In The craftroom 5th July 2014 – Having fun with shaving foam

 Reading Jo Rice’s  blog post, about the Clarity Cumbria workshop they held on 29th June and how much fun they had with shaving foam, gave me the idea for a Saturday session for my little group, but…….

 

Could I cope with my group, shaving foam and INK?

 

Some research first I think, At the Clarity workshop they used Distress  re inkers (which they have on the Clarity web site. they also have the full set on offer at a v good price, though have not got – yet) so  tried those first

 

Than tried alcohol inks on coated card stock

then I remembered I had some Inkidink inks too

Using small pieces of card you can make  up a batch of backgrounds in no  time at all, ready for making into cards when required as you can see from the samples I have made below.

There are plenty of U tube videos and tutorials on the internet showing how to do the basic shaving foam technique  as well as more advanced ones so I am not going to go into a lot of detail here.

Basically you will need something to put the shaving foam onto i.e.. foil container, plastic lid, paper plate, etc ideally A5 size or larger, we used the plastic packaging from some 8 x 8 embossing folders  which worked great. cheap no frills shaving foam (don’t go for one with added oils etc) cocktail sticks/skewers, and kitchen roll for clean up.

Now to our crafty afty

Luckily for me, this week Jackie is on holiday in the lakes, Diane is having to work and its Irene s grandchild’s first birthday, so that just left  Lisa, my mother, Jenna and me to play (experiment)

They each had their own base onto which they each squirted out enough shaving foam onto it to give them an approx 1″ thick base of foam when smoothed out. Then it was just a case of adding colour

 

As well as inks, one of the tutorials I saw used acrylic paints so we gave that a go

We found with the paint that is was best if once the card had been pressed on and pulled off, it was better left to dry and the foam to disappear instead of wiping off as you can with the inks as the paint is slow drying compared to the inks, unless of course you want that kind of dragged effect. I rather liked it.

This was the effect when left.

Lisa had also being doing a bit of research on the internet and had come across a tutorial where they had used food colourings instead of ink (and cheaper too), so yes I had some and out they came too

They worked really well too, I was just a bit skimpy with the colour on these.

One word of warning though, food colouring does not come in non spill bottles so make sure you replace the lid after using or it could end up going everywhere and make sure you have protective covering over your work area  – just in case  you have a mother who doesn’t put lids back on. Yes she did and it was the pink one too, luckily Lisa has very quick reflexes and the table is very well protected lol, so no harm done.

Actually apart from that one little incident it went rather well and we had a very productive as well as educational first half to our afternoon

Time for a coffee break I think  which gives us time to clear away and to take stock of what we have managed to produce so far. Then it is a case of deciding what to do with some of our pieces.

I got out a range of silhouette type stamps and word stamps (which just happened to be mainly Clarity Stamps) that I thought would work really well. Then it was up to them to choose their backgrounds and stamps and make their cards.

My mother, Margery  has now learned how to ink, blot, plot and its worked really well,

Love Lisa’s backgrounds, gorgeous colours and the kingfisher stamp is perfect. Lisa just trying to learn that a little white space on a card can be good.

And Jenna’s, yes she has still managed to get tangling into her work lol, but does show another way of using the backgrounds

All in all, it has been a lovely fun  afternoon, we all got to learn something new (for us) and they even managed to finish a card (just about) too, lol

Now they have all gone and its my turn to have a little play with some of the backgrounds I made earlier along the the stamps before I tidy everything away.

Remember these ones?

There was  a set of Clarity stamps I had recently acquired and thought they would be perfect and also sum up our crafty aftys too.

 

And then I suddenly remembered this months Clarity Challenge – “Anything goes” . So as today has all been inspired  from reading Jo Rice’s blog post about what they got up to at a  Clarity workshop I think I will use this as my challenge entry too.

We will be having further sessions with shaving foam I think – intermediate level next – using with stencils, when I find out how, lol

 

Thank you for reading and for your comments, they are greatly appreciated 🙂