Firefly Girl Studio Classes November Session

The classes are back, and they're going to be awesome inshaAllah!  Just in time for you to have fun creating during the winter holidays!

Some classes have two sessions, so we're flexible on timings/dates for you.
Each class must be signed up and paid for 4 days prior to it's first session, to allow preparation of materials and course outlines/worksheets.
Classes marked with an asterisk * signify Prima Art Educator classes for the first time in Pakistan!

Yes, Prima inspired classes by me for all the local crafters! :) So if you wonder how we can attend those classes like they show on the Prima Facebook Page or Blog, seek no further, you're going to join em with me and we'll get to use some of the newest and coolest Prima product releases out in the market.

Classes are in Karachi, Phase 5 DHA.

These classes will surface for online sessions starting 24th December.

To REGISTER, please email fireflygirl.studioclasses@gmail.com with the Class and Session you are interested in joining! :)

Basics and Design.
 2 hr class.
 1500/-
 Compositions and Aesthetics
 Essential tools.
 Basic crafting techniques
 Exercise to assist topics covered.
This class is essential to those new to Paper Crafting, or feel they lack the essential foundation to make their work stand out. We cover Basic Design, compositions, introduce you to varying products across available in the market, local fixes, and talk to you about what is worth investing in, and where you can kick start your paper crafting passion.
12th of November
 Session One: 11-1
 Session Two: 3-5


Inkology.
 3 part class.
 4200/- or 1700/- each
 Introduction to types of Inks
 World of Distress
 Mists and Sprays
 Alcohol Inks
Conclusive written test, access to mentioned products and practical application.
Inkology covers the core to the world of paper crafts and mixed media through various inks, stains and other media. The 3 part class covers the different inks, their properties, their uses and practical application. We explore the techniques apt to each ink type, discuss product alternates and test their uses, incorporating them into our projects. This is more theoretical, and vital to anyone wanting to increase their knowledge to explore paper crafting with an intense approach.
 Limited Seats.
13th of November
 Types of Inks, their uses, their properties
 Session One: 11 to 1
 Session Two: 5 to 7
14th of November
 World of Distress (Using Ranger Inc, Tim Holtz products: inks, stains, and more . Different techniques and uses, experimental approach)
 Session One: 3 to 5.30
 Session Two: 6 to 7.30
15th of November
Mists and Sprays, Alcohol Inks
 Session One : 11-1
 Session Two: 3-5

Stampology
 3 hr class.
 2000/-
 Heat Embossing
 Powders and Pearls
 Rendering Stamped images
 Must take Inkology as a prior module.
 Conclusive test, access to mentioned materials and practical application.
 Limited Seats.
 Studying stamping techniques, types of stamps and the variety of projects possible to produce.
17th of November
 Types of Inks, their uses, their properties
 Session One: 11 to 2
 Session Two: 4 to 7

Introduction to Mixed Media with Finnabair Art Essentials and Prima*
 3 hr class.
 3000/-
 Basic materials & techniques inclusive of art mediums, color sprays, stencils and more
 Practical application
 Learn to use Prima’s Art Essentials, learn to layer, explore various mediums, and apply them to collages and mixed media art pieces.
16th of November
 Session One : 11-2

Mixed Media Art Journal*
 with Finnabair and Prima
 3 hr class
 5000/-
 Create your own Mixed Media Art Journal
 Materials provided. Additional materials based on preference to be acquired.
 16th of November
 Session One: 4-7

Mixed Media Art Tile*
 With Finnabair and Prima
 3 hr class
 5000/-
 Create your own Mixed Media Art Art Canvas 8x8 inches in size
 Materials provided. Additional materials based on preference may be acquired.
18th of November
 Session One: 3-6

Polaroid Inspired photo Holders*
2 hr class
 2500/-
 Make and Take
 Materials provided. Additional materials based on preferred project may be required.
Create adorable photo holders to don your special moments. You will create a set of 3 photo holders and will create the coordinating embellishments to match. All materials, including Prima products provided.
18th of November
 Session One: 11-1
20th of November
 Session Two: 4-6

The Ornate Shadow Box*
 3 hr class
 6500/-
 Make and Take
 Materials such as 8x8 shadow frame provided. Additional materials based on individual project may be required. 1 4x6 photo to commemorate required.
19th of November
 Session One: 4-7

