Alcohol Ink Techniques for Christmas Cards Class

1. Alcohol Ink Techniques for Christmas Card Making Class: Hello and welcome to alcohol ink techniques for Christmas cards. Now, in this class we're going to go over several different ways to use alcohol inks and your card making. And in the process, we're going to make some Christmas cards. Let's go take a look at what we're covering. These are the five cards that we're going to be creating, creating in this class, we're going to use a variety of different stamps and dies. All holiday, Christmas themed. The techniques though will work for any stamp or die. We're using some line stamps as well as some solid image stamps. Then different dyes that will coordinate with the cards use different alcohol ink techniques. But these three cards will be created all at once because we're removing ink from one and then adding it to the other and then decorating it. This class also comes with a downloadable civil ILS PDF that will have pictures of each of the sample cards as well as the supplies used to make each one. And then each of those supplies will be linked to where you can purchase them if you choose. But it's great to have a sample pictures with the supplies that are listed for each one of them so that you don't have to make notes or remember while you're taking the client, let's go create some Christmas cards. 2. Pinecone Card: Faux Watercolour Technique: So our first alcohol ink card we're gonna do is this acorn one. And really any silhouette stamp will work for this. For alcohol inks, we're actually going to use alcohol ink markers because we have a little bit more control over this. So what we're gonna do, and I've got a piece of glossy card stock here for my first stamping, I've got a piece of playing card stock here. We'll do a second stamping just to see what we get. And that way if the ink isn't going to be wasted. So what I'm going to do is I'm starting with my lightest color. These are Copic markers that I'm using. You could use any alcohol-based marker. It will work just fine. So I start with my lightest color and color, the whole section that I want, the color that I am using it in this case of Brown, you wouldn't be able to use alcohol inks and a jar with this because you wouldn't have the control and you'd end up getting a lot of it running in between the stamp punish just going to end up making it a pain in the butt to clean up constantly or to clean up the whole thing. So for the next color, the medium color, I'm just tapping the color on. I want to get a little bit of the acorn texture to it. I'm not covering the whole thing. We're not going to, some of this texture is going to be lost because when we go to stamp. So this is the third color, that dark color. You could just do this with two colors. I happen to like doing a little bit more than that. I happen to like doing the three colors, but if you only had two, it would work totally fine. So now I'm going to do the greens. I'm going in with the lightest color first. I'm coloring all of that greenery, although the middle part here, right above the acorns or the pine cone story is really going to be covered over by darker color. Not going to see it. I just like to have one layer of color down so that if by chance when I'm doing a next color, I happen to miss it. I still have color there. So now I'm starting in the center with the medium color. I'm just flicking my pen out. I want a nice gradual change from the medium color to the dark. When we go to stamp it, we're going to spray it with some isopropyl alcohol that's going to rehydrate all of the ink. This ink is drying while you're using it. There's no way to color fast enough for it to still be wet. So we need to use the isopropyl to re-wet the ink. And when we do that, some of those colors are going to run together anyways, which is totally fine. This is how you get a full watercolor with alcoholics. So I'm using my darkest color here on the sentiment because I want to make sure that that shows up really, really well. My paper here, I'm going to move that over because I don't want to get some over spray from the isopropyl. So I have a spray bottle here with isopropyl is 99%. I'm going to spray it probably about four times. I'm going to do it two times from this side and then I'm gonna flip around and do it two times from the other side. And you want a nice even missed. You don't want to use a sprayer and you're going to stamp it right away. You don't want to use a sprayer, that big blobs of spray. You want it as even as possible. My piece of card stock here is four and a quarter by 5.5. It's going to be cut down for the card. But I always like to have a bigger piece of card stock. So then if I happen to stamp it a little bit crooked, I have a little bit of leeway there. So beautiful. There's my first stamping. Now let's, I'm gonna move this over here. Let's get a second stamping. Most of that ink is gone. But let's just see what we have here. I use cheap or inexpensive, just playing card stock for this. I don't use my glossy card stock for this. Just because chances are I'm not going to get a really good stamping with this. But I've been surprised before. Hold it firmly in one area and press down with the