Inspire Me

Tissue Stamping & I've been tagged

Today I want to share with you a really cool technique called Tissue Stamping.

Now for those of you that will be at my weekly technique class don't read on, cause you'll spoil all your fun for when you come to play. LOL

I used the gorgeous backgrounder stamp Shady Daisy by Cornish Heritage Farms to start.

This technique is so simple and the results are just awesome!

Here is what you will need:

A Stamp - this works best with stamps that have lots of surface as opposed to more of an outline.

Tissues - 1 or 2 (no particular brand)

Several colors of dye based inks - Be sure that one of the inks is light in color

Paper to finish project as desired.

Ink your stamp with the lightest color ink. Then using the tissues crumble them up individually and dab them onto your next ink color (the next lightest color) then transfer the ink from the tissue to the stamp by dabbing the tissue onto the inked side of the stamp. Repeat this process using your other chosen ink colors working from lightest ink color to darkest ink color. Huff (breath hot air) onto your stamp and then stamp your paper.

For my project I inked the background in S.U. Bashful Blue, on my tissue I next added Some Mustard Seed (yellow) ink, then some S.U. Pumpkin Pie and finally I dabbed the center of my daisy with Adirondack Espresso. The end result? A soft diffused combination of colors that seems to blend seamlessly.

I then matted by tissue stamped daisy on Lemonade polished stone paper and a piece of Antique Gold Metallic paper from Cut Cardstock.

Cornish Heritage farms has a ton of these great background stamps that this technique would work perfectly with. You just can't go wrong when you start out with such a beautiful stamp!

Then my very talented friend Mary Anderson tagged me.

In this tag you are suppose to list five things for each question.

1. Things I love: First and foremost I love my hubby, then my children, close friends and family. I love the laughter of kids, being creative and my wonderful life!

2. Things I Don't Love: Insincere or fake people, Spicy food, meat (yes I'm a vegetarian), my weight and cold, raw rainy days like today.

3. Songs on my IPod: Ha, you're joking right?! Me with an IPod? The most I do is Jango through my computer when I'm in my design space creating. This way I just choose the artists mostly, Jazz, Soul, R&B, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles etc and it (Jango) loads them all for me for free. Oh and of course some rock & Roll.

4. Favorite food or drink: For drinks - I love coffee, sierra Mist Free & vodka (yes I do indulge on occasion) For foods - Lobster, shrimp, Chinese & Thia foods

Now I have to tag 5 other people, so here goes:

1. Joan Fricker at Joan's gardens
2. Mel at Mel Stampz
3. Julie Koerber at Out to Impress
4. Deb in Florida at With a Stamp and a Song
5. Debbie Doncaster at Passion for Crafts

There you have it 5 more great blogs for you to spend hours reviewing. Have fun and tell them I sent you.

As always I would love to see your tissue stamping projects.

Till Tomorrow and here's hoping it warms up a little!

Another new Stamp Co.

Hi everyone, so guess what there's another new stamp company and this time it's kinda in my back yard. She's located in New HHampshire. Her preview images look very cute, so go and wish her luck and while there be sure to leave a comment for some great blog candy.

I'm just excited that she's from New England, so good luck to Denise! And her three previews of her Whimsy Stamps look adorable.

As a side note - the stamps for sale listed on my blog are going quickly so if there's something you're interested in e-mail me soon. Also if you have sent me a note about stamps and haven't received a reply from me please send me another e-mail. I have replied to everyone but just found out that some of my e-mails are dropping into the big black abyss of computer land. So unless I send them with a return receipt requested some of them have not been making it to there destination. I'm working on it with the Internet provider but that's almost as productive as watching tomatoes ripen, he-he.

 

Be back later today!

Shopping Extravanganza

 Click on the link below to download directions and see other vendors for this weekends shopping extravanganza. Hope to see you there!

Download Extravaganza_Flyer_2008.pdf

Spring Clean-up

Sticky Note - Be sure to scroll down for daily posts

Well I know it isn't spring - but after this weekend it feels that way. Spent the weekend cleaning and organizing the garage so I could put away my little spitfire and park the van for winter. And in all this cleaning mode I got into my stamps.

I have so many and so many I haven't used, so I thought I might try and share with you. I've photo'd them all and am going to part with them at reduced prices. I will ship anywhere and will ship as inexpensively as possible. Just go to my photo albums and click on Stamps for sale. It's in the left column of this blog.

If you're interested I have the prices written on each photo. Just e-mail me be sure to include your address and I will quote you S&H. Think Christmas or a little something special for yourself.

