ANTIQUE UTEE NECKLACE

Back to my favorite hobby, making jewelry with Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE). I learned this technique from the Queen of UTEE, Suze Weinberg.

I used an oval antique silver ornate frame by Tim Holtz and laid it face down over two flowers on a Posh fan stamp. I melted clear UTEE in my melting pot with a little purple To Dye For. To Dye For doesn't come in purple so I mixed red and blue together on a jar lid with a toothpick to make purple, then I swirled the toothpick through the melted clear so I basically had clear with swirls of purple through it. I then poured the UTEE into the frame on the stamp and let it harden. Popped the UTEE piece out, colored the raised design with Smooch inks, let them dry and with my finger, slicked a coating of Diamond Glaze over the top to seal the piece. While the UTEE piece was still wet, I ran some Loctite glue around the inside rim of the frame and placed it on top of the UTEE piece. Let the glue and glaze dry and then did my beading.

Of course the necklace is way too fancy to wear with any of my ratty clothes so now I have to go clothes shopping.

HOW TO MAKE FAUX WASHI PAPER

If you're like me, you buy sheets of gorgeous washi paper but can't bear to cut into it or use it. While I'm trying to work up the courage to use the real stuff, I've been making my version of washi paper. You'll need a lightweight paper, I used rice paper but plain old copy paper works just as well, spray colors such as Smooch, Glimmer Mists, Color Wash or whatever you have that's in a spray bottle or make your own with water and re-inkers, an iron, stamps, perfect medium ink and white ink, perfect pearls in colors of choice.

1. Mist your paper with colors of your choice until you get the coverage you want. Let dry. When dry, iron to flatten paper.

2. Stamp whatever images you like using a perfect medium pad and apply perfect pearls in colors of your choice. If you don't have perfect pearls, stamp your images with metallic inks. Stamp accent images with white pigment ink. Of course, you can stamp your images in any type of ink you want, I just like the shimmery look of perfect pearls.

3. Use your faux washi paper as a background and decorate your card however you like.