Stampotique Designers Challenge 145 - Feature Flowers

Good day all, I hope that spring has sprung over in your neck of the woods. Mother Nature sure has given us quite a winter... This week's Challenge over at the Stampotique Designer's Challenge Blog the challenge was chosen by the wonderful Valerie Wilson and she has asked us to "Feature some Flowers" in our creations.

What a great time to do that too, spring is peeking it's head out here in Colorado and I'm excited as ever! So a flower challenge is wonderful.

It's my turn to post over at the Stampotique Designers Blog so make sure to check out the feature over there

for my creation this week I used a Ranger jumbo tags. I just love these, they are huge and a nice size to fold in half and make a card. 

For this card I used Stampotique Stamps:

Carol's flower large and Carol's Flower Small - by artist Janet Klein

Agatha Star - By Artist Magda Polakow

Tall Word Collage - By Artist Amy Willson Wellenstein

Sunflower Left - By Artist Janet Klein

To start I used Distress Paint and water to create my background, setting that aside for a little while to dry

I then used Carol's Flowers for the background

I then took a white gelli roll pen and went around the flowers here and there to make them stand out just a bit

I then stamped my stem directly onto the card and colored it in

I used different paper for the head of the flower and cut it out and adhered it on top of my stem

I colored in Agatha and her star and added those with adhesives 

 I added my words and a bit of wash tape 

And last but not least I added a very large brad to the hole in the tag and then I folded my tag in order for it to be a card and I added ribbon and a pearl to close

Thanks for coming by and hopefully your days are filled with sunshine and flowers!!!

Postcard - Stampotique Weekly Challenge

Happy Hump day everyone, thank for stopping by the blog and having a little postcard crafting today. It's my turn over at the Stampotique Designer's Blog so make sure to pop by if you can and leave me some comment love!

The new challenge this week over at Stampotique Designer's Challenge Blog was chosen by our wonderful Sue Davies and she is asking us to do something Postcard Size - 4x6 

I have to say that I love making postcards, I'm actually making my Tim Holtz 12 Tags of 2014 in postcard sizes. 

For my card today I am using Stampotique Stamp

Large Sunflower by artist Janet Klein #9256

If you have been following Stampotique's new releases this is one of the stamps that just made it's debut and it's beautiful

I also used one of my fun gelli plate backgrounds, I usually make these in 8x10 sizes and then just cut them down as needed

I added a little bit of paint circles and doodles here and there onto my background

I used Wendy Vecchi's clearly for art and stamped my flowers onto it with StazOn black in. I then colored each flower with acrylic paint, Once dry I heated up the "Clearly for Art" and shaped it so my flowers would have dimension

Thanks again for stopping by and as always I treasure your comments.

Have a great Wednesday!!!

Stampotique Blog Hop and New Stamp Reveal

If you are a fan of our Facebook page you may have already gotten a sneak peek of some of the new images we are excited to be releasing today. We hope you will join us for the blog hop to see a variety of those images.

There are lots of new images from our favorite stamp designers and we are proud to welcome one of our newest stamp designer, Magda Polakow, whom you have seen tons of her fabulous creations here as part of our design team. We think you will find a few stamps that you can't live without.

Join us through the blog hop for your chance to win some awesome goodies-we will be randomly drawing two winners for a $30 gift certificate for Stampotique stamps at the Stampotique online store. The new stamps should be available over there now.

Also, make sure you hop all the way through for an exciting announcement on our Stampotique Designers Blog for an additional chance to win some goodies and some additional recognition as an artist.

You should have arrived to my blog from Kristen Catalano's Blog, if you did not arrive from there you may want to start the hop at the beginning over at Stampotique Designer's Challenge blog. When you are finished visiting my blog you will want to hop on over to R.Maria Sabina's Blog

Have fun hopping, we will be pulling the random winners of the blog at our next challenge on April 23, 2014.