I'm going to leave this post at the top of my blog for a short while so be sure to scroll past it for projects & tutorials.

Hope your weekend was as good as mine. According to the weather man we finished just in time as temperatures will be no warmer than low 30"s for the week - CCCCHHHHILLLYY!

Take care and have fun shopping!

New Company & Blog candy

Part of my goal here in my little part of blog world is to share with you new companies and exciting things. So I thought I would share this new company, Pink Gem Designs, from the UK that has these cute stamps. As part of her opening she is giving some away as blog candy so be sure to go over and check it out.

Have fun and don't yell at me for enabling you, love me for adding to the fun, lol

 

Bleaching it with Unity

Today I want to share a technique that I taught this week in the store. It's a technique that has been around for a long while but certainly deserves revisiting.

It's Stamping with Bleach. The fun part is that you never quite know what color lies under the top dye on your cardstock.

As for supplies:

• Household liquid bleach (cheapest you can buy)

• Napkins or paper towels and a small plate or tray to lay them in

• Solid core cardstock (or other bleach-able paper)

• Stamps of your choice

Here is how you choose your cardstock to stamp on. Be sure to choose cardstock that is a solid color running all the way through it. To check this tear a small piece where you won't need it and if the core (center) of the cardstock is the same color as the top and bottom then it has a solid core. If when you tear it it's white that's not solid and typically won't bleach. I say typically cause I'm sure that somewhere out there is a white core cardstock that will bleach, I just haven't found it yet and I have had many more successful results with solid core cardstocks.

Okay, the how to:

1. Lay  3 to 4 layers of paper towels or napkins on a plate and pour bleach over them. You want just enough bleach that the paper towels absorb all of it. If you have extra liquid in the bottom of your plate then add another paper towel.
2. Lightly tap your stamp onto the bleach & paper towels. If you press into the paper towels you will pick up to much bleach and it will be very runny. You won't like the results. Your stamp should appear wet but not dripping.
3. Stamp onto cardstock. Stand back and watch the excitement happen. Not happening fast enough for you? Then use your heat gun to speed things along.
4. Finish designing your card or scrapbook page as desired.

Here are some samples of the items I stamped and how I finished them:

 This card was made using:

Unity Stamp Co, butterfly beauty set, paper from Basic Grey's Ambrosia collection, stickles, Kaiser Rhinestones.

Here's the really cool part about this card, the butterfly is stamped on this black paper that comes wrapped around large rolls of film from where a friend of mine works. They just toss it and so she brought me some and said find something to do with this. Well I just love how when you stamp on bleach with it, it bleaches to a sort of pale gold. After stamping I matted it on Gold metallic paper from CutCardstock, added some orange stickles. Now the other really cool part the lace/ribbon on the bottom of the card. Just a note the actual black card is two toned from CutCardstock. Black on the outside and white on the inside. It doesn't bleach but I love how it's white on the inside so you can stamp another sentiment or write your message.

2nd tutorial:

1 roll of paper self adhesive ribbon. Since this ribbon is paper I inked the ribbon with Bisque chalk ink (any ink will do, if it's the color you want) I then cut a piece of sticker paper the same size as the ribbon. Take the back off the sticker paper and take the backing off the ribbon, stick the two together. Now everywhere that there is an opening in the ribbon it's sticky, so I dumped Licorice Glitter from Pk Glitz. Rubbed with my finger and blinged it up! Although you can't see the shimmer in the photo take my word for it, it just shines! I don't know where the ribbon is from, the packaging had no information on it. Basically it came 12 rolls to a container - all different designs.

Here's the next bleached item:

This cardstock is from The Paper Company - True Red. This also bleached to an awesome gold tone when stamped. I used the Thanks to you set from Unity Stamp Co. What an awesome set and so versatile!

 I used the 2nd ring from the left for this card. Tapped it into the bleach and then used my scalloped Nestabilities to cut it out along with a larger scalloped mat. The mat on the base of the card is randomly stamped with a background stamp, also tapped in bleach. I added dots of red stickles to the larger scallop, matted on the gold from CutCardstock and a piece of ribbon on the bottom. I just think this is so cool and it makes a really awesome looking card!

I also have a few more samples to show you that aren't quite completely finished. But I want to share them so you continue to see what I mean about solid core cardstock when bleached.

Again using Unity's Butterfly set and that black paper:

This also has the paper ribbon on the bottom, colored with a light purple ink and covered with gold glitter from PK. Pearls are from Kaiser.

