Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Posts Tagged ‘Stamping’

I love the colors in this, but can’t think how to use it. Not going to paste it to walls.

Suggestions welcome. If no one can come up with something it’s going in the trash.

(I lie… it’s too pretty to toss, but I will WANT to toss it)

hugs,
Vyx

P.S. I made a basic square back envelope with a piece of this… and took it to the sink and scrubbed the paste off. Not very convenient. I have some metallic text weight papers, I may use some of the uglier colors to line envelopes with.

I have no idea who makes this stamp. Or the background butterflies, either. Probably both were bought at Grapevine the last time I went. (2005?) Anyhow, I don’t think I’ve ever used the background stamp before… I love the way it looks as rubber, but it’s hard to ink up and stamp with.

After playing with both for a while, here is what I came up with. Could be better… maybe rounded the corners of the front layer… something.

Altho I’ve been stamping for a few years, I haven’t really done any in the last 4 years. Taking me a bit to get back into it, where one card doesn’t take me 6 hours!

I’ll probably be posting a lot more cards here in the next few days… I quit smoking and need something to do with my hands. :)

hugs,
Vyx

I’ve loved this stamp ever since I bought it a few years ago at Paper Odyssey in Eureka Springs. Sara had the most wonderful sample for using it, and I managed to beg the sample to borrow for a while, so that I could do one of my own at home.

Which I did, and sent Sara her sample back.

I’ve made quite a few cards with this stamp, usually just plain stamping and then coloring on white or cream cardstock.

This time I did layers.

I think I did a good job for me. It only took about 6 cards to get close to a design I liked. :)

Hugs,
Vyx

I recently bought a new in box Xyron 510, complete with all the sample cartridges. Great deal, because the new machines don’t come with all those sample cartridges that I’ve seen.

I owned one of these a few years ago, altho I think it was a slightly different model. I don’t think it did anything but adhesive. Gave it away because the adhesive around the edges of stuff bothered me.

Well, now I was thinking I’d like to have one to do some small laminating with. So, when someone offered up this NEW in box machine, I snapped it up. It’s not HER fault I have had such bad luck.

First thing I did was feed a couple bookmarks into it, as the double laminate cartridge was already loaded. That was a mistake. The machine promptly started crumpling my bookmarks and messing em up. I tried to rescue them, but it was no use. They were ruined. And so was the new Xyron. Somehow with my trying to rescue my bookmarks, I broke something inside. I could pull things thru, but cranking the handle didn’t do anything at all.

Well, I’m not going to let some machine beat me. I took it apart, saw the problem, and used some super glue to FIX the problem. I’d cracked the gear attached to the bottom roller so that it wasn’t able to make the roller go. (the top roller moves freely, only the bottom one is geared) I used lots of gel super glue, and glued that plastic gear to the metal roller. Let it sit over night, and instead of testing with laminate… I put the adhesive cartridge in. Works good.

So, it works again. Sort of has a hitch when you turn the handle as it gets to the part of the gear that is cracked, but I can deal with that. I do a bunch of things with adhesive, no probem. Go to put some bookmarks through with the double sided laminate again, and boom… this time I’ve got horrible wrinkles AND it grabbed the bookmarks unevenly so that they almost overlapped at the end. Sigh. Ruined more bookmarks.

I try the magnet laminate cartridge. Works fine, except that the adhesive on the magnet top won’t stick to anything. It sort of sticks to the laminate, but who wants big black borders around things? Yuck.

Now, my idea was to make a bookmark for everyone that joined my bookmark swap. I’ve already ruined a bunch messing with the Xyron. But I gotta keep trying, because the other way is to use laminate sheets, and those are not as heavy as they used to be. They’re okay, but not as nice as I like. Time consuming, too. Not to mention all those fingerprints I get on things sticky. Heh.

Okay, gonna try this again. I manage to get 6 bookmarks through the machine without anything messing up too terribly. Got some curl going on, but I cranked it out to start a bit to make sure I had all the wrinkles gone. I’m feeding the last 2 that I have ready to go in… get to the end, make sure they are sticking out enough, and slide the cutter bar across. It cuts the bottoms off my bookmarks AND at an angle. What? They were past the outside edge of the cutter guide, or so I thought. Sheesh.

I swear, I think this machine is possessed. But more likely, it’s just me and my inexperience with it. So when I was over in the big city last week, I bought a new double laminate cartridge, for the next time I want to do bookmarks. But next time I’m going with something square, like Debbie B in CO did. I’ll waste less laminate and won’t have to wrestle with trying to put 2 bookmarks through the machine at the same time.

That’s my story and I’m um, laminated to it. LOL!

Vyx

I’m not a very prolific carver, and I haven’t got all my carvings scanned yet, so…

2 stamps make up this design

Above is one of the first stamps I carved. I still like it so much that I used it for my theme here. :)

Next up, Mavis the Merhare. I was going to use her for bookmarks as the carving doesn’t fit on a regular sized card, but decided to go with something else. I drew Mavis myself by tracing the outline of a rabbit head from a christmas cookie tin and then adding in the somewhat fishy body. She has fur like a seal, rather than scales.

a carving done for Myrth

Mavis is friends with Vandalin, also part of Myrth. My daughter drew this one for me, she’s an excellent artist. Sarah is also a scientist, so Vandalin’s feet look like real turtle feet.

another creature of Myrth

Year of the Rat carving that I did last year. This isn’t that great of a scan, but is all I have on hand.
After I finish this post I’ll go scan a few more prints.

First carving done in a long while

To be continued…..