other, making sure that the stamp has good contact with your paper. Not bad, it's not the best, but it's not bad. I'm not sure. I'm going to put it aside. I don't know whether I'm going to use it or not. But it's always interesting to see some of the time, sometimes what you get, I've done it before. We've actually gotten three stamping out of it. So sometimes you'd be surprised. So it's worth it if it ended up being, So this is my, when I was doing the sample, I ended up getting a few there. But it's worth it just to see if by chance there's enough ink on there. So this is alcohol inks or you're going to need to clean it with a permanent ink. Cleaner, saves on cleaner rule work. I like to use the ultra clean. I might not great for permanent inks. So it makes sure that that is clean. Before you put it away. I am going to cut this down to five inches by 33 quarters. And I'll see you in the next video and we'll assemble our card. 3. Pinecone Card: Assembly: Okay, I've cut my piece down here. Let's assembler card together and chose a nice hunter green card base for it because it brings out some of the greens in the image. And like I said, any solid image will work for this. And it's fun to just have fun and play around with them and see what you get. Because really it's quite a quick card. It's a super simple technique and I love how alcohol inks they drive very, very quick. So I'm not waiting a long time for my inks to dry. You can get a lot of cards done in a short amount of time. With this technique. The last step that I did, I kinda thought it looked slightly playing. So just to add a little bit of dimension, I just added a little gold bow. It could be whatever color you want. I didn't want to add too much the card and take away from the stamped image. I thought just a little bow. Added enough. Oops. That and a little bit too much. When I do Bose, I like to make a big one and then I pull my tails a little bit smaller just to make it the size that I want towards my scissors. Cut the tails off. I'm going to use the same distress collage medium that I just believed my car together with. And I'm going to put a bit on the back and sit down and just let it sit there to dry. It does take a little bit for it to dry because it's a liquid glue for this particular application anyways, gluing two pieces of paper together as a lot quicker. But there we go. Very quick, very simple. I love this technique, will see you in the next video. 4. Santa & Sleigh Card: Alcohol Ink Watercolour Part 1: So the second card that we are going to create is this Santa and slay card. And we're gonna do a bit of watercolor ish in with some alcohol inks. So I have bottles that have alcohol ink in them. There are about a quarter of the alcohol ink from the bottle and the rest is isopropyl, so it's a diluted solution. It's going to lighten the color a little bit and it's just going to help it flow around the card. So the first step is we're going to stamp and emboss the image. This gives us a little tiny bit of a raised area where the image is. It's not enough that if you put a ton of alcohol ink on it, it's going to hold it in. It is only going to help slightly with kinda keeping it all in place. So I'm using some brilliance ink here. It's a really nice black ink. And I'm going to use clear embossing powder. You want to use clear embossing powder with alcohol inks because the alcohol ink does start to break down the embossing. And with clear powder, you don't really notice that if you use to color, you would start to notice that it is breaking down. So once again, my piece of paper is bigger than I need it to be. It's foreigner quarter by 5.5. Once I'm done, I'm going to cut it down to 33 quarters by five inches. These measurements would be on your supply list so you don't need to remember them. Alright. Clear powder on. You don't want to make sure that it's on all of the different parts of ink before we met it or melted with the heat gun. Here we go. Some of the ink dried super, super quick. Okay. I'm going to use an embossing gun to melt it. So this blows heat or emits heat to melt the powder. It doesn't blow air. I realized after I turned that he's got on there that I had half a sentence there. So you don't want to use a blow dryer which will dry out the ink and just blow air and ended up blowing your powder off. You want to use an embossing tool that emits heat and just melts the powder where it is. So the first thing I'm going to do is do the sky. And the reason I'm doing this guy is if I've had a chance I go over any areas, I can color over top of them with the next colors and it's a little bit more forgiving. So these bottles that I'm using has a really fine tip to them and I'm pressing pretty gently. I don't want to press out a whole bunch of ink. I'm just trying to color in those areas. I'm trying to get the bottom part a little bit lighter. And then we'll do the darker part on the top. I can do that a little bit quicker because I'll have the bottom part done. So you see some of these colors are kind of going over the lines and that's because that embossing makes a slight ridge is really not a huge bump. So it's not going to really hold anything in, it's just going to help it. And this is especially going