Watercolour Class Day 1 - another project

Here's a sample I did for the Vibrant Watercolor Wash technique in the On-line Watercolor class I'm taking (link on sidebar).  I used Distress markers and the paper is white shimmer.  The stamp is one of Fred B. Mullett's stamps from nature prints, and the sentiment is Stampotique.  The stamps are embossed in black, except on the notecard (Memory Box in squash), which are stamped in Soft Olive (Hero Arts Shadow ink).  I love this technique and will try it again.  It is really quick and easy.  I am enjoying this class so far, and learning new things, which is always fun.

Creative Chemistry Days 7-10

Day 7 (l-r): Nostalgic Batik,
Rusted Enamel, Distress Powder Resist

 Hello!  Here are the rest of the tags I made to go with the Creative Chemistry class with Tim Holtz that I took on line.  I really, really enjoyed it! 

Some of my favourites are the Rusted Enamel (can't wait to try that in different colours) and the distress powder resist - isn't that fabulous with my big Fred B Mullett fish!  I love the colours.  And I just got a wonderful bubble stamp at Heather's for the background by Ryn Designs. For that resist I used some sprays in shades of red.  Scrumptious!  I also loved the perfect pearls and am going to get them out far more often. 

Thanks for stopping by!  Now I'm off to clean up the aftermath in my stamping room.  I had hoped the elves would do it while I was out at work, but as usual, they didn't. 

Day 8 (l-r): Paint Dabber Resist, Crackle
Paint Resist, Shattered Stains

Day 9 (l-r):  Perfect Distress Mist,
Perfect Distress, Perfect Splatter Distress



Day 10: Rock Candy Distress Stickles



Stampotique challenge - Recycle

Here's my submission for this week's Stampotique challenge, which is to recycle something. I started off using a few different things, but they didn't work, so I raided the recycling bin. No joy there, but next to it is our box of things to go back to the bottle depot. I nobly sacrificed the 10 cents we'd get for the Stella can and cut out the label with my Kai shears and gently molded it flat against my brayer. I was careful not to cut myself on the sharp edges. Then I used some cereal box to cut into the fleur-de-lis border (Tim Holtz - Sizzix) and sprayed that with Riptide glimmer mist and some other mist concoction of vaguely orange/copper nature. This got piece got stamped with one of my Stampendous rock cubes using black ink. The crown (Stampotique) was stamped on a red scrap and cut out. That same scrap got used for the sentiment (Inkadinkado), which reads, "It's not just for breakfast." I only inked a portion of the stamp, which starts off with "Chocolate:" but I figured since this is likely going to finish up as a Father's Day card, I'd make it about the beer instead of chocolate. The red scrap also did duty behind the border. The card base is kraft cardstock. I like this and I hope hubby does too. I did wash the piece of can, but there is still the faintest aroma of beer about the project. Also my hands. This brings me to the end of my post and near the end of the long weekend. It's been a good three days, and I am trying not to think about the mountain of things waiting for me back at the office. No, I will banish those thoughts and go back to stamping!

Stampotique Designer Challenge

Hello! Quick post before I dash off to work. Here's my project for this Stampotique Designer Challenge - sketch.

I had a scrap of coloured paper I'd made so I stamped Gog Lin on it and coloured with Bruynzeel pencils. Then added some stones. Both stamps are Stampotique. Then I found some coordinating BasicGrey papers (Recess line) and finished off the sketch. I don't have any Stampotique sentiments (yet) so I used a rub on from my stash for the "celebrate".

Thanks for stopping by!

Challenge Tag

Hello! Wow - two posts in one day. It's been a good day for stamping, other than refereeing two girls who are somewhat overwrought with an excess of excitement and sugar.

The current challenge at Stampotique is to use newsprint/old books on the project. It's an any-stamp-goes challenge, so I went with this nice quote from a Darkroom Door floral set. I had the tag on hand, used to mop up extra ink off the craft sheet from another project. I can't say what the colours are, probably denim and eggplant color wash spray, with some Memories silver in there too. Just guessing though! I stamped the twiggy branch (Sunshine Designs) using chipped sapphire and broken china, then the sentiment embossed in metallic purple. I did a bit of a frame in black pen, and brought in the old paper by die cutting some butterflies with a page from an old book of French poetry. Which I then coloured with Tombows and covered in stickles. But the old book paper is there, I promise. You can kind of make out the print on the two larger butterflies. I decided it was too hard to see the embossing, so I took a waterbrush filled with bleach and went over the words to highlight them.

Thanks for stopping by!

