Craft Stamper Take It, Make It November Challenge

Welcome to a new challenge at Craft Stamper Take It, Make It!  It's Anything Goes, as long as you've used rubber/polymer stamps.

For my card, I sprinkled some PaperArtsy Infusions through a Donna Downey stencil and spritzed with water, then removed the stencil and painted the background with a wet paintbrush, which picks up some of the colour crystals as it touches them.  I used some grunge images and a sentiment from STAMPlorations.

Our sponsor this month is Rubber Dance, who are offering one randomly chosen winner the stamp set of their choice.

Pop on over to the Craft Stamper blog for some more fabulous inspiration from my teamies, and play along for your chance to win.

If your entry is chosen by the design team, it will be published in the magazine along with a profile of you, and you'll get a chance to guest design in a future challenge.  Just remember to stick to the rules - you can find them on the blog.

Don't Let Life Ruffle Your Feathers

I'm over at STAMPlorations with this card tonight using the latest STAMP Club set, and seeing as I've used a glitter pen, splattering and a diecut, I thought I'd play along with the CAS Mix Up challenge.

Here's a view of the full card, but it doesn't pick up the glittery sparkle on that die-cut feather.

I love the font on that sentiment!

STAMPlorations Inspiration #150

Fancy a bit more STAMPlorations inspiration?  Here's a fun card made with my Little Monsters set.  They may have had an excess of sugar ;)

I used a Molotow masking pen to mask out some spots before watercolouring the images with Distress Inks (what else?).  Once the watercolouring had dried, I just peeled off the masking dots.  Once it was dry I added the small sentiment from Birds of Paradise.

Pop on over to the STAMPlorations blog for some more fabulous inspiration from the design team, and don't forget to leave a comment for your chance to win a gift certificate to the store.

Seize My Birthday ;)

Welcome to a new challenge at Seize The Birthday!  The theme is Kraft Card Base, but if that's not your thing, you can still play along with any birthday-themed project.

I used my NBUS MFT die, and I was going to back it with white card, but decided to mount it onto another kraft card base instead for a letterpress look.  The gift-wrapped present is from Tim Holtz Crazy Things.  I couldn't decide whether I wanted the present or the party hat, or whether I wanted this size or the mini size, so I stamped them all onto kraft card and cut them out so that I could try each one on the main card before making my decision.

Pop on over to the Seize The Birthday website for some more fabulous inspiration from the design team, and our Surprise Birthday Guest, Becca Cruger.

It's my birthday today, and when I went to the Tim Holtz Creative Chemistry Live UK Edition in Harrogate with my friend Mel, she was having a little tête-a-tête with Mario at one point during the day.  This was what she was up to (and had difficulty keeping it to herself for a few weeks!):

It's official ;)

Not only that, this:

Lucky me!  Thanks, Mel - and Tim!

The Bee's Knees - Layered Stamps

I've got three new stamp sets being launched 8-10 November on the STAMPlorations blog, but we're doing a preview of them today. You can also see this post on the STAMPlorations blog here.

The first thing to note about these sets is that the images do not line up perfectly. They are meant to overlap slightly - think me and my sloshing outside the lines with the guesswork being done for you! You get a lovely graphic artsy image with very little effort.

The first one is Layered Holly.  You'll see that there are pairs of outline and solid shapes that work together.  Those two smaller leaf shapes at the bottom will work with their larger counterparts.

On this first card I've used the outline and solid leaf pair from the left of the pack, along with the smaller solid leaf next to the bottom on the right of the pack.  And, of course, the berries.  I used different shades of Distress Ink for each leaf layer.

You don't have to use all three layers.  This card uses the large half-leaf outlines and coordinating solid images.  I've overlapped the images at different points.

You can even use the large outline image with the smaller solid image.

The next set is Layered Leaves. The top two solid images work with the large outline underneath; the bottom three images work together; the three smaller images on the right work together, and the remaining three on the left work together.  But you can mix and match whatever combination you like, and layer whatever combination you want.

For this card I stamped all of the outline images randomly, then stamped different solid images that I'd inked up with various Distress Ink colours.

I posted this one last week but it's worth posting again because it shows how the top two solid images have been layered over the outline image.

And the final set is Layered Snowman.  There are four sizes of outline stamp and coordinating solid stamp.  You could make big snowmen, little snowmen, three-tiered snowmen, whatever you fancy.  You can ink up the whole of the solid image, or just ink around the edges.  You can use just the outline stamps, just the solid stamps, or combine them.

I inked up the edges of the solid shapes, spritzed them, then wiped away the spritzing from the centre of the stamp so that it wouldn't spread too far.

I did the same thing here, then stamped over the images with the outline stamps.

You don't have to stick with the obvious.  The large solid shape makes a fab bauble, the arm makes a brilliant hanging thread, and adding the outline image gives it a fun grungy feel.

You'll be seeing some more creative interpretations of some of the stamps from my STAMPlorations teamies soon on the STAMPlorations blog.

The stamps are available in the store, and if you use my code STAMPGIRLSHIRLEY you'll get 20% off these and any other stamps, stencils or dies that happen to fall into your basket while you're shopping ;)

That's another six Christmas cards in the bag, yay!SaveSave

STAMPlorations Inspiration #149

It's time for some more inspiration at STAMPlorations, and this week we're focusing on Shery's designs.  From now until 30 October all of Shery's designs are 15% off, and if you use my code STAMPGIRLSHIRLEY you'll get another 20% off (applies to all stamps, dies and stencils in the store).

I've done a bit of no-line watercolouring on mixed media paper with this gorgeous floral arrangement: In Bloom: Fancy Frangipanis.  The sentiment is from Counry Rustic 5x7 set.

Pop on over to the STAMPlorations blog for some more fabulous inspiration from the team, and don't forget to leave a comment for your chance to win a gift certificate to the store.

Falling Leaves

Autumn in my favourite season, I just love all the mouthwatering colours in the leaves, and the golden glow of the sun when it's lower in the sky.  Yesterday we got plenty of golden glow, with the weirdest weather I've seen in the UK - yellow half-light, almost like an eclipse, and a red sun, thanks to ex-hurricane Ophelia and dust from the wildfires in Spain and Portugal.  Getting other countries' weakened leftover weather is extreme as we get, thankfully.

I've just got my sticky little mitts on my new Layered Leaf stamps, from a new range of layered sets, and I couldn't wait to break them out and play with them.  They'll be debuting in early November, but for now here's a sneaky peek.

I'm playing along at CAS Watercolour Challenge's 1st birthday celebration, Fall Leaves.

  

and with Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Thinking of You.