to be noticeable when we go to paint the trees and the buildings and stuff like that. When we go to do those ones, I'm going to be using these here. They're actually disposable like eyeliner applicators that I found online that work perfect for this. I'm going to put some clear isopropyl alcohol down. And then some of the blue I want that clear to help this move around a little bit. Then I'm going to use my brush to try to help move it around a little bit more. I want to get that sky covered before that alcohol ink dries. Alcohol ink dry, super super quick. But there's not a whole lot of work time with it. I'm not really careful. I'm not sorry. I'm not concerned with getting it completely even. I like having some lighter areas and some darker areas that makes it a more natural SKY to me. But I am wanting some of that blue to cover the whole sky. A little bit more on if you want. Just keep in mind if the ink has dried around it, you are going to get some lines alcoholic just does that. But by adding the isopropyl ahead of time, there shouldn't be it should be to dry quite yet. All right. I think that's good for my sky. But you'll see I've got lots of blue in the trees here. And that is totally fine. So I'm going to move that up way so that I don't grab it. I am done with the aqua color and the denim color. Alright, the colors that I'm using on the supply list so that you know that as well. I don't think I'll need the clear isopropyl and know that I said I'm done with the aqua color. I just realized that I'm actually not. So I'm gonna put a little bit in here and lift it up with my brush. I want a little bit of that aqua color on the snow. A, it's going to hide these bits that go down below the line. It's also just going to give a little bit of shadow to that snow. There we go. You can go down as much as you want or leave it fairly high. Up. There we go. Now I'm going to do some green for the trees. And I just put a few drops. This is a little dish, has got a little well in it. You don't want to put too much of too much alcohol ink in there because like I said before, alcoholic evaporates and dries fairly quickly. So if you put too much in your bowl, it's just going to evaporate on you while you're working. Myself, put just a little bit in and add more when you need it. That way it doesn't go to waste. Now, any of these wells from previous projects or from before, I typically would reuse them again and just put a similar color ink in there. And you can see with doing these trees, I worked from the top down to the bottom. And I tried to work fairly quickly so that my ink hasn't totally dried so that I'm not getting lines between the light and the dark. The beauty part about this image is if the ink happens to go slightly out of the lines, I still looks good. The aqua and the Navy that are on some of these trees that have gone over the lines from when I was doing the sky. It will blend with the green for the trees. And just give it a little bit of a different shade. I need a little bit more green. This big tree is the one that your chances aren't going to have a harder time keeping the ink wet while you're coloring. But I tend to use emotion kind of like the branches would be there if I do get lines, it just looks like texture, oops, wrong color. You can see that I'm doing my trunks. The green, the color that I have for my buildings is terracotta. And I'm gonna go back once I'm done my buildings and I'm gonna put terracotta over top of that green. And it's just going to make it more brown color. All right, done with those trees. If you want, you can go over 1 second or a couple of second time, just make them a little bit darker, just so that your trees aren't all exactly the same shade of green that there's some lights and darks to it. There we go. 5. Santa & Sleigh Card: Alcohol Ink Watercolour Part 2: Now, let's do the terracotta color. And obviously you can choose whatever colors you want for this. I happened to have these colors already diluted from other projects. But these bottles are great. They feel really, really nicely. And I just write the name on the side of the bottle so I know exactly what the color is. I especially like using these bottles when I'm doing some alcoholic jelly printing because it just dilutes the color a little bit, makes it flow. Eliminates the step of having to add too much isopropyl because it's already mixed in there. You can see this image color is super, super quickly. We've got our buildings done. So last step, I'm just going to take this terracotta, go over top of that green. They're going to mix together and make a bit of a different shade. You can see my green went under the lines there. I just leave it in to me. Part of those imperfections make things what they are. I think it makes it more interesting. Alright, I'm gonna wait a few seconds for those inks to dry. I will see you in the next video. I'll cut this down so that it's ready to assemble. And then we'll assemble our card. 6. Santa & Sleigh Card: Assembly: Alright, our ink is dry. We're ready to assemble our card. I'm going to put the mat down first. I use the same hunter green that I used for the card base of the last one. I didn't want to use it for the card base of this one. I