Easter card

Hello! I made this card for the Stampotique Animal/Bird/Insect challenge, and when I went to enter it, I found the challenge closed. This is the second time I've missed the challenge. How stunned am I? I am losing my mind. Granted, there wasn't a lot left to lose, but this is irritating. Still, it's a cute card and I mean to give it to a friend for Easter.

I don't have any Stampotique animal/insect/bird stamps, so my thought was to make Marci here into a little Easter bunny. Her bunny ears are actually parts of Moon Girl's wings (feeling quite clever about that!). I stamped Moon Girl on vellum and embossed with Moonstone (no other choice of ep really seemed appropriate) and trimmed out the parts of the wing I wanted. Then after I had Marci stamped and embossed in Chocolate Brown (again, no other ep seemed right for an Easter bunny), I made a slit in the card stock at the top of her head and inserted the "ears". When I trimmed them out, I left little tabs on the bottom to glue down on the back. Marci is stamped on a light pink cardstock that has a faint texture. I coloured her with Distress inks (crushed olive, forest moss, tattered rose, pumice stone) and added in some small grass clumps too. She's embellished with some stickles (champagne, star dust). The card base is the light lemon PTI card, topped with some pretty decorative paper from my stash. It's a pad of Provo Craft handmade paper that I've had since I first got hooked, and I am trying to use it up. Then the card still needed a little something else, and I found a gorgeous piece of textured Japanese paper and used that. I found a great deal on scraps of Japanese paper, all in a big bundle for a good price (at Wallack's art supply store). It's ideal, because I can never bear to bring myself to cut into a full sheet, but these scraps, well they're already scraps so I feel free to use them. Unless they're really pretty and there's only one.... Ok, maybe I'm not quite cured of hoarditis, but I'm getting better and at least it's a start! The final touch took the form of three dots of Espresso dimensional pearls. On the inside is an Inkadinkado stamp that says "Chocolate: It's not just for breakfast".

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you have some time to stamp this week.

Birthday card

I made this card for this challenge at Card Positioning Systems #203. It's sponsored by Stampotique, and there are free stamps to be won, so I thought I would give it a whirl. I didn't have an appropriately sassy/snarky sentiment stamp, so I hand-wrote in, "And how old are you???" I remember when our little was small (like 3) everyone would ask her how old she was, and she would tell them and eventually she started asking them back. It was quite funny to see their discomfiture. To her it was a very common conversational gambit, so why not ask back? She didn't know that little kids aren't supposed to ask grown-ups how old they are. Anyway, that's what I think of when I see little Marci here.

The background papers are BasicGrey (Indian Summer collection) and the card base is More Mustard. Marci and her crown (both Stampotique) are embossed in black and coloured with Tombows.

Sorry for the long silence. I had a wicked 'flu and was in bed for a week. Next year I am getting the 'flu shot. I forgot this year, and I really got hit hard. Our whole family has been knocked down to varying degrees, and unfortunately I was hit the hardest. I hate being home sick and totally lacking the will to stamp. I see them there, I know they're there, and I just don't have the wherewithal to do anything about it. Luckily I am on the mend now, and have come up with two batches of ATCs for the Darkroom Door February swap, featuring the colour red. I also came up with some extras since if you send extra original ones, they will pay the postage back and save me having to figure out international reply coupons, etc. I haven't made too many ATCs so it was fun to experiment with that size of creative space. I made quite a few really hideous things, and eventually stumbled on some treasures. AND my parcel of January allowance arrived in the form of a box from Fred B Mullett, including some gorgeous embossing powders, an enormous Bluegill stamp, and some other marvellous rubber goodness. Can't wait to play with those!!!!! All that ep.... so much fun! Can't wait.

Birthday card

Hello! How are you? I'm great - it's been a really good day. Great day at work, lunch with a friend, met a friend after work, nice time with the kidlets in the evening and my mother came over and we had a great time stamping together. It's my brother's birthday soon, so we were making cards for him. Here's my effort - with Marci and Mort has a Pin Curl from Stampotique. I started by making the background, which is a piece of smooth white cardstock that I used to blot a colourwashed & misted piece of watercolour paper. I ironed it and then stamped and embossed this pair in black and coloured with Distress Ink (accented with Distress stickles). The "to brother sister" are Stampin' Up! stamps and the "from" is Karen Foster snap stamps. The grass is Stampotique and the rest of the stamps are Stampers Anonymous (Tim Holtz collection). I did some sponging of Black Soot around the edge, created a frame with markers and then added a grey mat and some black enamel accents. I really love this card. This pair really cracks me up and it's a bit unexpected. I like that Marci even looks like a big sister. She looks after her little brother and makes sure he brushes his fangs - I even whitened them with pigment ink to show what a great big sister he has.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you had a great day too.

