Love to Laminate by Judi Kauffman for The Queen’s Ink

One thing leads to another, and then another, and another! That was the case the other day when I decided to spray some pieces of red and tan cardstock to use as backgrounds for some stamping. That’s all I intended to do, and yet before I knew it I ended up with four very fancy, somewhat glitzy, shiny laminated sheets of cardstock waiting to be turned into projects!

Instead of a little bit of mist I sprayed a LOT, saturating the cardstock and allowing the iridescent colors to blend and blur. I also used a pipette to drip color in a random manner. The photos don’t show how much the sheets had bent out of shape (they curved and nearly curled up because I let them air dry without weight to keep them smooth). Here’s what the cardstock looked like after the paints dried:

 As a test, I stamped onto my least favorite of the sheets with black StazOn ink and did a little bit of coloring with white, gold and blue pens. Boring! I was glad I’d only experimented on one of the sheets.

The black StazOn just didn’t do the trick so I kept going, this time with black (easy to see) pigment ink and embossing powder to add more texture and pattern. I chose embossing powder in gold, verdigris and red to echo some of the colors I used with the sprays.

The sheets remained distorted so I used my favorite trick - I laminated them. The heat of the laminating machine and the pressure of the rollers act like an iron and nicely flattens the sheets!  I carefully trimmed the laminate with a craft knife and ruler on a self-healing mat so each sheet is now a perfect 8.5” x 11”.

Now all I need to do is decide what to do with them! More coil- or ring- or disk-bound note pads and journals? Fancy postcards? Tags? Should I cut them up into small pieces and make magnets?

What would YOU do with these fancy laminated sheets??? Right now I’m enjoying looking at them as they are, a reminder of how much fun it is to putter in the studio without a definite plan!

SUPPLIES:

• Cardstock in colors of choice
• Spray mists in iridescent or pearlescent colors of choice
• Pipette (to drip mists onto cardstock)
• Heat tool
• Craft knife
• Straight edge/ruler
• Self-healing cutting mat
• Embossing powders in gold, verdigris, red, or other colors of choice
• Stamps by Elizabeth St. Hilaire (RubberMoon)
• Pigment ink pad in black (easy to see)
• StazOn ink pad in black
• Gelly Roll White 10 (Sakura of America)
• Pen-touch Gold (Sakura of America)
• Heat laminating machine (or copy center offering this service)