Creativity
“I’m not creative”. How many times have you heard someone
say that?
Yet, is it really true?
The Creative Process
When someone makes that statement in reference to
card-making, to me it means “I have not had the chance to play and explore
enough to feel confident in using the products available and coming up with my
own designs”.
Did you make your first card or your first art project completely
on your own, with no instructions, and with materials you had never used before?
If you did, were you overjoyed with the way it turned out?
The Learning Curve
Most of us have had the experience of being a bit
intimidated when we’re asked to do something we haven’t done before, or when we’re
asked to do a familiar process in a different way. There’s a learning curve
that makes us uncomfortable. Until we’ve gone through the process a few times (or
many times), we have to think about it each time, and maybe try different ways
of doing it until it becomes our new routine.
Exploring
That’s part of the fun and excitement in life – trying new
things, or trying old things in new ways! Challenging ourselves and exploring opportunities
keeps things fresh. We try new recipes, new restaurants, new hobbies, etc.
Sometimes we’re forced to do it because we’ve lost a recipe or our favorite
restaurant closed. Sometimes we do it just because we want to shake things up.
I went through this learning curve the other day when I
opened the Stampin’ Up! “Hooray It’s Your Day” Simply Created kit I received at
Leadership Convention in Orlando last week. The kit contains card bases, envelopes,
die-cut accents, baker’s twine, cute star paper clips, washi tape, spritz
masks, Stampin’ Spritzers, and Stampin’ Dimensionals. This is a great kit with several different card designs, and one is a gift card holder! You'll need to add a few additional items for this project, such as the coordinating Hooray It's Your Day stamp set and re-inkers.
Spritzing?
Most of these products in the kit I had used many times before, but
when I read the instructions and found out the first thing I needed to do was
spritz the card with two colors of ink, I had a small panic moment.
“Spritz? I don’t really know how”, I thought. “How hard can
it be?” was my next thought. Well, it turns out that it’s really easy to spritz, but a bit more
difficult, but doable, to get the exact results you want.
Basically you put either water or
rubbing alcohol in the spritzer and add a few (or a lot) of drops of ink, put
the cover on, and shake it up to mix it. Then you spray (spritz) it on your
project. Easy.
The more difficult part is getting the exact color and spray
effect that you want. This depends on your combination of ink and
water/alcohol, as well as how much pressure you put on the spritzer and the
distance between the spritzer and the project when you spritz it. If you spritz
too much, you may end up with a blob, or the color may bleed through the
cardstock. Too little, and you might not get the color or coverage you want (but
you can always add a little more spritzing).
If you haven’t tried spritzing before, I suggest that you:
- Cover your work area with scrap paper first.
- Then watch this entertaining video by Brian Pilling to learn some tips. I tried to embed the video here, but the wrong video comes up when I do that!
- Finally, get some Stampin’ spritzers and re-inkers. You don't have to have the kit in order to get started spritzing, but it is a fun one!
- Point the spritzer at your project
and spritz away!
Here is my first spritzing attempt (before I watched the
video):
The ink colors are Pretty in Pink (retired) on the right
side, and Strawberry Slush on the left. As you can see, the color coverage is
not uniform across the background pattern, but that’s OK.
Use scrap paper and just play around and experiment with
your ink and water/alcohol mix until you get the color you want. Once you’re
satisfied with the color mixture, test spray patterns to see what works best
for you. Then, just go for it, and spritz your project!!!
Look for more spritzing samples that I'll be sharing in the next couple of days.
Happy stamping!