Tiny Treasures Gift Boxes*
 2 hr class
 1500/-
 Make and Take
 Dress up two of your own mini gift boxes. Experiment and play with embellishments and create based on preferred theme.
21st of November
 Session One: 5-7

Mini Album magic*
 3.5 hr class
 5000/-
 Create your own mini album. Start to finish.
 Chipboard bases and selective materials provided. Supply list based on personal preferences issued for variety and individual tastes.
23rd of November
 Session One: 3-6.30

Constructing Keepsake Tags*
 2 hr class
 2000/-
 Craft and take home your own whimsy tag. Dress it up with a concept. Select one word you want to work with. Access to Prima paper, stamps and flowers. Additional materials to be acquired based on preference.
25th of November
 Session One: 5 to 7

Tea in Transit, for every Chai Addict*3 hr class
3500/-
 Assemble and take home your mini tea bag dispenser using adorable Prima products. Whether you want to gift it to someone or want a pretty way to access your tea bags. You don't want to miss this!
 Materials provided.
27th of November
 Session One: 4 to 7

Bloom Inspired Art Tiles*
 3 hr class
 3500/-
 A fun class incorporating Jamie Daugherty Bloom Stamps and other Prima products. Construct an art piece on an 8x8 art tile. Personal medium of choice for coloring required (water colors, acrylics, coloring pencils, etc) basic materials for mixed media provided. Additional materials for embellishments to be brought based on individual requirement. Tile, access to Prima Art Essentials, Bloom stamps, adhesive and stencils included.
28th of November
 Session One: 4 to 7

Upcycled Utilities*
3 hr class
 3500/-
 Make the most of what you have lying about at home. Upcycle an existing box, container, basket, tin or pail. All materials provided, just bring something to alter! We're going to go all Prima on it!
1st of December
 Session One: 4 to 7
To REGISTER, please email fireflygirl.studioclasses@gmail.com with the Class and Session you are interested in joining! :)

Sparkle with Prima (Lulupu Blog Hop) Day 10

Hello Hello!

Thank you for paying my little space a visit as part of this super fun blog hop hosted by my friends over at Lulupu. I'm super excited to be sharing my bits and bobbles contributing to the amazing projects lined up as part of Sparkle with Prima. Before me was the Goddess of shabby chic and vintage, Mallika over at Aola Handmade Cards.

This is probably also my first post in a long while, and it's super cool cause I get to share one of the many pretty things I'll be experimenting with in the coming months as a Prima Art Educator for Pakistan. I have been on wheels for 5 weeks traveling for a little home away from home holiday. I got back day before yesterday, so please pardon the photos.

Alright, let's get to it.

I thought about what I wanted to craft for this hop. I had received an entire box of Prima goodies to play with (which by the way are still packed and in the process of going up in the craft space) prior to my holiday. And I had no time lost in deciding that it'd be fun to do something to commemorate the festival of lights, Diwali. I wanted to do this for all my crafty friends celebrating this festival. I read about it, and it was a little exciting working with a conceptual project.

I didn't want to take Diwali to a literal interpretation with candles and lights.. instead I worked up some crafty goodness keeping in mind the essence of Diwali. It celebrates new beginnings, comes around in autumn, and favors the good vs evil. Keeping these in mind I pulled up Prima's beautiful 'Epiphany' collection and got to it. This is an 8x8 mixed media canvas tile. It has been ink stained and layered with some of the cool new Finnabair Art Extravagance Specialty Paste, Clear Crackle. I stenciled it on with Prima's spin wheel set. It turned out pretty cool in between the ink layers. I used some of the Finnabair Mica Flakes and crused glitter.

The gorgeous resin bird is from the Ingvild Bolme collection. It's so prettttttaaaay! I popped open some lovely hues from the Color Bloom Sprays to accent the over all piece in tones of natural colors with a touch of fairy dust. Love these Color Bloom Sprays. Their nozzle, compared to others makes helps keep your hands clean. Super easy to use. The colors and consistency is just right, and the pearl like finish looks magical! <3

You can see some details up close, I've layered up with some inspiring words that tie up the new beginnings and Diwali. They give hope, make you feel happy...

The flutters within are all cut from the Epiphany collection. How lovely is it to imagine a changed world, with new beginnings, metamorphosis and the colors of gorgeous autumn?

I hope you all enjoyed this project. I look forward to some more craft therapy in coming months :) Thank you for stopping by. <3

Please hop over to Kripa at The Colour Press now to see the gorgeousness she's cooked up! :D

V

Gifts for Mom!

