Neat & Tangled / Tonic Collaboration - Day 1

Happy Monday!  You are all in for a treat this week.  We are collaborating with Tonic USA and not only will there be some pretty fantastic inspiration for you each day on both the Neat & Tangled and Tonic USA blogs, there are also two big prizes to be won.

Here at Neat & Tangled we'll be selecting one lucky comment from our collaboration blog posts to receive a $75 credit to spend at Tonic. AND, Tonic will select a commenter from their blog to win a $75 credit to the Neat & Tangled store.

Now for some inspiration, today Debby and Miriam are here to share.  First up is Debby:

Hello, it's Debby here today, and I'm delighted to be joining in with this week's Tonic collaboration! I already have a fair few Tonic products in my stash as I love the quality of their tools and original embellishment products to name just a few. However, I've not yet had the chance to play with the Nuvo Glimmer Pastes or try out the Tim Holtz Stamping Platform. 

I knew immediately I wanted to use the Moonstone Glimmer Paste to bring sparkle and texture to an ink blended stencil design. I pulled out the Interlocking Geo stencil from the new February release and blended a sherbet rainbow diagonally across the card using Hot Lips, Melon, Duckling, Mint and Spring Rain inks. Keeping the stencil in place, I then used a Ranger palette knife to spread the Glimmer Paste over the ink blended background. It's a bit like spreading butter I think! It never gets old to lift the stencil to reveal the design and I was delighted at how adding the Moonstone Glimmer Paste really brought this sherbet toned background to life with a million sparkles catching the light. 

I put the background to one side to dry while I worked on the sentiment and embellishments. Using the Tim Holtz Stamping Platform, I stamped the love from Love Notes in Hot Lips inks. For me, stamp positioning tools have been a game changer for my stamping, and Tim Holtz's one lives up to all that I hope from a stamp positioner - strong, sturdy, well designed and makes stamping a breeze. I used the included magnets to keep my paper in place while I stamped the image a second time to ensure I had a good intense colour and even stamping. I used the matching https://ldli.co/e/3rx79x to die cut the sentiment and then paired it with a partially stamped sentiment from the So Many Sentiments set. I carefully cut the 'we're friends' part of the sentiment away from the rest, stamped it with clear embossing ink on Black card and white heat embossed before trimming to a skinny strip. 

I added the background to a white card base and the two sentiment pieces to the background with foam adhesive and then accented with hearts cut with a die from the Love Notes set. I covered the hearts with Spring Rain and Melon inks, followed up with Glitter Gloss and then finally Crystal Glaze for a beautiful sparkly and glossy finish. I also added Crystal Glaze, Duck Egg Blue and Sugared Almond droplets as final accents. 

Next up is Miriam:

Hi everyone!  This week Neat & Tangled is collaborating with Tonic USA.  I was so excited to be able to work with their products, and created two cards to share.

For this first card, I die cut our Punchinella die from cream cardstock.  Then I used some liquid adhesive to essentially pain across the bottom of the die on a diagonal.  Once the glue was dry, I used the Radiant Gold Gilding Flakes to embellish the bottom of the die cut.  I then tacked the die cut piece down in a couple places over a piece of patterned paper.

Those dimensional hearts are from the Scored Shapes Dies set.  I cut the hearts from both patterned paper and vellum.  I rubbed the vellum hearts with Powder Blue embellishment mousse to give it a little shine and subtle color. 

Those were then stitched to the punchinella/pattered paper as well as a sentiment strip with a sentiment from the So Many Sentiments set.

I also added a vellum mat.  Just as with the vellum hearts, I rubbed the top and right edges of the mat with some embellishment moussse, this time using Pure Platinum mousse.

Everything was adhered to the card base and then I added a few sequins as well as a few dots of White Blizzard Glitter Drops to finish it off.

For my next card, I used the Embellishment Mousses in a different way.  I was a little surprised by the texture of the mousse when I first used it.  I expected it to be more like a paste that you used for stencils, but it had more of a clay consistency.  You can still use it in that for for stencils, but you have to kind of work it into the openings.  Or, you can soften it into more of a paste form by adding some water.

You can also add water to create a type of paint, which is what I did.  I just used my palatte knife to put a bit onto a craft mat, added water to create a paint consistency, and than painted onto a watercolor panel using the Powder Blue and Pure Platinum embellishment mousses.

I then added some stamping using the Landscape Textures stamp set and the Tim Holtz Stamping Platform.  I placed the stamp in the middle of the platform so that I could move the panel around underneath to create the random stamping.

Then I added some gilding by 'coloring' some dots on the panel using my glue pen.  And then adding the Radiant Gold Gilding Flakes.

Note - make sure your ink is totally dry before you do this.  I managed to smudge a bit of black ink when I was brushing away the excess gold flakes.

I die cut the You Can Do Anything sentiment and gilded it as well.  To give it a little more strength, I did add a second layer and then adhered the entire piece to my panel.

Now it's time to head over to the Tonic USA blog to see what their team created.  Be sure to leave comments here and there to be entered to win the giveaways.  See you back here tomorrow for Day 2!