thought it would be great to just kinda bring out those trees a little bit, tie in that color. I'm using distress collage medium to glue my layers down. I liked the distress collage medium because it is clear and it is Matt. So if anything happens to seep out, you're not even going to know it was there. There we go. Now you definitely want to make sure that your alcohol inks are completely dry when you glue your car together. Otherwise, the alcohol ink, even if it is mostly dry but just a little bit there, can sometimes react with the glue and interfere with it so you want to make sure that it is completely dry. So now I'm going to use a little bit of stick goals. We could leave the card like this if you want. But the stickers just add a little bit of sparkle to it and I think take it to the next level. I'm just going to put just a tiny little bit under the reindeer and slay. A little bit of sparkle there. Then a little bit on the trees. I didn't do it on the sample, but I could do sum on the top of the hills as well, just the top of the snow. Because in my mind, the stick walls is the sparkle from the snow, the frost, that sort of thing. I'm actually going to do it on this one. Once you have your stickers on, you want to leave it for a little while for it to dry. And it really depends on how thick of a layer you've put on as to how long, typically half an hour to an hour is good, but if you do a really, really thick layer, it's going to take just a little bit longer. So when it's wet, It's like that. When it's dry they stick was just reduced in size and you get more of a sparkle from it. 7. Creating Alcohol Ink Backgrounds: So if in the next section we're going to create three cards at once, we're going to create a background. And then we're gonna do some lifting to stamp on the other two to create those cards. We're also going to create two other backgrounds, one for this flower and one for the slow though those ones were going to die cut. So they don't need to be perfect backgrounds. But let's create those. So in this video we are going to do those three backgrounds. I have a, it's actually a hair tool that is low voltage and it's got two speeds and it's also got a cool setting to it. Then I'm going to use to blow the inks around. You could also use an alcohol ink blower. This just works a little bit quicker. So for the first background, I'm going to miss my paper. This model just has 99% isopropyl alcohol in it. I've also got a dropper bottle with that. I'm just going to use one color, it's the crimson. We're going to create a background just with the crimson. I love this color because it's just a nice, beautiful, rich red. And then start moving it around. But this one, I want the whole back ground covered. It doesn't need to be all evenly one color and it always works best when it's got more than one shade of the same color to it. If you haven't worked with alcoholics before, they do try dry fairly quickly? I've got some ridges here where the alcoholic won't go. So what I'm going to do is put some isopropyl in those open spots, add some ink. I do the isopropyl first, add some of the ink color and then more isopropyl and that helps it move around. And then we'll fill in those areas. And if by chance you want to rehydrate the whole piece with ink. That's what this spray bottles for. It's good for getting across the whole oral over the whole surface, but it's also good for rehydrating your whole background. If by chance you don't love it. It also adds some textures to some of those areas that just get a little bit of mist. Which in turn makes it look a little bit more interesting. Oh, I must have sucked up some of the crimson with the bottle dropper because I got a little bit in there. Alright, I just don't want these big white patches here. I'm trying to eliminate those. I don't normally put it on the highest setting, but I just wanted to make sure they get that ink and some of those things as before it dries. You want to make sure you're using a surface that you don't mind getting stained with alcohol ink. If you use a lighter Matt, chances are the alcohol ink is going to stay in it. Alright. So I'm going to set this aside to dry. I'm going to create another one and I'm going to leave that stuff at the bottom there. I will clean it up once I'm done my backgrounds. But that liquid underneath there is going to help hold this piece of paper or a piece of view but one place. And I'm using a tuple paper, which is not a paper as a synthetic, it's a plastic paper, but as a perfect surface. We're using for alcohol inks because they stay on the surface. This is one of the ones I'm going to die cut. The first one is the one that we are going to use the lift ink and stamp off of. So I've got the same crimson and I'm also using Kenyatta brass. I'm not a huge gold person, but I love this one because it's got, it's not too yellow. And it flows really nicely. So I put some of that Kenyatta in each of those spots and then I'm adding some isopropyl to spread it around. Since this is one of the ones that we're die cutting, is just to get the color over the whole surface that I want areas big enough to die pet. My point set is, I'm just gonna do it once. Now the reason I didn't use