We're bringing you exclusive gifts for Mom this year! Mother, my bit of heaven is a series of Mom gifts to present to your first love this year! Firefly has put together these specials to accommodate several of you inshaAllah :) Please read through the form and let us get back to you with payment details for your order confirmations <3

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Inks, Stains, and other things!

Well, I'm on vacation. Hehe. And this is actually the best retreat as I get to explore and tread on art therapy. As I am not used to feeling idle, I pick up crafty things to do on my own without a brief or requirement from clients, no deadlines... and just an opp to explore different media.

I haven't splurged fully, so I've been sampling and if I like these, I'll probably invest in more colors and what not. This blog post is pretty much a demo and a tutorial. What often happens is we don't know the use or the technicalities of a lot of chemicals and inks we purchase. This is to help you with that so you can eventually invest or consider buying them.

Once you're done reading, do leave your feedback as a comment on the bottom of this post :)
PS: I haven't all my tools and things on me so can't do one on embossing and stamping inks yet. Shall cover those on the next round :) inshaAllah!

 

 

Rule Number ONE... if you don't know the use... do some research... if you're experimental, try one at a time. These inks can eat up our pocket. :P

 

 

Liquid Pearls

These read as dimensional pearlescent paint. The colors for these were gorgeous, and I HAD to buy them. I have no idea what I'll use them for but they're fun to try out, right? :)

 

 

 

I haven't yet gotten the hang of controlling the consistency but here's what they look like on paper.

These would be sweet as little accents on flowers or geometric designs.

 

 

 

The Fad about Distress Inks

 

 

There is a tidal wave in the market for Tim Holtz Distress Inks. They're intended to give your work an aged and distress look, perfect if you're into vintage and mixed media! When I first bought mine, I honestly didn't like it. I thought I was better off using a dried stack of Martha Stewart Inks. A week ago however, I bought one again. To play around with. And I must say, first impressions are never lasting!

 

Ranger produces these distress inks and other amazing products. They have an ink blending tool and the whole shabang. But for, the fix-it crafter I am, I decided to skip the ink blending tool (namely because I packed it away in a suticase) I tried using it without.. and the above is the result I acquired.

 

A lof of you ask me if you can use Distress Inks in inking your stamps or using them while stamping. For this blog post, I actually went ahead and stamped a little butterfly with each distress shade to let you know the result. It is pigment ink, which means it's wet and stays that way for a bit.. but given it's created to give that aged feel, the sponge doesn't quite ink the stamp the way you'd want it to.

 

I have 5 colors I demonstrated with.

 

 

 

The top of the tag is distressing by dabbing my fingers onto the ink pad and patting on to the tag edges. The bottom, as you can see is more intense, is directly brushing the ink pad against the cardstock tag. This isn't the most appropriate way as it just uses up a LOT of ink and becomes too intense for the distressed look. *you can see it in the photo* You can try distressing without inking your fingers by using cotton swabs, the eye shadow sponge swabs, an every day sponge, cotton fluff, or the actual ink blending tools.

 

You can also crinkle and scrunch up your paper and rub over it with the ink the same way for a visual and physical distressed appearance on your projects.

 

For the demo I have used Victorian Velvet, Tea Dye, Wild Honey, Crushed Olive, and Broken China.

 

The tag below is something I played around with using some stamps, archival ink, broken china and wild honey distress inks. The green is where the two over lapped. I didn't use any other sponge or applicator, just smudged with the fingers.

 

 

 

 

Distress Stains

 

Continuing the range of Tim Holtz products, there's also something called Distress Stain. It's ink that

comes in a little bottle with a sponge dabber at the end. I currently bought these two to play around with. For the demo I've used Vintage Photo as I used wild honey for the distressing earlier.

 

 

 

That's teh sponge on top.

 

What you do is, shake up the ink a bit.. squeeze the bottle gently, and the sponge releases some ink.. the more pressure you apply on to the bottle and surface, the more ink there is. For the tag, I've just gone over to create a darker intensity. Squint your eyes and study the tag for a second... you can see a gradation in the color. Because of the amount of ink I've used over it. This is fun to use with embossing and resist inking. You'd get some fab results if you keep playing around. You can also dab it for the distorted effect on the top right.

 

These are available in several colors, not as many as the distress inks though!

