/* */ Beulah Bee

August 29, 2014

Aporia crataegi


I've never seen a Black-veined White Butterfly (except via You Tube) and I think they are quite nice.

Inspired by this this photo, I created a tag by printing it, cutting it out, pasting mulberry paper behind the wings, tinting it with paint, ink and colored pencils, and pasting it to a distressed background.


I'm linking it to the Monday blog challenge at Simon Says Stamp. This week's theme is "witch kraft" and while it may not be apparent that I used kraft paper--it's there, as a background, now covered with layers of paint and ink.

A happy accident caused by using too much Seedless Grape distress stain to darken the kraft paper compelled me to sand and rub at it with the hopes of making it lighter. When the top layer of the paper began to peel away, I gathered up the bits and pasted them back on and spread a layer of thin white paint on top.

August 25, 2014

Antoinette


Did you ever wonder why brown paper bag-colored card stock is called "kraft" paper? It's not a clever take on the word "craft" but instead, comes from the "kraft process" a term used in paper making. Others must have wondered about this too because there's a Wikipedia entry for it. And did you know that manila paper was originally manufactured in the Philippines, which is how it got its name.

Click to Enlarge
To celebrate this new found knowledge, may I present a tag made from both manila and kraft paper which I'm linking to the "witch kraft" challenge at SSS.

I pasted the kraft paper onto a manila tag, stamped it with archival ink, transferred an image using polymer medium, tinted it with distress inks, stains and some colored pencils and added strips of printed kraft paper to the border.

The light-colored image plays nicely off the kraft-colored background and this week's challenge was the perfect excuse to finally use it.

August 15, 2014

Madame Butterfly

Before

After

Did you know you can achieve painterly results with gel pens? Just make marks with the ink then wash over them with a brush and water.

Credit for the original image came from one of my most favorite bloggers (thanks again, Aputsaiq).

Half of the pens in the first photo were thrown away after I completed this tag because they had either dried-out or, more typically, the gel and ink had separated from the base of the pen (the survivors had tighter-fitting caps).

Bought several years ago, I haven't used them much but suggest to you that they do have value for adding color to paper and don't need to be saved just for writing.

And because I used a mark-making technique here, I've linked to this week's Monday blog challenge at SSS where the theme is scratched-up.