Kenyatta brass for the first one because we're using alcohol lifting and the lift it doesn't lift metallic. So you would still have metallic in some areas that you are lifting your image from? Sometimes that's okay for this one. I just didn't want to have that in there. Then once you've got your ink that's not blowing anymore, once it's pretty much set in a certain area. And you can set it aside to completely dry. And you want to make sure it is completely dry. Before you die cut. You will get some alcoholic that transfers to your die anyways, but you can just clean it off with isopropyl alcohol that will get set to the side. And then this one, this one here, I want it lighter colors because I want to have some lighter areas because it's going to be a dicot there. We're going to put on the red and I don't want red on red. These aren't perfect colors, but they will work for what we're doing. I just want to lighten it up a little bit. Good amount of that isopropyl. This one is salmon and it is really diluted with isopropyl. And this one is a pink Schubert. And it is also really diluted. But you can see once we add a little bit of the crimson, it'll just lighten the whole thing up. And that way when we have our dicot flower on there, it's not going to get completely lost. I just want to make sure that the part that we're going to die cut is able to be seen from the background. A little bit different. One thing I forgot to add, I've got some rainbow sparkles is from mirror boo, just to add a bit of glitter to it. There we go. Just to get a bit of a different texture. This is another one of the ones that we are going to die cut. You can see how that is much lighter than this. Sorry, my hands are in front of it. Then. So when we have the dicot flowers, they're going to show up beautifully on that surface. Alright, those backgrounds are done. I am going to set them aside to completely dry before we move on. And I'm also going to completely clean my surface area before moving on as well. I just realized I forgot to say how to clean up your surface area. I just take that same isopropyl and the spray bottle. And I spray where the alcohol ink is, makes sure that your pieces are far away from it. Otherwise, you're gonna get over spray on them, then just a paper towel to wipe it up. 8. Creating Dimensional Flowers: Alright, so now we're going to create the flowers, the dimensional flowers that we're going to put on the front of our cards just so that they're ready for us, for when we are ready to put them on our cards. Now before we do that, some of these areas that are quite dark, maybe alcohol ink that's really just not going to dry just because it's really concentrated. So what I do is I take a paper towel and I just put it on there and it just kinda takes up some of that excess. We're going to create flowers out of these two. This one here is set aside for one of the card backgrounds. So like I said, when we were doing these backgrounds, this is, you put paper, It's a plastic paper, but it die cuts beautifully. Sometimes. Sometimes if you've ever tried dye cutting, acetate or whatnot, it's hard to die cut and just kinda fights with the plastic. But this here dicots beautifully. So I have a thin die here. You want to put the blade side towards the paper. And the nice thing about having a large area, we only need two of these flowers is you can pick and choose exactly which parts of the paper you are going to die cut even the back is really kinda cool. I'm gonna put it through my machine here. I'm going to cut two of each of or out of each of the backgrounds. The rest of the background can be saved for more flowers and for another project. And really I could have just done one background and then, and then cut got four flowers out of it for this particular project. But I completely forgot where I was going with that, but I wanted the flowers to look a little different. So that's why we did two, so that they weren't both exactly the same. Alright. Now, if by chance you or die cut, that first 11 of the petals happened to be outside or popped out when I was taking it out of the paper. If that doesn't happen, there's little holes in dicots. Specifically for this reason, you can take a pic, you can take a little thumbtack and it'll help you pop that out of there. Alright, now for this one here, this one is pretty much all the same color, so it doesn't really matter exactly where I cut it out of. This one is going on a lighter background as well. And you'll see some of that. And that's the heavier, thicker and thicker areas got stuck to the plate just because of the pressure. Once you're done doing your die cutting, you're going to want to take that isopropyl alcohol and clean your plates off so that is clean for the next time you want to use it. Alright, one there and I need one more and then same with your die. Some of that alcohol ink is going to transfer as your die cutting. It just does it to clean up, spray some of that isopropyl alcohol on, and then you use a paper towel to wipe it off. Can use an old toothbrush if it gets stuck in areas that you need to scrub a little bit to get it off. Just going to put this to the side for now. Alright, so let's get this die cut out. You'll find sometimes it comes out really quick and easy and sometimes it likes to fade a little bit more. So now what we're going to do is I'm going to take, Actually do this before time. You poll paper. You don't typically want to use a heat gun with it because it melts and works. And so you can't emboss on UPA paper it for that reason. But we can also use that to our advantage. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to take one flower and I'm going to use that heat and have it melt and warp the paper so that I get some little shapes in here. And we can't really control it to a point. But if you do find that there's an area that's moving more than you like, go to a different area, let that cool down. I don't hold my heat gun on it. That's just too much heat. Keep moving it around. I don't want this to completely curl up. I just want some texture to it. I'm going to leave that like that. So you do need something to hold it down, otherwise, this would just blow away. But look at how it gets. Just movement and texture to it. It does curl it up. If you wanted. You could alcoholic both sides so that if you see the whites there, it would be the color of your alcoholic, but I don't mind seeing that white. So I left it that way. Now the second one. Now I want this one to be flatter than my first one because I'm going to put this first one Over the second one and I don't want them to completely curl up. So I'm going to use my distress collage medium. This works on the UPA paper. Put some in the center of the flower. Then use my tool here to press it down. And then I'm going to set that aside to dry. When we go to put the car together, I am going to put some stickers in the center of this, but I don't want to put it on there now just because it's not going to have time enough to completely dry before we're putting it on our card. But if you were doing this, say the day before, you can absolutely put your stickers on so that it has time to dry. For that one. This is a great way to get just some movement in those flowers when you're using alcohol inks. When I do flowers with just paper, I'll often use my fingers to curl them and just get some movement and curl and some just life texture into those flowers. But this is a great way to do it with alcoholics. That one there fluctuate over sometimes if you get it quick enough, you can flip it back. This will it hardens but it's not like it's when interfere with mailing or whatever, but you don't want if you don't want it forward, you can heat it up again with the heat gun and put it back. But you have to be quick. So once again, I'm using my distress collage medium and you might have notice that it's squished out a little bit on that first one. That's totally fine. Just dress collage medium is a dries completely clear and it also dries matte. So once this is dry and on our project, we're not going to see that little bit on my board there, but there we go. We have two flowers that are gonna be beautiful on the cards that were gonna make. Let that dry completely. And then we're gonna move to the next part, which is starting to create those cards. 9. Happy Holidays Card: Lift ink Technique & Assembly: Alright, so the first card that we're going to create is this one here. And the very first step is we're gonna do the alcohol lift ink image, and then we're going to stamp them onto these other pieces for the other two cards. So this one here is glossy card stock and it's got a glossy finish to it. And this one here is just playing card stock. So the first one I'm going to stamp off onto is the glossy card stock. And then I'm going to stamp off onto the plane. So make sure you've got a good amount of the alcohol lift ink on there. Choose where you want to stamp on your background here. Any of these really thick areas are not going to lift off very well. So I try to avoid those areas. Hold the stamp down with one hand and press firmly, make sure it has really good contact with your background there. And then stamp this one down. There we go. Set that aside to dry. I'm going to leave that there and we'll use that in just a moment. For this, to lift this off completely, we're going to need a pair of completely clean paper towel. Press it down on the image, flip it over, press it down on the image. And I do this four times. If you feel it needs more than you can do it more. But I find what we're doing here is lifting up the wet ink from that alcohol lifting and you can't smear it. Otherwise you're going to smear your image. And usually four times is good. This time we got that much. So now we're going to take a clear area and we're just going to buff it. And that removes and cleans up that image. Go set that aside for a second. This one here, there's still ink on that surface, so I'm just going to miss it with some isopropyl two times from each side. And it's just rehydrating that ink. And typically you don't want to lose control of your acrylic block and have a drop on you. But if it does drop, you got to work with where it drops. There we go. So you see how each time there's just a little bit less ink. And the glossy card stock, it just the inks just seem a little bit brighter on it. Regular card stock, it just seems a little bit on the donor side, but