Tutorial - Faux Stained Glass & A Bonus

Are you recovered from the Blog Hop yet? I’m not quite sure I am! LOL! I keep going back to various blogs and enjoying the art. I’ve got to work up something for the Sketch coming up on Tuesday still today but in the meantime I have been dying to share this with you….

A lot of people commented on how the butterfly on my card looked like stained glass. Thank you! That’s exactly what I wanted it to look like and so I am glad that it actually came across as I intended. The butterfly on that card was just stamped with StazOn Jet Black ink and then colored in. But, you know how sometimes you get this whizbangger of an idea in your head but can’t always get it out how you’re imagining it? Well, my first several attempts at doing “Faux Stained Glass” did not do my imagination any justice…. {I tried using Liquid Glass and pouring it out over a handn sketched design, then I tried embossing powder on my Silpat mat and nearly melted the mat……} and then this fabulous butterfly stamp from the Healing Wings Set came into my hands and it actually worked how I wanted it to!

Today I’d like to show you some real “Faux Stained Glass”. This project is a little different than the butterfly on my card. I was laying in bed thinking about stained glass (cuz I have this new fascination with actual stained glass now) and this is what I came up with.

Ok now, gather up your supplies. You are going to need the following:

* A Heat Tool
* Transparency Paper
* Mirror Platinum Embossing Powder
(I used CTMH)
* Bic Sharpie Markers
* Versamark Stamp Pad
* An “outline” style stamp with spaces
that resemble * stained glass
* Sharp scissors
* An “Anti static pad” {not shown}


{STEP 1}
* Lay your transparency paper down on your work surface. I am using a white sheet of paper under mine for filming purposes. Otherwise you can’t see it all that well.

*Rub down the sheet section you will be stamping on. Rub all the way to the edge of the transparency sheet.



{STEP 2}
* Lay your stamp face up and thoroughly ink with Versamark ink. (I lay mine face up because it helps limit the amount of excess ink that may get on your block. Those Versamark pads are awfully squoooshy.

{Step 3}
* Carefully stamp your image onto the transparency sheet. Be careful not to wiggle or slide the stamp. The transparency is slick and it’s easy to slide. Press down all parts of the stamp to make sure you get a good amount of ink on the transparency.

* The photo on the right shows a nice clean Versamark stamped image. It’s very hard to photograph clear paper. LOL!

{Step 4}
* Pull out a piece of scrap paper and put it under your image. Pour your embossing powder over the stamped image. You might have to pour it over a couple of times for a good thick layer. If some excess powder sticks where you don’t want it you can take a moment to gently scrape it off or brush it away before heating.

* The picture on the right shows a nice thick layer of embossing powder on the Versamark image.

Ok… now we’re going to melt this bad babeeeee… well, actually we’re only melting the powder. We really don’t want our transparency paper to melt so let’s take a precaution and HEAT UP that heat gun.

{Step 5}
* Preheat your heat gun for about 15-20 seconds. You’re going to want that air nice and hot so that you don’t have to have the heat on the transparency sheet for any longer than you need to.

{Step 6}
* Don’t leave your transparency sitting on your work mat. Hold it up in the air to prevent melting or warping of your cute pink Fiskars work mat. See left photo. Ergh.

* Taking care to keep your fingers away from the heat, gently wave the heat gun in front of the stamped image on the transparency. Keep the heat moving so that you don’t overheat one spot and melt a hole through the transparency. You will notice the powder turn shimmery and look like molten metal. Looooooverly schtuff that molten metal is!

*It’s hard to photograph with both hands being busy… LOL… sorry for the blurrrrrrr….

{Step 7}
* Now you can cut out the section of butterfly. Just roughly cut it out, don’t trim closely just yet.

* Here you can see the embosses image of the butterfly. Doesn’t it look splendid? Like pure molten metal or flux and solder like real stained glass. I love that the mirrored platinum gives such a nice patina’d effect. Don’t worry, it’s actually platinum, not so greenish. It’s difficult to photograph this at midnight.. LOL!

{Step 8}
* Now flip that bad babeee over we’re ready to color. You will want to color on the backside. I am sure you could color on the frontside, but who wants to risk coloring that beautiful embossing with Bic Sharpie marker? Not me. Flip it. Just flip it.

{Step 9}
* Begin by coloring focal points or areas you want to stand out. Then fill in the areas with contrasting colors. You can also blend for a graduated color merging.

* See that stray stringy looking thing on the right side of the image? It's a bit of embossing powder that got heated. It’s not on the stamp… weird.. Not sure how that got there, but I like it. It looks like cracked stained glass. Even more fun!

* Keep on coloring until you get the desired effect. Tip: You can go back over some of the colors with a different color if you don’t like how it turned out… be careful what you mix or it may end up looking muddy.

* See the scribbles on the transparency? That’s me trying out colors before I color in the butterfly and why I don’t trim out my image just yet. It’s also nice to have an extra spot to put your fingers to hold your image. The ink is a bit sticky and your fingers can leave finger prints and lift the ink if you’re not careful.

{Step 10}
* Now you can trim it out close to the image. I left a little tab of transparency attached to my butterfly so I could attach it to my project. (Posting soon… once I snap the photos in daylight.)

Here’s what I ended up with (left pic = backside of image, right pic = front side of image):

{BONUS TECHNIQUE}
And here’s a bonus for ya! Remember back in the 80’s when those holographic style foil/shimmery backed pictures were all the rage? {Ok, maybe some of you youngins might not… but I do…LOL!} I looked all over the web for an example, but the closest I found was this cool version of Starry Night by VanGogh. Click HERE to view it. (A separate window will open.)

So while I was playing around with this butterfly I decided to try another “technique”… Faux Foiled Images.

Take your beautimous butterfly and flip that bad baby over so that the back is facing up.

Pull out your handy dandy Sakura Clear Star Gelly Roll glitter pen (it’s #38450 from Sakura) and lightly roll it around the back of the butterfly until you see the glitter covering the color. Don’t rub too hard or the tip of the pen will scrape off the Bic marker color.

Wait a few minutes for it to dry… watch your fingers, you’ll have glitter everywhere…. then flip it back over so the embossed side is facing up and VOILA!

You have a beautiful Faux Stained Glass Foiled image. :) {Click on the image – which is a totally different butterfly than the one we made in the tutorial - to see the sparkle better.} I bet you could probably experiment with different glitter pens for different effects, too. I imagine that a gold glitter pen over gold/dark yellow marker might look like gold leafing… hrmm…. I might have to try that out!

~Inky Smiles & Happy Stained Glass making and Foiling!

PS… if you do have Copic Markers you CAN use those as well. I only own 5 Copics at the moment, 2 brown, 1 skin tone, 1 blender & 1 gray. Not exactly the best for coloring a butterfly but I did try the markers out on a transparency. Both types of marker colors change a bit so try it out on scraps of transparency before you begin coloring.