Crafter’s block {when the “muse” goes away}

I tell you, I have not been able to get out of my own way in my studio lately! It is clean and organized, I have time to create but where is that darn muse when you need her? Well, today instead of waiting for inspiration to strike I was just going to force myself to make something, my expectations were not high, mainly I just wanted to get inky and enjoy myself and here is what I made:

To kick myself into action I checked out the weekly sketch at Oriental Stamp Art (OSA is a great stamping yahoo group, the ladies there are so inspiring and it helps to surround yourself with like-minded stampers either in real life or online) and decided to grab some stamps and go from there. I used stamps from About Art Accents/Art Neko. Another way to overcome crafter’s block is to use colors you don’t normally reach for, in my case SU! Orchid Opulence (there is a reason they discontinued this color LOL!) I inked up the Chinese Coin Border stamp with that somewhat hideous purple, rocked the edges of the stamp in Elegant Eggplant and then used my rose red brush tip marker to color the coins-just be sure to scribble your marker on scrap paper after to remove any ink you may pick up from the stamp. I stamped that 3 times on white bristol board (Strathmore) then I colored the coins with my mustard and yellow-green copic markers. I was pleasantly surprised that the ink underneath did not smear.

Stamps: About Art Accents, Paper: Basic Grey, Ink: SU!, Markers: Copic, Die Cuts: Lettering delights

I decided that the card needed some die cuts so I used my Cricut and SCAL software to cut pretty tags-one for the happy birthday sentiment, one for my label on the envelope and one for the inside of my card. I lined the inside of my card with an “experiment” from a few months ago. The die cut labels are from an SVG set called Delilah Tags from Lettering Delights, they look like the new Spellbinder tags and labels that arte hot right now but these are $5 and you can cut them any size you want!

So there you have it, sometimes you have to force the creativity…when I started a project with orchid ink and mustard markers I seriously doubted I’d have anything post-worthy but you never know, get inky and enjoy the process! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!