PS I discovered that mixing Dusty Concord and Aged Mahogany gives the most wonderful plummy reddish purple. Gorgeous! I will be using that colour combination again. Dusty Concord also combines beautifully with Chipped Sapphire. I love that about Distress Inks - if there isn't quite the right colour, you can mix them together for beautiful results, and because they don't break down when wet, the colours really go well together.

Exciting news

Imagine my delight and surprise when I checked my favourite blogs today and discovered that Vicky Garrett chose my Starry Lady card as one of her challenge favourites! I was so excited. It's one of my favourite cards that I've made and I felt very honoured to be chosen from such wonderful entries in the challenge. Thanks Vicky!!!

Check out the entries - they are all fantastic!

There's another challenge on right now, masking, and you can use any stamps (their first challenge of the month is open to any stamps) so go out and get inky!

Starry Lady

I made this card for the challenge at the Stampotique Design Challenge blog, where the challenge was to use one punch and one diecut in your design. It's the challenge where you can use stamps other than just Stampotique images.

I started off with Ms Starry (Stampotique), embossed in gold on watercolour paper, and added in a bunch of stars (Papertrey Ink), also gold embossed. Then I punched out some stars using a Fiskars hand punch and coloured the image using Tombow markers and a paintbrush. I embellished with some stickles (see second image for more sparkle than the scanner could pick up) and added smaller stars with stickles, a gold leaf pen, and a glitter pen. I had left a gap for the sentiment (see third picture), but it was too big, so I put it on the inside. This left a large gap, and DH suggested that the card needed the Milky Way. He was absolutely right and I forgive him for all his comments about crooked stamping, excessive (i.e., any) ribbon, and corny content. The Milky Way was a stroke of genius, and I boldly and bravely set to with my gold and glitter pens to create a starry path for my lady here.

The die cut portion of the card is at the bottom, and it's more of the card base (dark purple), die cut with a Tim Holtz edger and sponged with Champagne shimmer paint. The panel behind it is amethyst stamped with the Gemstone cube (Stampendous) in amethyst and gold ink. The card base itself is stamped in Versamark dazzle using the Star map scrapblock by Cornish Heritage Farms. I also gave the card base a light spritz with gold Smooch spray. The focal image is mounted on foam tape over a gold mat, so that the punched stars have some dimension over the gold behind.

I've had this sentiment for a long time - I really like it. So when I saw this image of Ms Starry on the Stampotique website, I thought it would be the perfect complement to this sentiment. The words are embossed in eggplant on ice blue linen paper, matted on more dark purple and edged with gold leaf pen. The tiny stars are accented with gold stickles.

Now that I'm done, I have only one problem - choosing who to send it to since there are so many wonderful people in my life that make me smile like that. Not a bad kind of problem to have!

Thanks for looking.

Stampotique Design Team Call

Hello! Stampotique has a design team call. Click here to check it out. Spread the word, especially to any stamperissimos (those are the stampers who stand up to ...stamp...).

Arch #23 Signs of the Zodiac

This is Arch #23 for the Inkurable Stampers Gothic Arch challenge, theme "Signs of the Zodiac". I have had this image of the woman with the bowl of stars (Ms Starry, Stampotique) for a while and have been itching to use it. I stamped her on watercolour paper and coloured her with Tombows and cut her out. I stamped the arch with the star map (Cornish Heritage Farms), which has signs of the zodiac constellations on it, also embossed in gold, and also coloured with Tombows. I added a few other stars (Papertrey Ink). The stars are stickled and some are popped up, like the lady.

I like this lady who is flinging stars into the sky, and she is a much more satisfactory theory for the origin of stars than some sort of cosmic collision of gases or whatever it is now that the physicists think stars come from.

Bling it on!

