Thinking Outside the Block Fridays are HERE!

Welcome to the first installment of Thinking Outside The Block Fridays!!


I hope ya'll like these tutorials and get some use out of them.


But first I have a card to share using the sketch at Technostamper:






This is the father's day card i made for my step-dad. He loves music and plays several instruments. So I paired the little dancing with pez stamp with some great music patterned paper from CTMH. I just love blue and brown together! Pezzy is colored with copics.

The blocks i will be using for these segments are the ones that come with all of the studio g $1 stamp sets, however the techniques presented can be used on anything acrylic - acrylic frames, albums, cut outs. If you don't collect the Studio G stamps but would like the blocks to complete any of these projects they can be purchased from the store.
Here is the project for today:

I'll start with a rundown of suplies I have found work well. First adhesives:

The E6000 is what i use to glue the blocks together. It is fairly strong and dries clear. Glossy Accents and Zip Dry are great for glueing on the embellishments. Both dry clear which is important when working with acrylic!

Next up is ink. I have found that Ranger's Pigment inks and Brilliance Dew Drops Pigment inks work exceptionally well. I am sure there are others too, such as StazOn but I have not used them at this point. I love the Brilliance Pearlescent colors for acrylic because they are SO shimmery and it just adds to the crystal quality of the acrylic. The pics don't do them justice but i tried!

The Dew Drops are just smaller versions of the regular ink pads and I like these for several reasons - they are cheap, easy to store away, and their shape makes it easy for inking a stamp with multiple colors. I recently decided to add these to the store and you can get them here - the buttons should be up by Saturday morning!

They are just as incredible on plain paper too!

there are 18 pearl colors plus several metallics.

The first step for the project here is to create the "aged tile" effect. I do this with alcohol inks. Alcohol inks are made for slick non-porous surfaces and so they are perfect for these acrylic blocks. You will need the alcohol ink blending tool and felt (not the foam).
I used Latte alcohol ink here. We will only be inking the edges of our blocks so you only need ink on one edge of your felt. just squeaze some drops onto the felt. it is better to add too little and then add more. you can also add a drop or two of blending solution - this will lighten the color.

ink all four sides of each block you are using for your project. The alcohol ink dries fairly quickly.

Next we will glue all of the blocks together. run a small line of E6000 glue down one side of a block and attach the next block to it - don't push too hard or all of the adhesive will squish out. I lay mine out as I glue them either on my Ranger non-stick craft mat or my card table which is covered in vinyl - sometimes a bit of glue will leak out on the back and it doesn't stick to these. I let them dry overnight at this point.

Now time to decorate. I chose to put a picture on the back but you could also put a stamped image. for the pic i placed a tiny drop of glossy accents on each corner, glued it to the back of my blocks and then laid it down to dry flat. I used some SU stamps and Brilliance Dew Drops - chocolate and sky blue and stamped my design on the blocks. THIS INK MUST BE HEAT SET to dry. I use my heat gun under a good strong light so i can see the slight color change as it dries.

The primas and bead pops are attached with Stickles Cinnamon - Stickles also works FABULOUSLY on acrylic. I added stickles dots around the edges. The hanging ribbon is attached to the back of the picture with zip dry glue.


If you decide to play along I'd love to see your creations - please leave a comment with a link to your project - if you choose to upload to splitcoast please use TOTB so we can find them all in one place. Stay tuned next Friday for another exciting project!