Gifts from Voodoo Vixen and some bad news about pigment ink pads

Earlier this week I got a package from my friend Annette, aka Voodoo Vixen. Her package came from Canada and was filled with many goodies. At first, I thought Annette had altered the doll outfit I sent her and I thought how I had not even started altering the one I had that would eventually be hers. Thankfully that was not the case, though, and I got a reprieve (you can see the doll outfit at the back of the table).


Annette said I was to receive this lovely page for a fat book, but I was not a part of that swap. However, I would NEVER turn down 1)anything Annette makes because it is always laden with so many wonderful embellishments, and 2)anything made with the theme of TIME or clocks.


I know my camera sucks, but maybe this photo is a better representation of the crackle on the clock face and the embossing in the background. This is one super page and I am adding it to my Time Altered Book. Thank you SO MUCH dear Annette. And yes, there are more embellishments than I can possibly name.


But wait! Annette sent several foam pieces from her latest dies. She also sent transparencies and chipboard I could use for masks.


She suggested I could use the dress form and other foam pieces for stamps. They actually look like stamps to me. And when I added the Wacky Tac, they even acted like stamps. I often tout Wacky Tac, a liquid tacky glue that dries with enough tack to make it repositionable (and many times, too). There is no need for a cushion between the stamp (or foam) and your acrylic block. And you don't have to peel tape off your acrylic blocks, either. It's the perfect thing to adhere your stamps to a clear block.


As fortune would have it, I got two of the Umbrella men, one whose umbrella was a bit under the weather. Still, I was so happy, because now I have one man going left and one going right.


As luck would also have it, as I was putting everything away in my basement last week, I found these three pigment inks that had gone through two water pipe floods and had been stuck in a bucket on their sides. I know they had not been moved since the first go-round back in 2008, so I was looking forward to putting Tim Holtz's tale of how to store your stamp pads to the test. Not sure you can tell, but these three stamp pads still have their original plastic shrink wrap covering sealing the ink in place. In fact, these could have just come from the stamp store had they not been in a bucket for three years or so. As I removed the plastic protective shrink wrap coating, I noticed bits of mold on the back of each of the stamp pads. I carefully washed the backs of the pads before I proceeded.


When I tried to ink the butterfly Annette sent me, I had a lot of trouble. You can see I finally got the first one (upper left of page) to sort of take ink, then realized as I was trying to ink the foam the second time, that only one tiny edge of the pad was doing the inking. The top (in the photo) of the ink pad is dry, and just a small part in the bottom (in the photo) of the pad has ink. And that ink is still very juicy. But the rest of the pad is dry as a bone.

What I'm trying to show is that only a small part of the ink pad, the part closest to the butterfly, is still wet with ink. The rest of the pad is dry.


The same is true of the green stamp pad. Only a small area is still wet, and I suspect it is because that area was what the rest of the pad leaked into.


Then came the real test. I bet Annette never thought I would put her butterfly to the test so quickly. This time it was with the rainbow pad.


This was the worst pad of all. The dark colors had bled into the yellow, which was the only color that still had any juice left.


Not a very good representation of a butterfly.


So that's when I decided to see if I could do a direct to paper effect using the butterfly as a mask. The Wacky Tac was already dry on the foam. That didn't help either. There was just not enough ink


to create a good image.

So, those of you who still think Tim Holtz knows what he's talking about when he says it doesn't matter how you store your ink pads, you might want to remember that not all ink pads are made by Tim. If he says HIS pads will stay inky even if they are kept at an angle in a bucket, then fine. That doesn't mean all ink pads will stay that way. Take it from me, along with my gift from Annette that I was able to prove it. Please remember, Annette did NOT send the ink pads. I'm the one who let these ink pads sit unattended in a bucket all those years.

Thanks again Annette for the lovely gifts I got to play with yesterday. I promise to play more next time and may even make something useful from all the goodies you have sent me. And if I helped anyone with their stamp pad dilemma, I am thrilled.