Stampotique Challenge 184 - Bring Me Sunshine

Welcome to another Stampotique challenge. This week our hostess is Kaz and she is challenging us to 

"Bring the Sunshine"

Here is what Kaz says about this challenge:

"It's cold in the UK and I can't wait for it to warm up. Show me something sunny to hopefully encourage the sun to come out"

For this challenge I put together another coaster, I have this one and one more to go and I will have an entire set. YAY!

Instead of making my sun the regular yellow, I used white and blue for my sun, I really like how it looks in the background of my coaster.

For this coaster I used Stampotique stamps:

Peace and Words - By Artist Kate Crane

Small Homes Quote - By Artist Janet Klein

Stitched Houses - By Artist Janet Klein

All of these stamps are also new releases

We hope you will join us for this fun challenge over at Stampotique Designer's Challenge blog, you could win a 30.00 gift certificate to our online store. With all the wonderful new releases that will come in handy.
You can also see the winners in the New Release Blog Hop as well, check out the Designer's Blog for that too!!

Have a great day!

Altered Playing Card Challenge Week 24

This is so crazy, we are on week 24 of this challenge, just a few more weeks to go. I am so glad that so many people have hung in with me on this one, it's been so fun. I really don't want it to end. 

If you have missed any of the previous week's here are the links

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 
Week 7
Week 8

Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Week 16
Week 17
Week 18
Week 19
Week 20
Week 21
Week 22
Week 23

and our Facebook group

Facebook Group

and the Pinterest Board link

Pinterest Board

How many of you have a gazillion washi tape rolls?
 (gazillion = more than you can count haha)
Well, I know that I have way more than I need but I just can't stop buying the stuff.

I thought we could use that washi tape this week 
(note: if you don't have washi tape, you can use printed paper cut into strips)

For my first Altered Playing Card I grabbed a few rolls that I thought would look nice together

I'm going to use my glue stick for the tape because even though the tape is sticky I don't want it trying to fall off my altered card

All I'm going to do here is line up my washi tape to make stripes for my background
Each time I use tape, I add glue underneath it
so... glue, add tape, glue, add tape, glue, add tape

Once I'm finished adding the tape to the entire card I trim the edges and this is the background for my first card

I repeated the same steps for my second card
if I put my wash tape in the stack first I can see what they will look like together prior to putting it on my card

 I didn't like how thick the red polka dot tape was so I simply cut it into a thinner strip

If I Follow the pattern of dots I can then cut it straight

and lastly trim the edges.... here are my two backgrounds together

For the first card, I'm going to use a new release stamp from Stampotique, this one is called Rudy and is by Daniel Torrente

After embossing and heat setting my image I colored with copic markers, I then cut the seahorse out

I used my prismacolor marker to go around the edges of my seahorse to add a black out line

I wanted to create a circle to lay behind the seahorse so I used a piece of white card stock and my archival inks, simply smudge some of the ink onto the white paper

I then cut a circle with Tim Holtz's movers and shaper small circle 

and then edge with black archival ink

This circle will go behind my seahorse

Here is my finished playing card, I think the circle allows my seahorse to stand out a bit more

For my second card, I used a new die from Tim holtz and cut out a butterfly from white card stock, you are not going to use the butterfly that you cut out, your going to use the template remaining.... (note: be sure that you have enough paper to cover your entire altered playing card)

Next, I used blue archival ink to stamp some pretty writing 

I didn't like how bright the white card stock was so I used some archival ink to color my paper slightly

for the next step I'm going to use glossy accents as my glue (the washi tape is slick and I want to make sure I use a good adhesive) I am lining up the edge of my cut out image to the edge of my APC, this is how I'm lining up my butterfly
the only part of the washi tape showing should be the center of my butterfly 

Once the butterfly was glued onto my APC I then cut the excess off, this is the view from the backside of my altered playing card, I just cut off all that excess paper

I added some more orange archival ink onto white card stock again but this time I made it a bit darker. I stamped my words with black permanent ink

I then cut my words out and glued over the butterfly, I also edged my entire card with the same orange ink

Here is my finished card

and here are my two cards together

I hope you have a blast working with your washi tape this week. If you don't have a lot of washi tape like me you can always use printed paper, just cut them into strips and glue them on......
CHEERS!
See you all next week!

Stampotique New Release and Blog Hop!!!

We are so excited about the new release for Stampotique Originals!!! We've been keeping it under wraps for weeks now, but know that some of you got a sneak at one of our new stamp artists. 

Stampotique is thrilled to add to the line-up the designs of one of our former team members and popular mixed media artist, Kate Crane 

(is that squealing we hear amongst you?). We know you all won't be disappointed with the line-up of stamps from all our artists this go around. 

This is a huge release, there are 50+ new ones being released this time around, so plenty for everyone to choose from (or choose them all).

Hop along with the design team and 2 special guest bloggers leaving comments along the way. We will choose 3 random winners from 3 selected blogs along the way to win some goodies.

We will choose our winners with our next challenge on February 25th.

So for my creations today, I was so excited to use the new stamps that I couldn't stop creating. I love them all. 

My first creation is a coaster, I have been making a set of coasters for my house and what better time to do one than with the new release stamps.

