Shaving Cream Challenge

January's challenge winners will be announced on the 3rd Tuesday of February, 

so stay tuned to see who won the amazing prizes! 

February's Top Winner will receive 

A FABULOUS PRIZE PACKAGE 

offered by our hostess, Ellen!!! 

  

Hello lovely friends and followers it is Karen P here today.  The lovely Mynnette is recovering from a bad dose of flu so this month we will be sharing a step by step photo tutorial with you.  I offered to help Mynnette with this post so that she can try to rest a little, a very busy lady.

This month we have another fun technique for you to try. The results are fabulous one off’s! This is a cheap way to make your own background papers and most of you will have the supplies you need at home.  It is called the Shaving Foam Technique and I bet most of you have heard or tried this before. If you have or haven’t tried it yet we hope you will this month and play along with us too.

Our lovely Rocky had a tutorial of the Shaving Foam technique using Cosmic Shimmer sprays on her blog.  Luckily, for me, I've not had to do a lot of work, thank you Rocky you are a star!  I’ve also photographed my shaving foam experience with re-inkers and inks and if you want to check that out please click on my card below to go to my blog to see the photographs.

 

*********************************************************************************

Supplies:

Shaving Foam

Two or three colours of re-inkers; inks; shimmer or ink sprays

A container or plate to spray the shaving foam onto – use something you can dispose of or something that will never be used for food

Kebab stick/Plastic Ruler/Skinny paint brush (the end of it)

Craft mat to protect your work surface

Card

Kitchen towel

Disposable gloves

Apron

*********************************************************************************

 Before starting I strongly recommend you do the following:

1. Cover your work surface with a large craft mat or several layers of newspaper, you can wash your mat or dispose of the newspapers once finished.

2. Wear old clothes or an apron to protect your clothing.

3. If you don’t like to have mucky fingers you will need to wear disposable gloves.

4. Cover a second surface where you can leave your papers to dry.

5. Have everything ready and at hand before you start.  I used A4 coated paper and I cut it into A5/A6 pieces before starting.

*******************************************************************************

How To:

Fill a container with about an inch of shaving foam.  Rocky used the lid from an A5 storage box and the cheapest shaving foam she could find.  Any fragrance from the foam does not last or scent the paper.  Flatten the foam with the end of a ruler or similar to give you a smoother working surface.

If you are using mica sprays or misters you need to agitate before spraying onto the foam.  This will produce a nice effect but we want the lovely swirly patterns you get inside old books so you will want to mix it up a little.

Make your swirls with the end of a paintbrush,/skewer that can be wiped clean easily. Fingers tend to be a little too big for this.  The beauty of using shaving foam is that your swirls do not continue to move around until you put your paper/card on top like water would.

Place your card on top of the foam, press down gently to make sure you have contact with all the ink.  Rocky says card is best for this technique as paper is too weak.  I used Claritystamp coated paper which did not absorb the ink or shaving foam and I found it worked okay for me.  However I would not use copy paper because it does fall to pieces.  Lift the card/paper out of the foam.

The excess foam can be removed by running a ruler gently along the card.  Return the excess foam to the container.  You should get several images from the ink and foam mixture.  Each one will be a little paler than the last.  If you used a spray with mica it will show clearly on the first copy but may not be apparent after that.  This can always be rectified afterwards by spraying a little clear 'Pearl Mist' over the card.

This colour choice was quite light but produced a beautiful spring like colouring which was ideal for the tag that Rocky was making.

Bold colours are great. This tag was made with Purple Haze and Aqua Lagoon. Rocky tries to keep a tag book, made using scraps of card, to remind her of favourite colour combinations.  Rocky writes the colours used on the back, punches a hole in the corner and hangs them on a big clip ring – I must start doing that!

Below are a couple of photographs that I took whilst doing this technique.  You can see that there really is no difference if you use mists, inks or re-inkers.  I used Distress re-inkers first and I used them very lightly.  As I got a bit more daring I used some very old Dee Gruenig Posh Inks (+10 years).

*********************************************************************************

We've got an amazing guest designer with us this month--

Sarah of  Sarah Stone Creations

Here is the lovely card Sarah made to share with us this month ~

And now some inspiration from the Crew~

Ellen

Louise

Rocky

Hayley

Karen P

Katy

Shana

Karen H

Julz

*********************************************************************************