Crafters Corner : speciality papers

Hello there,

How are you all? In my last post here I talked about Neenah Card Stock which is excellent for regular cardmaking and works the best with ink blending, stamping, die cutting and as a card base . Today, I am sharing few other speciality papers and how they work with different mediums. I am sharing few other papers we have at Crafters Corner. See, each paper has its characteristic so read the package carefully to get the best out of it. I am listing few of them with its meaning .

- Acid Free - Means it has pH 7.0 or higher. In our school chemistry we learned about acidic and basic substances and their pH scale measures . If the pH is less than 7 it is considered acidic. Such papers (eg. news paper) deteriorate and become yellowish and brittle. So your cards and scrapbook will deteriorate over time if you are not careful choosing your papers.

- Lignin Free - As we know papers are made from plants. Lignin is a natural occurring bonding element in plants that holds the wood fibre together. While lignin is not an acid, it does give off acids as it deteriorates. Therefore if you have a paper that is only acid free, but still contains lignin, it will become acidic over time.

- Archival Quality - means paper is acid & lignin free, made from cotton and processed in a way to make it more durable.

- Cotton Content - makes paper strong yet pliable at the same time. Cheap papers are made from wood pulp rather than cotton.

1. ) Brustro water color papers.

These papers are made of cotton and cellulose. They are professional grade paper made in Italy . It is cold press paper which means it has texture. The bumps and dents hold colour pigments very well. It adsorbs water quickly without warping and gives bright images.

I simply stamped and heat embossed images from this penny black set . I used various distress inks ( I don't have distress markers. I love to dab my ink pad on an acrylic block and use it as a palate.) Die cut is by PTI die. It didn't buckle or warp a bit in spite of using loads of water and ya, I never tape it down...:P. Use regular glue to mount it on Neenah CS.

And here goes my first video. (It has a spelling mistake but hey...i didn't have time to correct it). It is very basic and mute but I request you all to go easy on my video making skills...:) I really wanted to share how i use distress inks as water colours.

Video : Water colouring with distress inks.

Hope you will enjoy it. And don't forget to leave a comment.

2. Brustro Ultra SmoothBristrol -

This paper is super smooth which makes it ideal for solvent based markers, felt tip pen, ink, airbrush, pencil & charcoal.

I have used the Altenew stamp with black Memento ink for stamping and Copic markers for colouring. Because of the paper's smooth surface, the marker tip glides very smoothly making colouring so...so easy and gives beautiful blending. And it is little less absorbent which means you use less ink to blend.

For the next card, I have used same paper for panel . I used Altenew -Figure Effect- stamp set. Background is stamped in smoke grey-versa fine ink. Added few splatters in gold. For the panel, I used Hero arts Ink Daubers to make that little green slope. Both the figures and 'more than you'll know' sentiment are stamped with versafine-black ink. Added little glossy accent on heart.

As the paper is smooth, stamping was super neat. Along with Neenah this is going to be my go to paper.

3. In my last post, I worked with Neenah and pigment inks. Today, I used various dye inks for stamping on Neenah. See the end result.

I used Papertrey ink stamp to create this fun pattern by stamping multiple times with various (memento, wplus, heroarts) inks. Die is by papertrey too. I stacked various colored die cut underneath to give dimension to sentiment. It gives very elegant touch to the card.

4. You all know about Fabriano paper. It is textured on one side and smooth on other. Their colors are bright and pretty. Here i have used the smooth side of white CS as my card base. it is a simple single layer card with multilayer stamping.

I created a cluster of flowers using wplus9 stamp and various memento inks. Sentiment is by Simon says stamp. Smooth side is ideal for stamping. Textured side can be used as base when you are mounting stamped panel on top of it.

5. Next paper is Brustro Artists'Oil Painting Paper. I don't know how many of you have used this paper but I used it for the first time and I am very impressed. It has this unique paper surface which is obtained through a specialized texturing process. It is similar to linen canvas. I used it as a base for my card. I gave a wash with yellow thin down acrylic color. Added a layer of gesso on top of it to mute the background a little.

I applied texture paste using Tim Holtz Stencil and some acrylic colour splatter. I took one portion of a cover plate die cut by Winnie & Walter. I coloured the die cut using acrylic colours with a piece of foam. Added foil in few parts once dried. Added diamond die cut, sentiment and two rub-ons to finish it off. This paper is perfect fit for mixed-media artists.

I loved this paper so much that I decided to try acrylic colours. I wanted few tags for a friend who is an artist. So instead of making each tag separately, I decided to make a large panel and cut it into tags eventually.

I taped down a panel with masking tape and painted a whole rainbow with acrylics. Once it was dry, I added a wash of white color and drew some shapes with sharpie. I kept on adding layers till I was happy. I was so engrossed that I forgot to take pictures in between. Once it was dry I cut the panel into various tags.