that's okay. So I'm going to put these aside. We're going to use them for the next two cards. The stamp can be put to the side as well. We can start assembling this card. I've got the card base already done. I also have my happy holidays and my greenery die cut completely done. I found that those are either die cut exactly the same way as the dicot flowers. So I just didn't think he needed to see that again. What I tried on this background and it didn't really work. I tried that very first technique that I did with the pine cones. And I colored some green onto the stamp and then miss it it and stamped it. So you'll see a tiny little bit of green here, but the rest of them you don't actually see, so I skip that step, but just at the off chance that you were able to see that green there, That's why it's there. I had high hopes that it would make the greenery on their pop out a little bit more, have a bit of a different color. And then I went back. When that didn't work, I chose the gold bellum greenery die cuts instead. All right, now I only have one of these die cut. And the reason is I broke it in 1.5 of them is gonna be glued right there. Oops, need the cap off. Glue. This is just going to help pump that point set of flower off in the background a little bit more as well. Make it look a little bit different from the backing. Now, you'll see my velum here pops up. And that's because it does not like let's do this one next. It does not like glue. Velum doesn't like any liquid. So as soon as you put a liquid glue on there, it does tend to pop up, but it relaxes a little bit once it's dry. You can, if you want, put an acrylic block over top of it to hold it down in place. Well, everything is drying. I'm actually going to do that while I'm putting glue on the next piece just to hold it down. I'm using my distress collage medium. Again, dries completely clear and it dries matte so you don't see where the glue is. But with this glossy card stock here that I've got the word cut out if you want to be especially careful to not accidentally get it on the front of the die cut. Because if you do, you're going to be able to see a bit of a different texture. It was one of those things that probably wouldn't see it unless someone pointed it out. But just be careful not to get to that glue onto the front. And really any glue is going to change the texture of that glossy card stock anyways. Now I'm going to put down my flower. You see how just a little, being a little bit lighter, it pops out from the rest of the cards a little bit better. Then last but not least, I've got some platinum stickers here that's going to tie in with the gold from the greenery as well as the gold from the sentiment. I just do little dots. I like it to have a little bit of the same texture that point said is happening in the middle. There we go. My glue is still wet, but I'm going to let that set, set that aside to dry. I am going to put the acrylic block on the Happy holidays just to hold that down while it dries once it's completely dry. That's what we've got right there. 10. Seasons Greetings Card: Lift ink Stamped Image Assembly: So now let's create a card out of this one here. So we're going to create this card here. So this is glossy card stock. And remember how I said you couldn't use heat embossing on Bupa paper. You can absolutely use it on glossy card stock. So that is what we're going to do. The first thing we're gonna do is stamp this season's greetings stamp. It comes with that point set a stamp. So we're going to use some sticky embossing ink. I've got versa mark where you want an ink that's going to stay wet long enough to hold that powder while you're using the heat and gut with it. So press your sentiment firmly so you get a good impression of your image. The powder on there. I've got a little bit of gold powder that is sticking around that around that stamp that shouldn't be there and it's probably I probably touched it with my fingers and you've got oils and your fingers. So it probably is sticking to that. So before I go and emboss it, I'm taking a soft brush here and I'm just brushing that stuff away. If I leave it there, It's just going to melt with the rest of the embossing powder and will not be able to be removed. So some of it is so close to the stamped image that I'm not going close to it. I don't want to ruin my stamped image. But anything that I can get out with a soft brush, I will because it'll give a cleaner embossed image. There we go. That's better. Close the cap on a power so we don't get it over the surface like I just did. Alright, and now I'm going to use the heat, heat embossing and I'm going to melt it. You can do it on top or you could do it below. I tend to do both just because the heat sometimes warps the paper and by doing it underneath as well, they kinda evens it out a little bit. Make sure also that you're doing this away from your hand. There we go. So you can see how the paper works a little bit. And that's totally fine. It's going to be flattened when we glue it down anyways. But I do try to go underneath to let it flattened on it, on its own. Alright, so I've got that same glossy paper that I used for the sentiment for the last card. And I'm also using it for