Tutorial Tuesday: Creating Acetate Accents + 2 more mini-tutorials

As acetate accents have been all the rage for a little while now and Stampin’ Up! doesn’t carry any in their catalog, I decided to see how I could go about creating some using all Stampin’ Up! products.  Although obviously not as quick as simply taking one out of the package and attaching it to your project, I was surprised at how easy it was. Today’s tutorial shows you how.

I also added in a couple more mini tutorials based on some more trends I’ve seen in the paper crafting world in the last number of months.  One of them involves using patterned paper with stamped images instead of an actual ink color.  While it’s pretty straight forward when you are using an outline stamp (simply stamp the outline image in black or brown ink onto your patterned paper and cut out), I had always wondered what to do with solid image stamps.  after all, the only way we an see where to cut is if you stamp the whole image in an ink color – but then if you do that, where does the patterned paper come in?  Today, I finally hit upon a solution which I’m also going to share with you.

Lastly, the other hot accent for paper crafted projects is rhinestones – not brads, not mounted into a metal fastener – just the plain gemstone.  I’m going to show you my solution for that too.  So let’s get started shall we?

Mini Tutorial 1: Creating Acetate Accents

Step 1:  Take a piece of acetate, fold it in half and use your bone folder to achieve a crisp crease (* you only need to do this if creating a "sandwich effect" with glitter inside like I did).  Take one of Stampin’ Up!’s rub-ons (in this case from the Anchored rub ons set) and using your popsicle stick, mount it onto your acetate.  Tip # 1:  you can buy acetate at most office supply stores.  Make sure you get the photocopy safe kind so that you are able to use the next tip.  Tip #2:  Instead of a rub on, stamp an outline image in Whisper White Craft ink and heat emboss using white embossing powder. Or, for the holidays, instead of white embossing powder you could stamp in and use gold or silver – wouldn’t that be stunning? Well how about any color of craft ink with clear EP for that matter? Tip #3:  Punches DON’T WORK!  I tried it several different ways – alone, two layers, over a layer of CS, sandwiched between two layers of CS and in each case the punch would jam and wouldn’t punch all the way through the acetate.

Step 2:  Holding the two layers of acetate together, slowly and carefully cut out around the image , leaving a small clear border, using your paper snips.  * you really have to pinch the two layers together because acetate is slippery and the two layers have a tendency to slide apart while you are trying to cut. Once your acetate is cut, take the piece with the rub-on (or alternately the white embossed image) and spread a little crystal effects around – keeping it to the inside of the lines.

Step 3: Sprinkle some Dazzling Diamonds glitter over the glue and then sandwich it with the other layer.  Alternately you could use some of Stampin’ Up!’s fine cosmo or chunky essentials glitter for a totally different look!

 Mini Tutorial 2: Creating stand-alone rhinestone gems

Step 1: This is so easy that I’m sure you’ve probably thought of it already, but just in case you hadn’t I thought I’d share. All you have to do is take one of Stampin’ Up!’s rhinestone brads (this one is from the Pretties collection), open the big prongs up as wide as they’ll go, take the edge of your snips and pry the little fasteners open and the gem will pop out.  Tip:  I tried using the SU tool kit, but none of the tools in there were quite thin enough to slide under the little fasteners.

Step 2:  Attach it to your project using a tiny dab of Crystal Effects.  Prior to attaching it, I stamped the small star from the Nursery Necessities stamp set, cut it out and attached it to the center of the acetate star using a bit of Crystal effects.  I then attached the gem. Other than the fact that I liked the look, the reason I added the star is so that it would hide the Stampin’ Dimensional I used to mount it to the card.

Mini Tutorial 3:  Using Patterned Paper & Solid Image Stamps

Step 1: Again this is one of those things that was so easy that afterwards I thought "now why didn’t I think of this sooner? The biggest problem I have found with using solid image stamps and patterned paper is the fact that you don’t want to use a colored ink because that totally changes the look and feel of the patterned paper, but then if you don’t use a colored ink, how do you see where to cut?  All of a sudden it just hit me today – simple!  Run an embossing buddy over your patterned paper.  Here I used three different patterns and stamped 3 separate times.  Stamp your solid image in VersaMark, heat emboss with clear embossing powder.  The pattern of the paper shows through the clear embossing powder, and you can now see where to cut!

Here is the picture of the finished image:

Here is a picture of the finished card:

Supplies:

Stamps: Nursery Necessities, Nursery Letters Jumbo Wheel
Paper: Bayou Blue, Soft Sky, So Saffron CS and Designer Prints Series Paper
Ink: Whisper White craft, Bayou Blue, So Saffron, VersaMark
Accessories: embossing body, clear EP, heat tool, Anchored rub-ons, clear rhinestone brad (from pretties kit), Crystal effects, paper snips, Dazzling Diamonds glitter.

Dimensions: 

Card base: 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" piece of Soft Sky, scored at 4 1/4" and folded in half
Bayou Blue CS: 2 1/2" x 5 1/5"
So Saffron CS: 3" x 3"
Whisper White CS: 2 3/4" x 2 3/4"
Acetate sheet: 2 1/2 " x 6" folded in half
scraps of white