Simplicity (it's not one layer, but I think it fits as a CAS project)
• Crafty Mess 19: Anything Goes

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's October Anything Goes or Breast Cancer Awareness Linky Party.

Supplies:

Bookmarks XIV: Clean and Simple Birthday

Orange is more complicated than I thought.

Click here to skip the rambling and go directly to the project and challenge listing.

This week's challenge at the Annabelle Blog was Say It In... Lime, Mango, and Orange:

And I had a lot of colors like those, but none that made a very good set of nice bright colors like in the prompt. I tried a lot of them:

"Citrine" is obviously the best choice for Lime. I could find only one acceptable yellow orange for Mango, the "banana custard" from the Color Box Swell queue. As it's more a "soft yellow" than "yellow-orange", the the bright oranges didn't look very good at all with it. So even though "mango tango" would have matched better, I went with the softer "sweet melon" for my Orange. Also from the Swell queue.

I have used that queue in the last billion three or so projects. It's been really useful but I think I need to get away from it for a project or two. There are only so many pastel rainbows a girl can stand, you know?

Anyway... there are a couple of birthday challenges going around, so I incorporated those. And after the seventy-five different tries at "the right green" I went through for the last set of bookmarks, I wasn't in the mood for fuss, so CAS-ual Friday's challenge sounded great: clean, simple, use embossing. I mean, hey, I've got this sparkly new embossing powder that I decided not to use on the last project, and I was a little sad about that... and birthdays need sparkle, right?

It's definitely simple, and pretty clean, although I guess color gradation and sparkles are little fancy. I like it, though. (And I really like the time it took to make!)

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• Annabelle Challenge 085: Say it in... Lime, Mango, Orange, & White
• CAS-ual Fridays Challenge 69: Use Embossing (the images are heat embossed with sparkle-y, a.k.a. clear + glitter, embossing powder)
• Top Tip Tuesday Challenge 84: Birthday Gifts
• Do You Stack Up? Challenge #88: Birthdays

Supplies: