Cell Phone Case Tutorial

Hello all and thanks for stopping by the blog once again. Today will be my last post of the year over at The Stampotique Designers Blog and what a fun and fabulous year it has been. I have really enjoyed being on this design team and I look forward to another fabulous year with them.

Today is also the last of the "Anything Goes" challenge over at the Stampotique Designers Challenge Blog so make sure to check that out as well.

For this week's post I wanted to do a tutorial for the cell phone case that I made last week. A lot of you have asked me how I did it and what I used. 

To start off I bought a rubber clear iPhone 6 case, You can find them on amazon for pretty cheap. If you have another phone besides iPhone I'm pretty sure the clear cases are available for any phone

You can use any clear case you want to, I prefer the rubber because I like to "grip" my case when I'm holding my phone.

Next I created my template. Simply lay your case over some white card stock and use a pencil to trace the outside edge

Make sure you trace the camera hole as well or any other holes you need

The simply cut out your template and use an xacto knife to cut your camera hole, I like to insert my template into the case and adjust as needed. In this case I needed to cut my camera hole a little larger

(note: I try and use thinner card stock for the background because some of the cases are so snug that you don't want something thicker, your case won't fit otherwise)

After I have my template the size and shape that I need for my case I simply decorate it.

I started with my background and used acrylic paint (last week I used Dylusions Sprays)

I continued to use paint to add other elements and create more to my background, if you don't want to create your own background you can use printed paper or even your gelli plate

I stamped my main image and embossed

Stampotique Stamp

Lovelyarethesound - By artist Daniel Torrente

(I cut the heart out of the images hand and added a hand drawn cup of coffee, this will bring my image and my sentiment together)

I always color my main images with copic markers, those are permanent and I don't want the color to run

I used washi tape to add the triangles on the side, I simply cut some of the black off the edges

I printed out my sentiment on my printer and cut that down to add to one side

I then insert my finished project into my case, I always use another sheet of thin paper in between the decorated paper and my cell phone. This will keep any paint/sprays/stains etc from coming in contact with the back of my phone.

Here is my finished case

These cases are so fun to make and you can change it anytime you want to and make your very own original case.

Happy New Year everyone, I hope that you have a wonderful 2015!!!

Altered Playing Card Challenge Week 16

It's Monday again and you know what that means, another week of The Altered Playing Card Challenge!! YAY!

If you have missed any of the previous week's here are the links

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 
Week 7
Week 8

Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15

and our Facebook page

Facebook Group

and the Pinterest Board link

Pinterest Board

For this week's cards I wanted to do backgrounds with the same technique 
(sorry if my photos are a little dark this week, my light on my desk didn't want to work for me)

To start out I took both cards and picked an acrylic paint color for the backgrounds, you can use any color that you like for this step.
I just used a brush and painted the color on completely. I then set them aside to dry for a minute or two or three. LOL

I wanted to use tissue paper over my colored background so I took some Tim Holtz tissue paper and crumpled it up and used matte medium to adhere it to my background

I like the crumpled look for this (just simple wad it up in your hands and then straighten it back out before adhering)

I set the background aside to dry after I had it smooched and applied the way I liked it. The tissue paper will go over the edges at this point. You want your tissue piece to be bigger than you card so you can crumple it

after that was all dry, I cut the edges off, leaving these really cool textured backgrounds

For my first card I wanted to use this really cool Dina Wakley stamp, I stamped her onto white card stock and heat embossed her, I like to emboss the images before I color them with the Copic markers, it keeps the black ink from running into the marker color

Next I cut her out and colored her with colic markers

I decided that my girl looked better on my background without the words on her side so I cut those off

I picked a sentiment from this Donna Downey set and stamped it onto white card stock and cut it out

(I used this set for both of my Altered playing Card sentiments this week)

I used my black enamel accents to add three little dots in the upper right of my card. I love that the enamel gives depth

Here is my first finished APC

I just love the way the tissue paper makes that background look, specially with the color behind it

For my second altered playing card I used some Stampotique stamps

Agatha Star - By Artist Magda Polokow

and Daniel's Hearts by artist Daniel Torrente

I stamped them both onto white card stock and embossed them

I then colored them both with copic markers

For the embossing, I stamp my stamps with black ink and cover the image with clear embossing powder and then heat set. 

I then cut out my images and adhered them to my background. I picked a sentiment from the same Donna Downey stamp set above

Here is my finished second APC

And here are the two cards together

I hope you will give this background a try. If you don't have the Tim Holtz tissue paper, you can create your own by using regular clear or white tissue paper and just stamp all over it, let it dry and then adhere it to your painted background. I have done this! Just make sure to let the ink dry thoroughly after you stamp all over it

I hope you have fun with this week's cards. See ya next week! Have a Happy New year!!!

Stampotique Designer's Challenge

Merry Christmas Eve! and welcome back to another Wednesday with me and the Stampotique Designer's Challenge. This is the 4th week with the "Anything Goes" Challenge. This one ran through the entire month of December. 

The passed two week's I have given you a bit of a recap on my year with Stampotique, it has been a lot of fun going through some of my projects over this year. 

This week I wanted to make something new so i decided to make a cell phone case. I just got the new iPhone 6 and I needed to make me a shiny new case with my Stampotique characters. 

I always buy a clear case and just make my own background. 

So without further delay, here is my new case:

I used the Stampotique stamp - Moth Fab by artists Daniel Torrente and Jill Penney

and also Whatever... - Carol's Collection

I just love how my case turned out, nice and bright just like I like it. The great thing about it is, I can change it whenever I want and it's always original. 

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Altered Playing Card Challenge Week 15!!

Welcome back to the blog everyone and another week of the Altered Playing Card Challenge. This is week 15 of the challenge and I'm so enamored by what everyone is making and doing with these.

If you have missed any of the previous week's here are the links

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 
Week 7
Week 8

Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14

and our Facebook page

Facebook Group

and the Pinterest Board link

Pinterest Board

For this week's challenge, I decided to use Embossing paste on both of my cards. 

I wanted to use both white and black embossing paste and I went with the Wendy Vecchi paste because it's what I have in both colors AND I love the texture and smoothness of her paste.  If you have other brands, go for it! Use them!

I picked a few stencils and used taped it in place over my altered playing card

(this is a Dylusions Stencil)

I did not want to use the entire stencil, just a portion. So I added a piece of scratch paper over some parts and also taped that into place.

I then used a knife and smoothed my embossing paste over the stencil. I always add mine on in the consistency of buttering bread. Not too much.

When your all finished just lift your stencil directly up and then set that aside to dry. (I had previously drawn some circles into my gesso too)

I repeated these steps with my second playing card as well. This time I used the white embossing paste and a different stencil

After both cards had dried really well, about an hour,  I sprayed both backgrounds

For the first card I used Adirondack Sprays and the second card I used Dylusions Sprays. It doesn't really matter what sprays your using I just wanted to use the different sprays in order to show you that they worked the same

I let those dry once again

Once they were completely dry, I started with the backgrounds.

On the first card (with the black embossing paste) I wanted to highlight those circles I had drawn in the gesso. I used a Dylusions stamp set

Using black ink, I inked up one circle at a time and (without a stamping block) I stamped one circle at a time directly onto each of the drawn circles in order to highlight them

I then took my white geli pen and drew over the black circles. Now, the neat thing about spraying ink over the gesso is that when you draw with a white geli pen onto the embossing paste, the white pen ink turns the color of the sprays over the black embossing paste. It's so cool

See how my white pen turned the colors of the spray? I love how at the top it turned the sort of burgundy color and as it goes to the bottom it turns to the green

I also used the white geli pen on the other altered playing card as well. For this one, the geli pen white ink turned to the blue background colors as well.

I wanted to add a touch of black to my background so I took a marker and I outlined some blocks with black too

I also went around my edges with black as well

Now since I used the white embossing paste on this card, the white took on the colors I sprayed onto the background BUT the blocks are raised so it really gives this cool effect to my background.

Once again I took my black marker and doodled a bit onto my background in the spaces where there wasn't much going on

I picked two Stampotique images, Carrot and Daniel's Tree Topper and stamped them onto separate white paper. I also clear embossed them so it would be easy to color them with copic markers. (when you emboss them, the black ink doesn't run when you start coloring them)

I cut them out and applied them to my background

I also added stamped sentiments as well

Here are my finished cards for this week

The embossing pastes really give the background a fun raised texture and I just love using it. I hope you enjoy this week's cards as much as I did.

Have a great week and Merry Christmas to you all!!!!