Friday, August 12, 2016

"Woven" Background

Hello!  Kristie here today from
with a tutorial for you.
It's been a while since I've done a tutorial for 
Mashed Potatoes and Crafts.
Sorry about that, life has a way of getting in the way 
of crafting and blogging sometimes.
But, I thought y'all might like this technique, so 
here I am.
I simply wound some string around an acrylic block.
I secured it on the side with some tape.
Next I chose a couple colors of ink.
First I chose blue
I pressed the ink pad against the string.
making sure to get plenty of ink onto the string.
I then pressed the "stamp" onto some white card stock.
Because the strings were wider one way than they were
the other, I stamped them twice next to each other.
As you can see I stamped one way, turned the block
and stamped again at a 90 degree angle.
Above was my test piece, where I used all blue ink.
Then I did one with all the blue going one direction and 
chose a green to go the other.
This shows the basket weave much better.
I decided to give a try with a different "block"
I took a small square ink pad and wrapped that with 
string.  This gave a more square stamp.
I tried going all the same way too.  I like this but it
doesn't give the basket weave look, just a totally different 
pattern.
For this last one, I used 2 different colors of
Distress Inks (Vintage Photo and Tea Dye)
I wanted the stamp to be more square,
so I used the same small ink pad and 
covered the top with ATG tape,
you could use any kind of tape runner for this.
Adding the ATG tape was a game changer,
it held the string in place and I could place it all the way
to the edges of the block.
When I showed these backgrounds to my friends
they wanted to know how I got the darker spots in the 
'weave', the dark spots are where the string crosses over itself
so the string is doubled in those spots and it picks up a bit 
more ink.
I hope you'll give this a try, it makes a great background.
I did find I like the smaller block better, as it makes a much smaller
pattern which is more conducive to card-making.
If you'd like to see what I've done with one of these 
backgrounds, be sure to stop by my blog
I'll have it posted there.

Thanks for stopping by today,
I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial
and will try this technique.
It's always fun to use something unique
that you made yourself.
Leave a comment and let me know if you
have ever made your own backgrounds.
Until next time, make something fun!