Results of my day at home playing with macaroni

The macaroni I used were thin spaghetti, elbow, and bow tie.

Thin spaghetti, elbow, and bow tie macaroni noodles

Shelly, aka Tachar, from aspot2stamp still has her full mental and humor faculties in tact although she is suffering some horrendous tooth extraction pain.

One day we might see a post on the device she is thinking about.  Macaroni hot glued to a piece of foam core and used as a stamp.  She also saw Butterflies in my experiment that I did not see.

I used the bow tie noodles with several of my home made spritzes on Whisper White card stock.

Bow tie and elbow macaroni used with home brewed spritzes

The outline of the bow tie noodle mask is where Shelly saw the butterflies…before I messed with the elbow noodles to make the designs.

You can watch the video of my process here.

The two pieces I like that came from this experiment are vellum and ink jet photo paper.

The vellum is a piece I have from Club Scrap.  This paper is unlike any other that I’ve used before.  Very smooth surface and a thicker paper.  Vellum is non porous and does not absorb ink as other papers and card stock does.

Joe interrupted my experiment a couple days ago to help clean up his stash of items from our porch area.  I opted to leave the Faded Jeans Distress ink to dry on its own over night.  18 hours later the ink was still wet in places.  Enough that I poured Gold embossing powder over the entire paper surface and heat set it.

I like  this piece and will use this technique one again.

Vellum, Faded Jeans Distress ink, gold embossing powder

Lastly, I used a piece of Kodak ink jet printer photo paper with alcohol inks.  Adirondak Stream, Butterscotch, and Current along with elbow macaroni shaken in a plastic box.  I REALLY like this piece and will definitely use this again.

Alcohol inks, elbow macaroni, and photo paper

It is time to get the suitcase packed and the pickup loaded to head back out for Nashville for our final set of trucks today so I have to get out of this blog and back to work.  Seems like Monday to me but it is Thursday.

The month of May has some very interesting “National Days” coming up.  One of them is “Sandwich Day” in Great Britain.  I’m not sure of the exact day in May it is held but I will be making a post from the road about it in my other blog – Foolishness and Mayhem.

I’m sure my Friend from the UK – Lynn Claridge – will be lending a hand on that front.  At least I hope she has something different than bologne and cheese 😀

Have a fantastic weekend everyone.

Leslie

Macaroni experiment in progress

We delivered our trucks in Wilmer, Texas yesterday.  These past couple of weeks have been fraught with so many opportunities.  You know, problems in the making to opportunities.

I should be posting this to my “Foolishness and Mayhem” blog but I’m going to do it here.  Only because I have photos and a video in the works…that is if I can have more than 10 minutes to do them at a time.

After delivering our trucks we got a call from our  neighbor.  The managers of our mobile home park are coming down on all of the residents to clean up their lots.  Joe had left a couple of tire carcasses near our porch that needed to be taken to the tire shop we deal with to be disposed of and some pieces of equipment of Joe’s has been neatly stacked and out of the way but has incurred the wrath of the park management.  The note said to move it NOW or they would do it for us.  So we came straight home from Wilmer to take care of these items.

Plus, the water pump Joe had replaced in our pickup two weeks ago has been leaking a little so back to the original shop that fixed it in the first place.  Which is also near home.  Turns out a hose clamp was faulty when it was installed and the culprit for the leaks.  Our porch is cleared off, tires taken to the shop, equipment stored away and we have spiffed up our end.

The consensus is the park is up for sale and they want to do curb appeal fixes to put on a good face.  Now they spruce the place up – go figure.

Okay, enough of that and on to the real stuff I’m wanting to write about.

I had mentioned in my “Because I can’t read – Challenge” post using macaroni as a stamp or a mask.  I tried it and the results are promising.  Needs a little bit of polish and a do over or two but I think this might be something worth looking into later when I have several days to putter around.

Spaghetti noodles as masks, and elbow macaroni as flowers.  A bit hit and miss but it does work.

Elbow macaroni flowers and spaghetti noodle masks

I laid the spaghetti noodles on a scrap piece of Whisper White card stock then spritzed with my brew.  This worked until the paper curled from the wet then the noodles rolled all over the place.  Even after I dried the paper with my heat tool.

Spaghetti noodles vs. repositionable adhesive.  Noodles 1 – repositionable adhesive 0.

I then took an Elbow Macaroni, pounced it on a Cameo Coral ink pad to make the “pink” flowers.  Then Brilliant Blue for the other flower.

One thing I feared was the moisture in the ink would soak into the noodle and then make it mushy.  No, that does not happen.  The noodle stays dry and firm while the ink does not penetrate into the noodle.

NOTE:  Cameo Coral, Brilliant Blue, Whisper White are Stampin’ Up! products.  The inks may be discontinued – I don’t know.  The Whisper White card stock is still available – at least I think it still is.

Next experiment in progress got interrupted by an untimely knock on my window with exclamations of needing help outside to get things cleaned up.  Which meant that Joe was finally ready to get cracking on the task of cleaning, purging, and putting away his stuff from outside.

I have a piece of vellum from Club Scrap that I used in a plastic Stampin’ Up! stamp box.  Repositionable tape to hold the paper inside the lid.  I put several elbow macaroni pieces in the larger bottom of the box and several drops of Faded Jeans Distress Ink (Tim Holtz) in with the macaroni.  Give the box a good shake and bouncing racket and the results are….

Vellum, Faded Jeans Distress Ink, and elbow macaroni

Six hours later and the ink is still wet on the Vellum.  I’m going to leave it over night then see how it turns out tomorrow morning.  Vellum is not as porous as card stock is.  It is notorious for ink smears, smudges, and all ill manner of whimper inducing bad stuff when not handled properly.

Any type of ink application to Vellum REQUIRES administering hot air via the heat tool to set the inks.

Liquid ink from the reinker DOES soak into the macaroni.  Discolors it to be exact.  I’m leaving these bits to dry to hopefully play with them once again tomorrow.

Distress Ink stained elbow macaroni

We still have to go back to Nashville for the final set of trucks to be delivered to Wilmer, Texas.  However the dealership in Wilmer is not open on the weekend for delivery so we have to plan our driving over the weekend to be able to deliver on Monday.  Then it will be back toward home to get trucks from the Port of Catoosa, near Tulsa, Oklahoma to be taken to Las Vegas, Nevada.  That is all for next week.

I’m only focusing on tomorrow and getting to play before I have to go back to work.