The challenge this week at Stampotique is Bling, and all stamps are Stampotique. This is an easy one for me, since I have a drawer full of stickles, another one with Twinklings and lots of sparkly embossing powder. I also needed a birthday card for a 4-year-old girl and that task just begs for sparkle! I happened to have a piece of colourwashed and splattered paper big enough for a card leftover from a gothic arch. It's in gorgeous shades of pink and purple and yellow. Perfect for a little girl! I dithered for a bit how to stamp the fairy, and I settled on using Dusty Concord and embossing with iridescent ice embossing powder. She's stamped on watercolour paper, so I could paint her and so it would match with the base, which is watercolour too. I painted her with distress inks, shading a bit since things always look better painted with at least two colours. See that little heart on her chest? Painted with worn lipstick and spiced marmalade. Her face has tattered rose, worn lipstick and pumice stone. Honest! The wings have shabby shutters, tumbled glass, broken china, and pumice stone and the crown is wild honey + pumice stone. I also painted the mushroom with pumice stone and accented with enamel accents in white. When I had it all put together and mounted on the card (marigold morning - Stampin' Up), I felt that it needed something, so I drew in some swirls with diamond stickles, which I had also used to accent her wings. This was a gamble, and I'm 70% glad I did it. It really needed some words or other stamps, but I wanted to use this for the challenge, and I didn't really have any other stamps that would suit and the card has to be all Stampotique. Still and all, I like the swirls and really, this is for a 4-year-old girl who will likely not even notice in her haste to open the present. So really, it's for me and I like it. So there. I love the richness of the colours in the colour wash. I spend a lot of time with stained fingers thanks to my love of that technique. I might try that craft scrubby to see if I can clean them off. It doesn't really bother me, but I do work in an office, so I'd rather not have hands that look like I've recently been fingerprinted....

I have some other colourwash projects to post when I get a chance. Right now they're trapped inside my camera and I haven't had a moment to extract them since I have been off sick with a bad cold. It hit me like a ton of bricks on Saturday afternoon and it was only yesterday morning that I turned the corner and felt halfway human. Nothing serious, and I do get sick leave off work (just not off being a mommy).

On an unrelated topic, we watched the new Sherlock Holmes, the modern day one, with Tim from The Office as Dr Watson. It was fantastic! I was hooked right away. I thought they did a marvellous job. We've been enjoying Wallander too. And when I was off sick, I got caught up on my Midsomer Murder episodes. I sometimes wonder why English villagers don't move to the inner city to get away from all the crime. I mean they are bumped off left and right out there. Which reminds me of another show we enjoyed but haven't seen on lately was about the housewife mafia of Little Stempington and we can't remember what it was called. It had its funny moments for sure. I just liked the premise - too funny. All ladies-who-lunch on the outside and cold-blooded villains on the inside, cornering the local drug market on high-test hormone replacement therapy pills. Who knew rural England was this seething hotbed of crime??? (Other than Miss Marple, I mean, who was certainly well aware.)

On another unrelated topic, this weekend we are hosting our second annual gingerbread house building afternoon with the cousins. We have a cast iron mold (from Lee Valley Tools) that you bake the pieces in - one side is a log cabin and the other is a brick house. It's fun, but largely because DH does most of the baking and building. When I was a teenager I used to enjoy designing and making gingerbread houses at Christmas time. I remember making a few. I can hear rasping sounds from upstairs, which means DH is filing down more walls and roof panels so they make a better join. That is where we differ. He likes them to fit neatly together, straight line to straight line. I realize it is a cookie house, shortly to be encased in candy, so I just stick them together with gobs of icing to fill the major gaps. Actually, to be fair, it is nice to have someone like that in the house because it means that pictures get hung straight and the Christmas tree doesn't lean to one side.

Well, I should get back to it and not sit around blogging all night. I have things to do to get ready for Christmas, as well as Gothic arches to get caught up on, and the 12 Tags of Christmas have started already. Yikes! So much stamping to do, competing with other necessary tasks. How to choose??? People at work keep asking me if I'm ready for Christmas (and I do have to say that I resent bitterly this particular conversational gambit). I always respond with a chipper, "Another six weeks should do it!" and wish they would stick to the more traditional Canadian opening line, "Can you believe the weather we've been having, eh?" I guess I should be grateful that people still openly talk about Christmas, but I do dislike having to constantly defend my state of planning. My normal life gets planned on an as-needed basis, which is to say, whatever is happening in the next two hours. Long range planning gets done as-needed as well, which takes care of tomorrow, and possibly the next day if DH and I have had time to work in a strategic planning meeting. Any extras, like birthdays, holidays, church bazaar, throw a spanner in the works and seriously jeopardize things like laundry and groceries. I suppose if I gave up stamping, I could become some manically organized dervish, whirling the laundry from dryer to drawer on my way to menu planning and dropping the kids at gymnastics. In my new spare time I could host delightful candlelight suppers and stylish cocktail parties, but I would be so stressed from lack of stamping that I would likely become as murderous as a villager. Also, it would be a shame to lose the value of the investment on my stamps. By my calculations, if I stamp for seven hours a day for the next three hundred years, I will see a 10% return on investment. 10% is excellent, since our savings account only gets less than 1%. Now that I see the numbers in black and white, and realize what a great investment stamps are, I should get some more, and increase my returns by 9%, which translates (rounding up, carry the one) to investing in 9 times the stamps as I had been getting. I love it when the math checks out. I guess having an engineer husband is rubbing off on me.

