New Page, New Toys!

I've had a busy week, but today I had some fun and have made a new Scrap Page.  It was inspired by Shimelle's Challenge, to scrap with Aqua, Red and White:

I embellished it with hand-stencilled designs, using white Conte crayon.  I also made some embellishments with hand-cut lino stamps.  They all came out pretty well. 

I'm pleased with this one - another for my "Me" album, which has about 4 pages now... Time I actually put them in an album together, I think!

It was a good afternoon to be in my studio.  This was the weather outside (after a morning of bright sunshine, when I was stuck indoors!) -

Yes, that is a small flood you can see on the road!

Luckily it cleared up after a couple of hours and the sun came out again before bed-time!

While I was in my studio, watching the rain, I played with my new toys!! EEEEE.... I am excited to announce the arrival of....

A die-cutting/ embossing machine!

I got this today at a local scrapping shop called, Stamp Addicts.  They are a great shop and stock their own ranges of rubber stamps and crafting materials, along with a good selection of other stamps, papers, embellishments, inks, paints, tools etc, etc... They have an online shop where you can get a lot of their stuff. 

Anyway, they have had a special promotion during August and I got this today.  I'm really happy about it, as I already had this - 

- and needed a die-cutter/embossing machine to make it work.

I spent an hour or so experimenting.

The Cuttlebug included this little set of embossing dies, which I had fun trying out.  As you can see, they produce a really nice, crisp imprint.  I did another on a thinner paper though, which didn't come out well; so obviously a good quality paper is best. 

I also had this Sizzix embossing folder, which I got free with a magazine about 100 years ago.  The brass stencil is good for hand-embossing, but I wanted to see how it came out on the embossing machine.  After a bit of experimenting, and making my own packing sheet from a piece of medium-weight card, I got a really nice impression - as you can see.

Encouraged by the success of the Sizzix die, I tried out a rubber mat I had bought along with the Cuttlebug, which is designed to allow you to use the brass stencils you get for embossing by hand. 

I tried a couple of brass stencils and was really pleased with the results.  I think I ought to buy some Christmas stencils, for this year's cards!

Then I started to experiment a bit with the Letterpress kit.

There were nine plates provided with the kit, so I thought I'd try some embossing with this one.

A piece of grey paper on top and close the lid...

Not a very good result.  The paper is a bit thin.

This was the result with a piece of cardstock.  It's a "debossed" image, which means it goes in, rather than being raised out from the surface.  It doesn't produce an embossed image on the reverse though, so I can't emboss with these plates, only deboss.  Still, it looks nice (better in real life!).

The kit came with a tube of sticky black printing ink, a roller etc, but I didn't want to get all gooey today!  I tried inking up the plate with an ordinary little craft ink pad in a soft aqua colour.

This is the result.  I'm really pleased with it.  It's printed onto some soft sketch paper.  The hand-dabbed ink has given it a soft, blended effect and it really looks lovely.  I could do good stuff with this!

A closer view of the de-bossed and inked effect. 

So, that was today's experimenting.  I have lots to learn about these two bits of equipment, but it does mean I have my own teeny mini printing press!  I still need to find out what other kinds of stuff I can use as plates to print with.  The rollers do not adjust and I can't use anything that's too thick, or it will break the machine; but I hope I might be able to try some prints with the soft lino I have bought.  If the Letterpress won't allow it, I think the Cuttlebug plates are varied enough to accept some lino plates.  I'll report back when I have tried it out!