 

 

 

Adirondack Inks

 

This is another product by Ranger and Tim Holtz. These are alcohol based inks, which directly tells you that they dry SUPER fast. And they have that nail polish remover smell because of all the ethanol in it! These will bleed and run if you pour spirit, thinner, or nail polish remover over them, as they will mix.

 

I find them interesting to use over plastic. On paper, not so much. They bleed through and dry super fast so you can't really blend them unless you have the hair drier blowing the ink in all directions... they're not really intended for paper to start with. They're used on glass, and other slick surfaces. There's a specialy gloss paper you can use these with to retain all the media properties. Tim Holtz also has those acrylic charms you can use these to ink with. These alcohol based inks are fade resistant and are permanent. 

 

 

 

 

Just playing around here, you can see clearly how much these inks bleed!

 

I tried it on a plastic wrapper, because plastic doesn't absorb ink, and these alcohol based ones just evaporate leaving the pigment stain, this surface allowed some moving around and blending with other colors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

<EDIT>

While Alcohol inks are fab to play around with and use, if you plan on shopping and then bringing them over to Pakistan or any place outside the U.S... you may not be able to. These are highly flammable hence cannot be shipped on air transit due to flight regulation and safety. Same reason why lighters and large quantities of liquids are not permitted on the air craft. As per the Ranger website terms and conditions, it does state they only ship via ground post.

</EDIT>

 

 

 

Patina

Now these inks are also by Ranger, they're super opaque, dry pretty fast... and well, they're intended for metal. I used them for a tag.

 

 

 

For this tag in greens, there's a lot of Patina, and some wild honey distress. The dimensional bits and bobbles are Liquid Pearls, and the gold is actually a stamp embossed in golden archival ink.

 

 

 

Glossy Accents

 





While I have used epoxy resin for my charms and gumdrops, there are alternatives for quick dimensional projects. Glossy accents is a chemical you glaze over your imagery or surface, and it yields a clear gloss coat finish. The longer you let it stay, the harder it gets... but it still has that dent quality. So if you jab a finger nail into it, it will leave a mark. It's nice though if you want to create the glazed and glossed look on your embellishments.

 

I have tried Judikins Diamond Glaze and prefer Glossy Accents over it. The dry time is approximately the same, but I find Diamond Glaze more maleable or 'soft'... 

 

Using it is super easy, you just evenly coat the surface by squeezing the bottle. The Glossy Accent comes through the nozzle. You have to try not to get bubbles, it's pretty neat. :)

 

 

 

Here's how I first tried out Glossy Accents. I punched out a butterfly from a stack of glittered cardstock. Put Glossy Accents over one of them.

 

 

After letting it dry, here's what it looked like :)

 

See the difference? It's that epoxy bubble feel, but it's not resin... it's not hard.

 

To show you how you can embellish your stamped images, I went ahead and stamped this butterfly.

 

Covered it with Glossy Accents, you can see the cloudy glaze.

 

This is a little later, you can see it's drying.

 

You have the dimensional feel there.

Don't touch it no matter how tempting it is! Let it dry a few hours before you poke it. *wink*

 

 

 

I hope this blog post was helpful to most of you.

To treat our readers at Life as the Firefly Girl Blog, I'm going to give away one bottle of Glossy Accents! To be counted in the draw, just leave your feedback on the post by commenting below :)

 

Cardery.

I am not a card person, I had some super special requests and did hand crafted cards... I love buying them though. And since the wallet cards swamp my life... I just admire pretty things from a distance. *wink* I love the work I see online though. It's amazing what people do with them... E.T at Glitters & Swirls is one of them. Her pieces totally wow you :) You make sure you drop her a little hello by clicking here.

Anyhow, we have the rescheduled card making classes today, given it's 2 am already. I wanted to work out a few samples for the stamped ones more than the vintage category, as I already have so much of it over at Firefly! I just finished up washing all my stamps and putting them aside for the class.

The cards I've done are all super simple... I tried very hard not to go vintage! :)
The point of each one was to show different ways in which you could utilize stamping.


This one was light tones and dark ones to create background and foreground. Super simple!

I wanted to show how images can be rendered and treated after stamping and of course, using the right ink.

Stamped imagery and water color... archival ink used to prevent the smearing and bleeding. Blinged with rhinestones.

I love this one. Self print, I love that stamp... in the background... a bit of color at the bottom.. and the Hello accent.