ATC experimentation

I've been playing with some new techniques inspired by this month's Craft Stamper magazine (if you haven't got a copy yet, go get one - there are soooo many yummy techniques and ideas in it this month!). I used ATCs for my experiments as they're a nice compact size (but not tooo small) to work on.

The first technique I tried was paper blending:

I recently rediscovered some booklets of vintage ephemera that have been lurking in my stash for at least 5 years(!) and realised they would be great for ATCs... I particularly liked this lovely 1920s style lady. I decided on Basic Grey Stella Ruby papers for the paper blending technique as I thought they would go well with the 1920s lady. As per the technique in the magazine, I glued strips of torn paper to my ATC base and then painted with a thin layer of gesso to blend them together. I took the idea a little further and stamped over the finished background with Sepia Versafine ink before attaching the vintage lady. I'm quite pleased with the result. :)

The second technique I tried out was the rock salt texturising:

I loved the look of this effect in the magazine and I had all the products on hand - embossing powders, UTEE, alcohol inks and rock salt. However, I'm not so pleased with the end result I achieved here. I think I need a new heat gun - mine is a tube-shaped one that I've had for probably at least 5 years and it does the job well enough for e.g. simple heat embossing but on the few occasions I've tried more complex techniques involving UTEE, I'm finding the heat gun blows too much and is just blowing most of the UTEE crystals away before they get chance to melt! So although this looks quite funky, it's not as good as the results achieved in the magazine and it's extremely fragile - the rock salt crystals are not firmly attached and are liable to dropping off (there were a lot more on here to start with)! Ah well. It was an interesting experiment and no doubt practice (and a better heat gun!) will make perfect.

There's at least another two techniques from this month's Craft Stamper that I still want to try out but they require a bit of stash shopping before I can try them... I need some texture gel to try the mixed media  masterboard technique and I *badly* need to invest in a melting pot so I can have a go at the stunning beeswax technique!