Practice on a postcard!

Do you want to take the pressure off the next time you sit down to stamp or paint? Try stamping or painting on a postcard! If you end up really loving the design you can graduate it to a traditional card (or frame) or you can just pop a 32 cent stamp on it and mail it off! Think of all of the mail carriers who will get a kick out of delivering it! To make my postcards more sturdy and professional looking I cut some 4″x6″ panels of white cardstock (inexpensive GP from Sam’s Club) and stamped a large postcard background (oriental trading co) and adhered it to my stamped panels.

 

As I mentioned yesterday I found a bunch of old 4″x6″ glossy photo paper that my printer will no longer accept. It’s the perfect size for a postcard! Here I used Local King Rubber stamps and the technique I learned at their booth to stamp a one layer wonder!  Two perks of stamping on photo paper is that the ink colors remain brighter and the ink dries super quick. I used watercolor markers to stamp:

 

This happy gnome was an attempt at making a scene but I was not happy with it so I trimmed it to postcard size and added some “mail art” stamping in the corner. Now I love the fun look! Stamp Credits: Gnome/fence (Oriental Trading co.), flowers and grass (Inkadinkado), mail art stamps (Limited Edition, Close to My Heart)

 

Postcards bring back the “play” to stamping, I hope you will try it too! Have a great weekend and til next time happy crafting!

Call it “Artistic Licence”…

I was so happy to have time to do both sketch challenges over at 2 Sketches 4 You today. There are two pretty sketches this week and I used Kazan’s sketch #27 for this one…

Stamps: About Art Accents, Paper: K&co, Ink: SU! other: twig, yarn, silk flowers, brad, shimmer spray

…or, at least it started out that way 😉 As soon as I saw the sketch I knew I wanted to use one of my new ATC fairy stamps from About Art Accents.  I stamped it with SU! basic black and colored it with Tombow watercolor markers then painted over the image with Prang metallic tempera paint that I got at the dollar store. I stamped “be yourself, everyone else is taken” on a white scrap, painted it with the metallic paint and trimmed it with my oval Creative Memories cutter. I added silk flowers and took some of the leftover leaves and sprayed them with my homemade shimmer spray and hot glued them under the stamped fairy. I grabbed a stick from the back yard, wrapped it with eyelash yarn and hot glued that on to. Finally I used a marker to stamp the butterfly and I glued him to the twig. This card was so fun to make (even if I did use some artistic licence on the sketch!)

Here is an ATC I made with Angela’s bonus sketch:

Stamps: About Art Accents, Paper: SU!, K&co, Sticker K&co, Markers: bic

Thanks girls for the awesome inspiration!

Frugal tip: Want cheap glossy paper for stamping? Try lazer color gloss paper, I got a 300 sheet ream of color lazer gloss by Hammermill and it is a wonderful surface for stamping and doing the polished stone technique and it is cheap! 300 sheet for less than $10! Note, test both sides first because one side works better!

Thanks for stopping by and until next time happy crafting

Free Cutting files, Free Rubber Stamps and Blog Candy!

Now that I have your attention let me tell you about something very, very cool! The very popular (and easy to find) Inkadinkado is offering a free stamp to anyone who makes a card using their products and mails it to them! You can send up to 3 and get a free stamp per card! How cool is that !?! You can see the details in the March Inka Newsletter. It has inspired me to break out my new “inchie” stamps I got a few weeks ago and play. I made Cricut cutting files (see download links below) to make inchie mats, masks and the inchies themselves, in fact, hardly a scrap of the paper you use to make this goes to waste, love that! Here is what I came up with:

Stamps: Inkadinkado, Ribbon: Target, Cardstock: DCWV and Georgia Pacific

The above and below card were done by applying ink from a rainbow ink pad onto glossy cardstock with a brayer. I used dye-based Kalaidacolor ink pads.

The top panel in this card is white glossy cardstock (Stampin Up!) with brayered ink.I used inchies leftover from the mats to decorate it.

In the card below I used the mat as a mask and applied ink over it, remove the mask then stamped the inchies over my cubes of color.

Stamps: Inkadinkado, Ink: Inque Boutique, Paper: Georgia Pacific, Template: my design, see download link below.

Also notice the faux tearing, I tore a strip from a magazine and applied ink directly from an inkpad but a brayer would probably look smoother 😉

Sure Cuts a Lot users download the Inchine mats & Masks .scut file here.

Design Studio Users download the Inchie mats & masks .cut file here. I used the George cartridge to make this file.

I had so much fun making these, and I can use all of the little squares left over from the mats to make other inchies, what fun!

Speaking of fun I will have some blog candy on Monday, one lucky blog reader will score a fabulous prize…stay tuned…

Thanks for stopping by, have a great weekend and happy crafting!