the mat around the image piece. It just highlights the gold that's in there. I think it's a really nice frame, especially on holiday cards. There we go. Now really this image could be left like this. Just add a bit of sticklers, a little bit of sparkle. But I thought it'd be better to add some dye cuts and just add some dimension to it. So I've got some greens here that I cut out. A green card stock could have been the same, or could have been cut out of the same gold as the last one. But I thought, let's do something a little bit different. This is actually a little bit too long for what I want. So I'm going to don't be afraid to to break into, make your dicots a little bit smaller to fit whatever project you're working on. Nothing says that you have to use it as is complete way It's die cut. So I definitely do when I do break them up, I tried to break them up in an area that is not gonna be noticeable. So I wouldn't want to take say a silhouette of a big silhouette and just rip it in half. I want to make it sure that it's not noticeable that that was done. But easy to do on ones like these greenery ones here. Alright, so we've got the breast from the alcohol ink print, the gold around the outside and the gold embossing it just all ties in together. Now just to tie it in just a little bit more, I clearly had some red alcoholic on my hand then I just transferred over. So make sure you wash your hands. Some of this is going to stain and it won't come out but busy with other stuff and I didn't take make sure they're alcoholic was off my hand. I'm going to use some platinum stickers again, just in the center of that flower. Like I said before, I typically just kinda do dots. I want to make sure that it's not just one even area. I kinda like it to look a little bit more like a point ceta. The way those centers are, there is our card. That's the way the articles look when they're wet, but once they're dry, they flatten out a little bit. And then you'll see really a lot more sparkle. While it's on my mind that smudge that I got from my finger there. There's no way to remove it completely. But what I can do is I can take some isopropyl alcohol and rub it on there and that's going to bleach it out a little bit so it's not as noticeable and actually it was light enough that it did completely remove it. The one thing that was you don't want to go near the embossing because the alcohol ink or the alcohol isopropyl alcohol will start to degrade that. But like it, it's completely gone there. So if by chance you happen to do that, try that, use some isopropyl alcohol, spray it away from your project or put a little bit from your dropper. I don't want to use this because I had already gotten some of the crimson in there, so it's not completely clear. Put it on your surface, use something small that you have control and try to remove it. 11. Seasons Greetings Single Layer Card: Lift Ink Stamped Image Assembly: So the last card with the lift ink stamped image, we're going to keep it very simple. I didn't add a dimensional flower to it. I wanted to keep it very flat just to show that you can create a card with it by not adding a dimensional flower to it. And it will work just beautifully. So I'm gonna do that same season's greetings image that I dip the last one, we're going to stamp it and emboss it. I liked this layout where the flower was on the top and the sentiment on the bottom. But you could do that and then over lap them as well. That would work. Completely personal preference. There we go and there's no excess powder around that one, so nothing to brush off. Heat gun and melt it. Rico. And then let's glue or car together so it makes sure that the fold is going the right way. This mirror card that I'm using, as I said before, was the one that I die cut to do the holy or sorry, the Happy Holidays. For this one here, it dicots beautifully as well, just like the UPA. And great for Christmas cards or holiday cards. Just that extra metallic sparkle is lovely. Here we go. Usually it takes a minute or so just for that glue to kind of settle with that glossy card stock just because it's not porous on the top. So I'm going to add some glycerin, Twinkle, twinkle, sorry. Glycerin. Stick to this one just to add a little bit of sparkle. This glycine won the glitter is got a gold tone to it, but it's also fairly transparent so you're not going to lose the image of your points set up underneath it. I'm going to add some to the center. And then I just added a little bit to the greenery. You could also, if you wanted to just do some outlining of the point set of flowers a little bit. Just makes it a little bit more sparkly, a little bit more festive. There we go. There we're going to let that one dry. And once it's dry, you just get a beautiful smirk, sparkle from this that goes on there. 12. Alcohol Ink Techniques for Christmas Cardmaking Class Thank You: Thank you so much for joining me for alcohol, ink techniques for Christmas card making. Now remember, we did Christmas cards in this class, but you can absolutely use those same techniques for other cards to swap in and swap out the stamps dies, and different alcoholic colors. Have fun with your future projects. I hope to see you back in class soon.