Arch #19 All About Me

This is Arch #19 - theme "All About Me", for the Inkurable Stampers' year-long Gothic Arch challenge. This was such a tough one. I really struggled. I decided that rather than go "deep" on this one, I would just go with the flow, which I guess is really very much "me" after all. Just realizing that now! (Also very much me!) Anyway, the main image is a Stampotique one, and is me as the reluctant office worker (with bad hair and questionable sartorial instincts, if only I was that tall and thin though!). I am sleep-deprived, and in a partial zombie state most of the time (see the greenish pallor?), have to wear the 'office uniform' of blouse, etc., but usually try to have something colourful like a scarf knotted like a tie, or a shawl or something. I even have a blue blouse like this one, but no red polka dot tie, sadly. I don't wear mittens at work, but I do have some mittens that I knit for myself, and can usually only find one of any given pair, so that's about me too. I guess if I did want to go deep on this one, I would usually rather be outside admiring the sky and air than be inside at work. In fact, I would like to be a farmer (small multi-animal self-sufficient farm in remote, but idyllic location with bees and flowers and a Canadienne cow for our milk and cream), but my husband continually talks me out of it citing trivialities such as lack of money and vacation and the extreme likelihood that I would immediately lose interest in farming once I had to clean out the barn. Our plan is to take a farm vacation to 'cure' me of this dream, which could be a rather risky plan seeing as I could realize my true calling. Another thing about me - addicted to colour, colour wash, colouring, colour flinging, colour spritzing, colour sponging, colour-using of any kind. All of these are found somewhere on this arch. I also have a sense of humour and love to laugh. And I have a million stamps. Which explains the yellow joke panel (Stampin' Up stamp). Another thing about me is that I can never bear to throw away interesting scraps, so I have used some on this card to make the grass and the flowers and the yellow joke panel. Another thing about me is that I love Japanese paper, but can never bring myself to use it because it might get used up. I did get out some nice Japanese paper in shades of green to use as the grass. Do you see the watercolour paper grass that actually got used? hahaha. That is so me.

Also one last thing about me that you can't see directly on the arch - I lost her for quite some time, mid-project. I put things down on my desk and then they vanish, mid-project. I spend time hunting and cursing and vowing to improve my organizational abilities, then I find the thing and immediately abandon tedious activities such as tidying and organizing. One more last thing about this arch: the circles around my head symbolize all the balls I have in the air, but please also note all the ones that have fallen on the ground! So that's this arch. All about me.

Stampotique Vintage Challenge

Here's my card for the Stampotique Vintage Challenge. I was hoping my stamp order would get here in time, and lo! it was waiting for me today at the door. It was so exciting to tear into the package and see the new goodies. I've used most of them here (two lovelies didn't get inked up today, but they will soon). My inspiration for vintage here is the floral print on the girl's dress (seems like a very vintage print), the words clipped from a vintage book, and the chaste scene of new love blossoming 'neath a mushroom.

I found the background paper on my desk (more vintage??? hahaha), leftover from a spray and spritz experiment. I think I used Adirondack colour wash sprays (butterscotch, eggplant and espresso), but I can't quite remember. I think I also had some distress reinker and water in there too, as well as some Perfect Pearls, since in real life this has a lustre and shimmer. I also accented it with a bit of sequin waste and Antique Linen ink. The Giant Shroom, rocks, grass, and swirl plants were stamped on in India Ink, and accented with pencil crayons. The little ones, not sure whether I've decided they're faeries, goblins, wee folk, or what, are both stamped with the Gog Lin stamp and paper pieced for clothing. For the girl, I trimmed away her collar and hat, making some hair out of two hats instead. I also extended her tunic into a dress. The crown also gave her something different for her head. A few eyelashes turned her into a girl. Then, for the element that really made me love this card, the words. I don't have any Stampotique word stamps (yet!) and this challenge is Stampotique-only. So I turned to my trusty, dour vintage novel (The White Oaks of Jalna) and sure enough, the morose hero had an unrequited love scene towards the end of the book and I was able to cobble together this little description of the scene, which for me ties it all together. This card also made DH laugh, since "inward brightness" is just not at all the expected description of this little one. Anyway, I love these images, I love the giant shroom and these little characters.

I just googled this novel that I'm merrily redistributing, tiny piece by tiny piece, and it turns out it's by a Canadian author, an Ontario one no less. It was turned into a miniseries, the most expensive one in Canadian television history. Apparently it cost over $2000 to make. [I added that bit - we Canadians like to poke fun at ourselves. Sorry. Oops did it again! hahaha!]

Thanks for stopping by!