For my first card today, I chose to use the new stamps

Froggie by Daniel Torrente

Typewriter Alphabet by France Papillon stamp number 10018

Calendar Squares - By Daniel Torrente stamp number 6094

I used a gelli print background and added some ribbon for this card

I also created another card today using stamps

Large Sunflower by Janet Klein 

Barcode Text by France Papillon

I also used a gelli print background and some ribbon on this card

and last but certainly not least, I have created a fun tag

with a new stamp by Magda Polakow called IGNIS

This tag was a gelli print wipe off, I just love how those come out after I've already done my paper

Make sure to keep moving on the blog hop so that you can see everything that the design team has created with the new stamps. There are so many fun ones. We also have two 30.00 certificates to giveaway and an exciting announcement at the end of the hop

You should be heading over to R Maria Sabina's Blog from here

and just in case you missed it 

Here is a full list of participating Blogs:

Roc Nicholas

Valerie Wilson

Kaz Boughton

Sarah Anderson

Corrie Herriman

Carol Fox

Astrid Stulemeijer

Kay Wallace

Kathi Rerek

Coby vanWilligenburg

Nellie van Leeuwen

Janet Klein

Sam Read

Arwen McCullen

Kristen Catalano

Claudine Criner **YOU ARE HERE**

R.Maria Sabina

France Papillon

Tanja Kewel-Neef

Jackie Payne

Kim Howard

Gez Butterworth

Sue Davies

Magda Polakow

Stampotique Designers'Blog

Artist Trading Block - Wendy Vecchi Style

Hello and welcome to my blog and thank you so much for stopping by. Today will be my very first post as an Inspiration Team member over at the Artist On The Block Blog and I'm so excited about it. It has been amazing being on Eileen Hull's ATB Inspiration Team.

If you haven't already done so, make sure to check out Eileen's Blog for the Art with Heart Challenges. The Challenge right now is "April Showers"

For My Artist Trading Block today I have seen everyone doing some really awesome Tim Holtz inspired blocks. So I thought, what the heck, let me do something in Wendy Vecchi style this time. I love Wendy's style and I have fallen for her Archival inks, embossing and crackle pastes and stamps and I just had to use them all on this project. 

For starters Wendy has this wonderful video from CHA 2014 showing how she uses her re-inkers (see the video here )

So I used mine and made my background with them

(so sorry I didn't take a photo of this step)

I applied Wendy's embossing crackle paste over some hearts that I cut out using a Tim Holtz mover and shaper die and grungeboard

I then set those aside to dry thoroughly

Once those dry, they have this awesome crackle effect you can see that here

I then added some of Wendy's Archival inks over the top and some glossy accents  

For my roses I used Tim's pine cone die and Wendy's Clearly for Art (Wendy has a wonderful tutorial on how to do these roses on her blog HERE )

I also used Adirondak alcohol inks

I then used several of Wendy's stamps and StazOn to stamp onto the clearly for art roses

I then shaped my flowers by heating up the clearly for art, it's hard to see the nice flower in this photo but these turn out very nice

I used Wendy's new stamp set called "License Plate Art" and embossed them. I then colored them by dabbing Wendy's Archival on my craft sheet and adding a bit of water and I used a paint brush to brush on the color. 

I used Tim's Distress paint to color one of Wendy's Art Parts

I also added some other of Wendy's stamped images and those were colored in the same way as the license plate stamps.
I used Tim's framework die "honeycomb" for decoration
I created another smaller block for the stand and decorated it with the same background paper and some of Wendy's stamps

I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial and think about giving these Artist Trading Blocks a try, they are really fun to create. 
Here is a link to Eileen's Dies
Eileen Hull Designs

Have a great day and thanks again for stopping by.
CHEERS!

April Showers - Stampotique's Designer's Challenge

Happy Wednesday everyone - aren't you just so excited about the new releases from Stampotique? We are having a wonderful blog hop so make sure to check it out over at and follow along:

It's so exciting to see all the new releases and some of the new designers. We are thrilled!!

Come by the Designer's Blog and check out my creation for today and catch up on some of the Design Teams creations. 

This week over at the Stampotique Designer's Challenge Blog the theme was chosen by our lovely Carol Fox and she has chosen the theme "April Showers"

What a great time to do this challenge and think spring all at once. Make sure to participate and link your creation up for a chance to win a gift card to the shop. You can get some of those new stamps, yay!!

For this challenge I decided to use one of the new stamps from Magda Polakow, she is one of the new designers and has created some fantastic stamps

I am using - Agatha Star

I also used a gelli print for my background, I thought it was perfect and I love the colors

I just love Magda's little Agatha and I hope you will too. Thanks for stopping by and checking out my creation this week.

Artist Trading Block - With Dylusions Sprays

I have been having a ball playing with the Sizzix Eileen Hull  artist trading block dies the passed few days. I made a large one that will be coming up next Thursday for the Inspiration Team and The Artist On The Block website so make sure to check back next week! 

