Project of the Week ~ Fun With Freezer Paper

Surprise, surprise… It’s me, Wendy here posting on a Monday! I’ve never posted my own Project of the Week before. So this experience has given me yet even more appreciation for our talented design team. Truth be told, I spend most of my time designing and manufacturing our stamps so it is not often that I get a chance to actually play with them.

For today’s project I decided to be brave and try something new to me. I was recently inspired by a card I saw online that used freezer paper and dies to create a mask. So I thought why not give this technique a try.

The supplies I used were:
Reynolds Freezer Paper
Sizzix dies… Basic Shapes Butterfly, Delicate Butterfly, small frame
Big Shot
Watercolor paper cut to 3 3/4″ x 5″
Purple card stock cut to 4″ x 5 1/4″
White card stock cut to 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ and scored in half
Iron
Ranger Sea Brights dye ink re-inkers in Citrus, Purple Surf, and Pool
Paintbrush
Water
Memento Tuxedo Black ink
Repeat Impressions stamp #9005-E, Flutter By
Exacto knife

Here is what I did:
1) Preheat iron using the cotton/linen setting.
2) Die-cut large Basic Shapes Butterfly using a piece of freezer paper.
3) Lay the butterfly shiny side down in the desired position on the watercolor paper.

4) Iron the freezer paper for a minute or so until it is well affixed to the watercolor paper.
5) Use dye inks and a wet brush to apply a colorful wash over and around your mask. (I had intended to use my watercolors for this until I discovered that they were all dried up. Oops! I guess it’s been way too long since I played with those!)

6) Allow paper to dry completely.
7) Use exacto knife to loosen an edge of the freezer paper mask. Carefully peel off mask.
8) Stamp the Flutter By sentiment in black ink.
9) Affix watercolor panel to purple card stock, then affix to white card base.

And voila! Here is my finished card. Not too bad for a first attempt.

I thought this technique was fun so I continued experimenting. For the second card I die cut the smaller butterfly with the detail cut outs, then followed all the same steps.

But apparently I was too heavy handed with my washes because when I peeled up a little corner of the mask I discovered that some of the ink had seeped underneath. 🙁 Booo… But since I really liked the look of it with the mask left on it, I decided to leave it that way.

In fact, I liked it so much that I made one more that way on purpose, but with a little added twist… While my wash was still wet I sprinkled a little coarse kosher salt over it.

Then once the color was dry I just brushed away the salt. In case you’ve never tried it before, that creates a cool effect that ends up looking a little like batik. Neat! Here’s a close up so you can see what I mean.

And my finished card.

So I ended up getting a bit off course with this technique, but it was fun experimenting and I’ll definitely be doing it again. I hope you might give it a try too.

Thank you for visiting today and please be sure to stop by again on Wednesday to check out our next challenge and all the fabulous inspiration from the RI Rock Stars.

Until then… Happy stamping!

Wendy