I used new release stamps:

Welcome to My Reality - By Artist Arwen McCullen

Design Cube 2 - by Artist France Papillon (cracked background)

Dog Cube - By Artist Daniel Torrente

I also used stamps
Lovelyarethesound - By Daniel Torrente
Halloween Cube 2 - By Daniel Torrente

Next I did a journal page with Kate and Roc's new stamps

For this page I used:

Capture the Magic - By Artist Roc Nicholas

Sing With Words on the Side - By Artist Kate Crane

Next I created a Altered Playing Card

I used stamps:

Skull Balloons - Arwen McCullen

Hat Cube - Daniel Torrente
I also used stamp
Mervynboy - By Daniel Torrente

(how cute is the hat and balloons?)

and one more journal page

I used new stamps:

Design Cube 2 - France Papillon

Roc's Tree - Roc Nicholas

Boots - Kate Crane

From here you should be headed to Kim Howard's blog, be sure to leave comments on all the blogs for a chance to win. Here is a list of the entire hop...

Janet Klein

Coby vanWilligenburg

Claudine Criner  YOUR ARE HERE!!

Kim Howard

Astrid Stulemeijer

Valerie Wilson

Carol Fox

Kate Crane

Sue Davies

Kaz Boughton

Corrie Herriman

Kathi Rerek

Samantha Read

France Papillon

Roc Nicholas

Kristen Catalano

Nellie van Leeuwen

Arwen McCullen

Magda Polakow

Jackie Payne

Gez Butterworth

Hope you enjoy all the design team creations, 

we can't wait to hear what your favorite new stamps are!

Stampotique Challenge - Happy Un-Birthday!

Thanks for stopping by the blog today. This week over at Stampotique Desinger's Challenge our lovely and oh, so talented France Papillon is our hostess. 

She has chosen the theme "Happy UnBirthday"

Here is what France says about this challenge

"We often expect cards on our birthday. How about surprising someone with an unbirthday card? With or without Alice in Wonderland inspiration, make a happy unbirthday card!"

This theme gave me a huge challenge. I had to really think on this one. I don't have many Alice in Wonderland stamps so I decided to do a postcard "just because"

The funny thing is, once I got started with this I ended up doing two instead of just one.

You have to forgive my photos this week, my light in my craft room isn't working well and since it's snowy and cold outside I can't take photos out there. Sorry

First postcard I did

I used Stampotique Stamps:

Piling Thing - By Artist Daniel Torrente

Blessed Skellie - By Artist Roc Nicholas

I also used a few stencils for the background and printed out my sentiment from Microsoft Word

I used Copic Markers to color my images

My second postcard

I used Stampotique Stamps:

Piling Thing - By artist Daniel Torrente

Whisker Monster with Sign - By Artist Kira Nichols

Here are the two together

These two postcards will go to two different people and I really like how each is unique in it's own way. 

Come by the Stampotique Designer's Challenge Blog this week and join us for this fun challenge. You could be the lucky winner of a 30.00 gift certificate to the online store. 

Cheers!

Altered Playing Card Challenge Week 23

It's another week of The Altered Playing Card Challenge, we are working on week 23 this time. Only about 4 more weeks to the finale and to our finished complete decks! I hope you've stuck with me this entire time, we are almost done!

Look at our Deck so far:

It's so cool to see them all together!!!

If you have missed any of the previous week's here are the links

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 
Week 7
Week 8

Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Week 16
Week 17
Week 18
Week 19
Week 20
Week 21
Week 22

and our Facebook page

Facebook Group

and the Pinterest Board link

Pinterest Board

This week I'm focusing on using "masks" to create a really cool background. I want the backgrounds to stand out so I'm not using many images over them.

I started out with two playing cards and used acrylic paint for my first step. For my two cards I used a gold and a light blue, set aside to dry (your going to want a lighter color for your background, we will be adding a darker shade over it)

For this next step, there are a few ways to make a mask to use, Tim Holtz has mask sheets, you can find at your local craft store) that have adhesive backs, you can cut these sheets to any shape

You can also use a die and card stock

In this case, I'm using both so you can see how they both work

I decided to go with this new Tim Holtz thinlits die set for one of my masks

Just simply use both card stock and the mask sheets with your die

I cut the black card stock using Tim's new die first

For my second mask I used Tim's framework die and his mask sheets

and I ended up with these two masks to use

For this first card I used Tim's clear mask sheets and adhered the diamonds and the outline here and there onto my card

Once I had the mask where I wanted it I used adirondack color in a shade of brown and a distress tool to go over my card and mask pieces

Once you have the desired amount of darker ink over your card, simply peel your mask off and reveal your design

For card two, do the same thing, I used a piece of removable adhesive to keep my mask in place, I chose a shade of blue that was slightly darker than my background paint

Here is how my two backgrounds came out (I also edged them with ink)

Next, I placed my masks back onto my cards because I realized I wanted to stamp over them as well (you can do this step without removing your mask first, which is recommended)

For the blue card, I chose a color and stamped my stamp over the mask, as you can see I put the mask back in the exact same place and used a piece of painters tape to hold it

Since I only had one mask, I stamped and I then moved the mask and stamped again with a different stamp this time

Now my card looks like this, the mask acts as a barrier so the space stays untouched

Same step for the second card, then peel off the mask pieces

(this photo was taken prior to peeling the mask pieces off)

Next I simply stamped my main image in black right on top of this background, I also added a few words to my card

Here is what my card looks like when finished

For the next (blue) card, I used my heat gun to dry the card really well before stamping my main image. I want to heat emboss this image so I wanted to make sure my card was really dry.

I stamped my image and heat embossed in black

Next I used several different colors of acrylic paint to color bits of her

and lastly I added a word, here is my finished card

and here are the cards together

I really love how the use of masks make my background stand out. Love it! I hope you have fun playing with masking this week too. 

Only 4 more weeks to go!! WOW!

CHEERS!