Tile Fun!

Well, I had planned to post a few days ago for Biblical Impressions, but when I photographed the tiles, the pictures turned out awful. As I mentioned in my last post, I accidently sprayed these tiles, made this summer before college started up again, with glue instead of sealer. While the glue darkened and dulled the tiles, they still looked okay, but these two just didn't photograph well either. So, I decided to remake them this weekend after (hurrah!!) I finished my last assignments for this quarter.

First, I want to show you a tile before I stamped on them. As you can see, these are not smooth ceramic tiles, but are tumbled tiles. When you choose your tiles, be sure to be aware of the grooves and pits. On my sunflower tile, I did not notice that, and around the edges, it doesn't quite have the smooth look of the original.

I wanted to make a masculine looking tile, so this is it. I applied my green Stazon pad directly to the tile. I embossed the plaid stamps in copper. When I first photgraphed this second set of tiles, I though the white cracks (from the tile) made the tiles not look really nice, though it is a more natural look, so I inked in some more green on this, and yellow on the next tile.

Now, in case you were wondering if the glue really had made all that difference, here is the tile, same copper embossing, though maybe a different green:

I used the Sunflower Background for this stamp, after applying yellow to the tile. I edged the tile first in brown, then yellow as the brown was too far to the edge, then edged in once more with butterscotch. I liked the color, and decided to daub it on the sunflower centers as well.

Unlike the plaid tile, I covered all of the tile surface with ink.
Here is the tile before I altered it (note, photographing on wood vs. countertop yielded different appearance fo the yellow):

So, those are the tiles I recreated for this post. But as long as I finally had a chance to play with my stuff, I made a couple of Christmas tiles. These are your standard ceramic glazed tiles. I got a bunch for next to nothing at a place called "Why buy new" which has all sorts of fun used stuff. I've discovered, from a flawed tile that I had been using as a coaster just to determine this, that embossing handles use very well. So, I used embossing on both of these. First, however, I applied alcohol ink to each of them. For the tile with the Our Lord circle image, I decided to emboss the sides with gold. I probably won't do it often: embossing on tile (either kind) takes FOREVER, so I may try something else next time. For the sectioned tile (same size as the single tiles), I used Glory to God and holly from the discontinued line of BI stamps still available.