This is another butterfly from that same set - there are 5 butterflies in this set - and they are all gorgeous! This was stamped on Grape Slush Cardstock from Bazzill:

Isn't that amazing how this bleached to an Opal? And the True red bleaches to a yellow Gold and the Black to a gold also? I love stamping my image and then just watching it slowly turn to a new color. I think the fact that I had awesome stamps really made this tutorial/class perfect!

So until tomorrow, when I hope to share another new 3-D image with all of you.

In the mean time stay healthy, happy and Bling on!

The ABC's of Marriage

Well, finally here is the scrapbook page that I completed for the ABC's of Marriage swap. The rules were pretty simple:

• Pick the letter of the alphabet that you wanted to scrap about
• Create a 12 x 12 page using the Boom-Di-Ada paper from Close to my Heart

• Make the same page 27 times

• Use a stamp set from Close to my Heart also. (if you're interested in purchasing or seeing all of the great stamp sets & paper packs that Close to my Heart has just click here - Lisa will be more than happy to help you!)

First let me show you the paper pack

Then I chose the letter J and went with something simple like Joy. To make the letter J I used the Solos J set.  

My big problem came when I realized that one paper pack would not make 27 pages - what had I been thinking? So I tried to use the patterned papers as accents and focus on the basics of the cardstock. Here is the final result:

 

The best part is that I sent off these 27 pages and never even remembered to take a photo of them. So I had to e-mail the hostess and beg her to take a photo and send it back to me. And no I didn't even keep my copy. Sometimes I wonder where my head is at........

I'll get the whole set back shortly.

Here's how I made the page. I placed each page on my scor pal and scored at 1" all the way around, forming a frame.

I punched each corner with my Diamond print Tonic corner punch and backed the corners with a piece of the burgundy cardstock. I stamped a small flower in three colors on all four sides of the page. I used this small flower since all of the patterned papers had flowers. I stamped and cut out the J's. For the dot above the J and the O I cut a flower from the paper pack. I popped the O in Joy with a foam dot. The Y was cut using my cricut from the orange paper in the pack. I then stamped small dots on the Y to give it more texture and to blend with the small Joy frame which was cut from the green polka dotted paper in the pack. This was also stamped and cut, I also placed each one of these joy frames on a piece of chipboard so everything didn't look so flat. The washer type rings were stamped from another CTMH stamp set and then punched out. I cut up the piece of patterned paper that had all the borders and ribbon type print on it and placed a strip on the side of the lower mat and on the top of the small journalling block. Each of the small burgundy dots was punched from another of the patterned papers that had these dots all over it.

Even though this is a very basic and rather plain page, there was a ton of time that went into it with all the stamping and cutting. I do have to thank my Mom for helping though. She did most of the cutting for me - Thanks Mom!

So doing these 27 pages with all this stamping and cutting took more of my time than I had anticipated. But it's another project done and checked off - Wow, that feels good!

My last swap that I am in is an ATC card and I only have to make 6 of them. Simple enough, I hope :)

Hope you enjoyed and I'll see you all tomorrow!

Bling on!

Blog Candy Alert

Hi, I just wanted to share some an awesome blog candy alert with all of you.

Fran has some awesome blog candy going on over on her blog for her blog-a-versary which was last week. But check out her blog she has such gorgeous work there and she has the new Herb from Whiff of Joy. So make sure you check her blog out you won't be disappointed.

 

Missing you!

Hi everyone, been wondering where I've been? Well me too! So here's the sorted story...............

Kids have been ill with this darn cold and then they shared with me. Hubby hurt his knee and has been gimping around. I keep teasing him. I also had an all day crop to prepare for and had to make 40 little treat bags for everyone (you can see them below) and I also was finishing up a scrapbooking swap for the ABC's of marriage (I have the letter J) and a private scrap party for 13 the very day after the all day crop.  So I've been busy creating, making kits and traveling in between the craziness of home.  I'll post the final ABC page later on. So that's the brief craziness of late and here are those 40 totes:

I used the new Stampin Up Baskets & Blooms die to cut the bags. That worked slick since I was able to cut four bags at a time. And so many options from just this one die!

The paper comes from Close to my Heart - Abundance pack along with the stamp set Give Thanks. So I stamped, stickled and cut out 40 pumpkins. along with the little tags on the back. Oh, here is what the back of these looked like:

Each one was filled with candy corn and other chocolate goodies! Gotta have chocolate when scrapping and stamping for the day!

It really looked awesome to see the hall have one of these at each person's seat. They were a big hit!

So watch for more posts coming up cause I do have a lot of projects to share with all of you. I may have been missing from blog world but I was still creating :)

See ya soon!