For now, I wanted to use one of the smaller size block dies and make something for my dear daughter 

I decided that the small 1 1/2" x 1 1/2 inch sized block would be perfect for this project

My daughter is 16 now and has had her drivers permit since last August. She will be officially driving without her father and I in the car this coming August. Of course, her father and I really worry about the day we aren't in the car with her anymore. (as any parent would)

I decided to make something to remind her to always drive safely. (to bad I can't put a mini video camera inside this little box!! haha!!)

To start this project off, I sprayed a white piece of paper with Dyan Reaveley's Dylusions sprays in various colors 

I also applied more inks and sprays with some stencils, I then cut down my paper to the perfect size for each side of my artist trading block

I used all of Dyan's stamps for the flowers and words, embossed them with black embossing powder and colored them with copic markers

I then carefully cut them all out, these are tiny so that was quite a chore haha!! 

For the words, I stamped my sentiment and then cut down each part of the phrase that I wanted to use

I added a few lines of white acrylic paint to each side of my paper and also edged each one with black marker

 I painted my artist trading block with black acrylic paint for the base and glued each side of my paper on

In order to get this ATB to hang, I made a hole right in the center of the top and bottom pieces 

For the top I used a Tim Holtz ring fastener and colored it with distress paint first

For the bottom I made another hole and used a chain, I also used Tim's new Heart Charms and cut out some of the paper I had made and wrote my words for the heart. (try writing that small, its tough LOL)

Here is a photo of my finished Artist Trading Block....

You can see that Tim Holtz ring fastener that I painted in the following photo 

It says "You are loved more than you know" and the heart says "Drive Safe"

Here is a photo of it hanging on her rear view mirror ... (sorry the photo isn't so great, it's tough to take a good photo inside of a car on a sunny day)

Thanks again for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and photos. Maybe you can try your hand at making one of these Artist Trading Blocks, they are mucho fun!!

As always I love your feedback and comments!! XOXO

Pen, Paint Pen or Marker

Good afternoon all, I'm so excited about this week's challenge over at Stampotique's Challenge Blog

Magda Polakow has asked us to use a Pen/Paint Pen or Marker on our projects and I have to tell you, I love using all of those on my creations. 

Spring has definitely been on my mind lately and I'm SO ready for some burst of heat and sunshine so this postcard was for a "Spring" swap that I joined

Come on over to the Stampotique Designers Blog and check out my postcard

For this postcard I used Stampotique Stamps -

Carol's Flower Large - By artist Janet Klein

Carol's Flower Small - By Janet Klein

Jasmin - By Artist Jo Capper-Sandon

In the background I used Tim Holtz distress paint and inks and I also used Tim's stencil called splatter

I added bits of tissue tape here and there

I used Tim's new Framework die called "lattice" to create my green pieces in the background. 

I simply stamped the Stampotique stamps onto separate white paper and colored everything with copic markers, I then cut them out and glued them onto my background

I drew the flower stems with Pitt Pen Black marker and then went over them again with a white gelli pen

I drew scratch marks here and there with the same two pens

I wrote my sentiment out and cut it out and glued it on

As always I love/cherish your comments and am so excited to get feedback.  Thanks for coming by and take care

Cheers!!!

Tim's Tags of 2014 - April Postcard

Hello all and thank you for stopping by and checking out my creation for Tim's Tags of 2014 APRIL

I just love Tim's tag this month as he has embraced his softer side. Tim's creations are always so wonderful and this tag did not disappoint 

Once again I am making postcards with the tags and I am making two each month. One for me and one for a friend of mine

For my postcards I used some different colors of Distress paints and inks than Tim but kept the same steps and concept

 I do not have the framework die that Tim used so I used the Honeycomb framework die for my project

I also used some of Tim's Eclectic Elements fabric and simply glued it onto grungeboard and ran it through the Big Shot.  I can use the parts for my honeycomb

This is what my backgrounds looked like before I added my other elements

Once everything was put together I had two finished postcards. I used Tim's Idea-ology tag labels for my word "Beauty"

I stamped the Bee onto Wendy Vecchi Clearly For Art with Staz-on ink and colored it with copic markers, cut it out, heated and shaped them

Thanks so much for stopping by and make sure to check out Tim's Tag for April, it's amazing as always!!

Cheers!