As you will learn in this class slide mounts are a wonderful

Polished Stone Background Class by Kriss Cramer Adapted from a live online class. Wood Mount (It can be a nice wood mount or simply a child's building block available at the dollar stores. The block size should be anywhere between 1" to 2".) Velcro (enough to cover the wood mount) White Felt (the cheapest you can find) Krylon leafing pen (optional; color preference up to personal choice)
	Step 1 - Gather Your Supplies Adirondack Alcohol Inks Adirondack Blending Solution Wood Block with Velcro White Felt (several pieces cut to size of wood block) Glossy Cardstock TSS Stamps Black Ink Pad Krylon leafing pen (in any color, preferably something that compliments your alcohol inks)
Step 2 – Let’s Get Started Assemble your wood block with a strip of Velcro and place a piece of felt on top.(*** please note that we now sell these in our online store; www.TheStampingStudio.com if you do not want to make your own) Select three alcohol inks. Get your blending solution, some glossy cardstock, and something to lie underneath your work area like a craft sheet or a page from a wallpaper book. Alcohol ink will stain. I would suggest cutting your 8 ½ “ x 11” glossy cardstock in fourths to have four 4 ¼” x 5 ½” panels. It’s a smaller area to work with and it is the same size as your card.
	Step 3 – Drop 1/First Color Select a color and drip three to four drops, in the same spot, onto your felt.
Step 4 – Drop 2/Second Color Select second color and drip three to four drops, in the same spot, onto your felt.
	Step 5 – Drop 3/Third Color Select third color and drip three to four drops, in the same spot, onto your felt. You may notice I actually have a fourth spot. I added the lightest value again. That’s optional.
Step 6 – Blending Solution Have your glossy cardstock ready. Squeeze blending solution all over your drops of ink. You don’t have to use a lot, but you do need to saturate the colors. You’ll see the inks spread out and become fainter.
	Step 7 – The Fun Part Pounce!!! Aggressively pounce that block onto your glossy cardstock. Keep twisting your wrists as you pounce down to move the colors on the felt around and hitting different locations.
Step 8 – Pounce Some More Keep going. Pounce that block all over that paper!
	Step 9 – Don’t Be Shy Pounce the block all over the card until it is covered the way YOU like it. Too much pouncing will turn your colors muddy. So don’t over do it. Some white area is just fine. It’s all personal preference from here.
Step 10 – Aah Ha -- Finished There you have it --- polished stone with alcohol inks. From here you can stamp a greeting or images. Let your imagination go, but first let’s go to the next step…. there’s more.
	Step 11 – A Different Look – Krylon Leafing Pen Let’s try this again. Get another glossy cardstock panel. Peel the old piece of felt off your block and place a new one on it. This time have your Krylon leafing pen nearby. Get your block inked up with two to three colors and put your blending solution on. Take your Krylon leafing pen, shake it up, open it and press it onto your cardstock in several places.
Step 12 – Hurry Up Hurry up and start pouncing, hitting those leafing pen areas first – pounce all over. It’s the same process as before, except this time you just added the leafing pen onto your cardstock first.
	Step 13 – Voila! New Look. Isn’t that pretty!
Step 14 – Grab Your Blending Solution Here’s another look. Take the card you just made with the Krylon leafing pen. Now… gently drip just a drop of your blending solution directly onto the card and watch the leafing and inks spread out. Drip a little … drip a lot …. you decide.
	Step 15 – Another New Look It just makes a different look. I did this to create my t-Shirt card for the April swap. I stamped a t-Shirt onto the polished stone paper and cut it out. It looked like the t-Shirt had been tie-dyed.
Step 16 – Domino Use your alcohol inks to polish stone a domino. As you’ll see, mine kind-of swirled instead of looking like polished stone. I liked it, so I left it alone. In a little bit, you’ll see several dominos I made using the polished stone technique. I haven’t stamped on them yet – I was having too much fun doing the polished stone technique. (I’m telling you…this stuff is addictive. You’ll go crazy inking everything you can, just to see if it works!)
	Step 17 – Ink The Edges You can use your Krylon leafing pen to ink the edges of your domino.
Step 18 – Stamp Domino Get a TSS stamp and a Ranger Archival ink pad. I picked TSS’s tiny, little flower from the Aloha! set – isn’t it adorable, especially for a small domino. Stamp the flower onto your domino.
	Step 19 – Finished (or is it?) Domino Here’s what the domino looks like with the stamped flowers. Cute. You can use this for a pin or place it on a sturdy card. I often drill holes in the top and make key rings.
Step 20 – Wait Just A Minute Grab a paper towel or a clean piece of felt and start rubbing off the stamped flowers. Yes…rub off the flowers.
	Step 21 – Negative Image The Archival ink pad is oil-based and you can rub off the ink, and it will pull off the alcohol ink underneath, leaving you with a negative image of the flowers. How do you like that?
Step 22 – Glass A friend gave me this cool glass tag. You do not need a flat surface to try this technique on glass. Any glass will work. You will need your heat gun this time. Do the same thing as before …ink up your felt block and put blending solution on it. Start pouncing your glass. This time, have your heat gun going and hit the glass with heat as you are pouncing. The heat interacts with the alcohol inks and changes the look slightly. It also makes it dry quickly so you can add more ink. You will need more ink to cover glass.
	Step 23 – Stamped Glass Stamp an image with StazOn, Archival, or Brilliance ink and heat set it.
Step 24 – End Result Here’s the end result. The girl stamp and coffee is TSS’s Cup of Heaven set.
	Step 25 – Don’t Like It? No problem. Grab a clean piece of felt and squeeze blending solution onto it.
Step 26 - Clean It Off Wipe off your glass. It will all clean off, even if you heat set StazOn ink. So…you should have no fear of wasting a glass votive or special metal tag. You can ink it and stamp it and if you don’t like it, just wipe it clean and start over.
	Step 27 – Dog Tag Here’s metal dog tag.
Step 28 – Polished Stone & Stamped Dog Tag Here’s the same dog tag. I used a saying from TSS’s Aloha! set.
	Step 29 – Polished Stone Dominos Examples of polished stone technique on dominos.
Melissa's card she made last night at class.