Bamboo Tile Stamping and threading

I've taken these photos to show how I threaded my bamboo tiles and also the best way to stamp them.
First the stamping. The best way is to lay the stamp flat and even, then ink it up and bring the tile to the stamp. Less chance of it slipping and the image becoming smudged. Lift the tile straight up and off. Now the threading. I've used hat elastic and as you can see I've threaded it through both tiles to join them together.

Pull it up so it's firm and reasonably tight and then tie a knot. Tug the ends really well so there's no chance of it coming undone.

Snip off the excess quite close to the knot.

Then ease the knot over so that it's sitting above the hole. This step requires a bit of pulling and tugging and lots of swearing. I used a bamboo skewer to poke the knot down into the hole and then from the opposite end I pulled and tugged until the knot disappeared inside the hole.

And here's what it looks like. It was rather awkward putting it on my wrist and taking a photo at the same time, so I've slipped it over a bottle of glazing liquid so you get the idea.

This bracelet consists of nine tiles and it fits my fat, chubby, chunky wrist quite well. But I tried it on Brighita's slim petite wrist and it was a bit loose, so probably seven or eight tiles would be enough. The pictures are from an Artchix collage sheet and they fit perfectly on the tile. I glued them on with a gel medium and when that was dry I've sealed them with Mod Podge gloss.

Just some more tiles. The top ones have two coats of silver metallic paint and I've stamped them using one of my little stamps I got at the craft show (see the previous post). The second row are plain tiles and I've stamped them using Archival Ink in black using a text stamp.

So let me know what you think and if you can think of another way of threading the tiles together I would love to hear from you.

Bamboo Tile Source

As promised a couple of days ago I said I would tell you where to get a great source of bamboo tiles but only if you live in Perth. I'm sure these are available elsewhere, so if you don't live in Perth you'll just have to look around.

To get these.............. ...........you need one of these. A bamboo place mat. Out of this one place mat I got 130 tiles and it's very easy. Just a matter of cutting the thin plastic strands that bind it all together and there you have it. Now I have seen on ebay 50 tiles for $4.50 and that was Canadian dollars (don't know how that converts to Ausie $) plus you would have to pay postage and handling. This place mat only cost $5.00, so each tile only costs.......lets see....130 divided by 5.00 is......oh heck, you work it out. Maths is not my strong suit by any stretch of the imagination. They're cheap O.K! I got mine from Cost Plus in Westminster (formerly Balga), there are Cost Plus stores in Alexander Heights, Kwinana, Mandurah, Waikiki, and Subiaco. As far as decorating them goes there is a wealth of informations here, even though it does relate to domino tiles I'm pretty certain most of the techniques could be applied to bamboo tiles. Also here and here is another good source of information with some pictures. Roni has the most amazing blog full of tips and tricks and this is where I got the idea for the button bracelet below.

I'll have a few more of these to show you over the next few days hopefully.

Bamboo Tile Experiments

I've been playing with some bamboo tiles and trying out different ways of decorating them the last few days. The beauty of them is that they are already pre-drilled so it makes them easy to thread. Although I'm having difficulties working out the best way to thread them to make them into a bracelet or bangle. The photos below are some of the different ways of colouring them. The black tile with the white on it was just sponged with black stazon ink and the white squiggles on the left is a uni posca pen, the word uni is written with a white uni paint pen and the very pale pen stripe is an inkessentials opaque white pen that wasn't very successful. The coloured stripe tile has different coloured sharpie pens. All of the patterned tiles were stamped with stazon and hand coloured with Adirondack pigment pens Below are some plain tiles just stamped with black stazon and the left one I coloured in with a sharpie and the right I just left plain.

These tiles I painted with folk art silver metallic paint. Gave them two coats and so it wouldn't be so fiddly having to paint one side then let it dry before doing the other side...........

..........I stuck them on bamboo skewers and then shoved them into a piece of foam. Ingenious I thought. They always say necessity is the mother of invention and I'm inclined to agree.

Here I've just sponged on green stazon with a small piece of 'cut-n-dry' stamp pad foam.

I also played around with alcohol inks and stamping and just quickly put this bracelet together to get an idea of how it would look.

Check back tomorrow and I'll show you how I aquired a very cheap source of tiles and if you live in Perth where to get them.

I'm off to play some more and try my hand at attaching some collage pictures to the tiles.