from my ink pad to yours

The process of "Owning" your stamp

As I've been working with some of my new stamps over the past week or so I've had time to revisit a topic I've often referred to as "Stamp Ownership".  We're all familiar with financial ownership of a stamp.  It happens when we pay for and take physical possesion of a stamp.  Creative ownership takes a little longer.  It may involve a lot of playtime and trial and error.  It means using the stamp or combination of stamps in many ways until you start to get a feel for the creative possibilities the image has.  Creative ownership isn't an endpoint but rather an evolving process.

Sometimes I can start on the road to creative ownership on my own - just sitting down with rubber and ink and playing. Othertimes I might be feeling creatively challenged and I need to look, and maybe copy, the creative work of others.  Once in a while going through the process of recreating someone else's work starts  my own creative wheels spinning and soon I'm off in a new direction of my own.  Whatever you do to get going the main thing is to get your stamps out and stamp with them! You'll never develop creative "ownership" if your stamps just sit in their box.

Fabulous Flowers, especially its large mum or dahlia like flower really demands this process from me.  This was one of the first images in the new Stampin' Up catalog that I was drawn to.  It's different from other flower images I've worked with, though I grow both dahlias and mums in my own garden. It's a very dimensional, textural flower in real life and bringing out that dimension with this image through various techniques should keep me busy for a while.

This first card, above,  was done with several Earth Elements craft spots and a layer of Glassy Glaze embossing powder.  The dahlia layer is Groovy Guava; the card base is River Rock, both of which are new In Colors this year.  I sponged Chocolate Chip classic ink over the embossed image, feathering it out at the edges.  The ribbon treatment is just me playing with the new Theatre Ribbon Originals collection.  The chocolate is threaded through openings made with the slot punch. I used the two tone green satin, tied in the center to create a bow effect.  I like how the shiny satin ribbons play off the embossing.

Here's another dahlia stamped with the same craft inkspots but not embossed.  I tried the little chocolate image in the center, I think more to play and emphasize the darker middle.  It certainly doesn't seen botanically correct to me.  I also huffed on my stamp a got a few more lighter images on the background of my Barely Banana cardstock.  The "Dare to be Fabulous" message is stamped in Timber Brown Stazon and colored with  More Mustard and Really Rust markers.  The Chocolate Chip border is done with the slit punch and tied off with some brown gingham ribbon I found at Micheals. IRL you can see that I used a scrap of chocolate Chip carstock that was already stamped with teh retired Cheesecloth background.  The Ruby Red card is stamped with Linen.  Wouldn't the Dare to be Fabulous message be a great send off to  a young person  heading out on their own this fall? Of course this mom would have a hard time not adding a   "...and take good care of yourself" note on the inside.

Fabulously in the Pink

My first playtime with the Pretties Kit was fun but not nearly long enough. It was easy to color the flowers using aa dauber and the Pretty in Pink pad without getting much ink on my fingers at all. I colored the large and a smaller one.  The Rose Red portion is punched with the five petal punch and then given a good going over with the bone folder so that I could peel into into 2 flowers with a softer flannel like feel that better blended with the silk flowers.

"Dare to be Fab..." is stamped in Basic Gray and colored with Regal Rose - which is a very good match for my flower stamped with Pretty in Pink.  I think the colors in the photo are just a bit blue.  Both the gray and the pink are warmer.

The taffeta ribbon is also pretty fabulous!  It's not nearly as stiff as I thought it would be and is very soft to work with.  Maybe it won't be so bad letting go of organdy. I used the Basic Gray taffeta here. The textured gray cardstock is stamped with some of the smaller flowers from Fabulous Flowers in Basic Gray, Going Gray and White Craft.  I'm not sure the flowers added much here.  I just was antsy to try everything...

More are in the works...too bad it's such a busy weekend:  BBQ days in Belle Plaine. Between that and getting ready for my Open House/Retired stamp sale early next week I'm going to be pretty busy but I'll try to fit in a post or two.

Porthole Zoo

Sorry this picture is a little fuzzy.  I took several but this was the best - I think it was too windy and the shrub holding the picture kept moving. This was actually the first - I retrimmed the gingham after seeing that this was just a bit too long but the later pictures weren't even this good. Sigh...

I did this for yesterday's Color Challenge: Tempting Turquoise, Real Red and Green Galore.

It's really a quick little card if you have a template made for punching your holes in a straight line.  You can check the tutorials on my sidebar for Tied Circles if you want to know more about this.

You can't see it in the fuzzy picture but the red is stamped with the Canvas background stamp.

"Just a note" comes from the In My Thoughts set and of course you've seen the animals before.  That silly bunch is from Zoofari.

Thanks for stopping by today!

The crab will be back!

Stampin' Up! has told us to hold onto our crabs! Crab & Company will be coming back in a future catalog. 

This adorable triangle shaker card was made by Lori Puccio who has graciously allowed me to share it on my blog.  I've been in a monthly swap group with Lori for several years.  Some of my customers specifically requested that I get permission to put this one on my blog so they can look at it anytime they want.  What a very fun card with a way too fun set. I'm so glad it will be coming back!

I've been tagged again...and again!

Ok, I spent about an hour and a half earlier this morning on an "I've been tagged" post, you know,  with all the links to the people who have tagged me, then came up with 7 new things that I didn't say when I was tagged before in April, started trying to ID bloggers who haven't been tagged yet and then getting lost in other people's amazing blogs.  Then I decided to take a break, do some real work and come back to finish later so I switched the post to a draft and pushed the save button - at least I'm pretty sure that's the button I pushed.

Well, I came back to  hunt some more for untagged blogs and then add them to my draft...and the draft is NOT here.

So, I'm not going to rewrite what I did this morning but will refer you instead to my April 7 things about myself if you haven't already seen it.

Of course,  you really should check out these bloggers who tagged me. You will enjoy reading about them and seeing their artwork.  I find them inspiring!

mjalbright's Beauty Lies Within
Susan's Stampin with Susan

As for tagging others - finding others that haven't been tagged takes away from my stamping time and  isn't as fun as just plain surfing blogs so I'm going to pass on that.  I will point out that I have a category on my sidebar for featured bloggers that I periodically update and will do so again soon.  Quite often these are bloggers that are new or that I have recently discovered.

I am adding an "I've been tagged" category to my sidebar so that it is easier for others to identify what tag games I've already been tagged about.  I do like these games and appreciated being tagged by others but the 7th item I wrote about myself in the lost post was that:

I haven't started my convention swaps: Yikes!!!

so its' back to stamping for me...

Motifs Tree

I still need to give that shady layers thing another go but in the meantime I picked up some of the Brocade scraps from my last post to recreate a current version of one of my favorite retired cards. As usual, the layout for the new card is a little different but I think you can see the similarities.  And guess what?  Today's Technique Lover's Challenge, #124, is to use scraps for a background!

I had planned to have an arrangement of Baroque Motif  "flowers" as my focal point but just couldn't come up with an arrangement that I liked.  So, I decided to add stems to make them a bouquet.  Then while I was cutting the stems I decided they would make a better tree.  So there you have it:  a Motif tree!

Stamps:  Baroque Motifs
Inks: Chocolate Chip
Paper, Baroque DP, Ivory Naturals, Chocolate Chip, River Rock
Accessories: Hodgepodge Hardware, Dimensionals

Not Quite Shady Layers

I started this card thinking that I would try the large Baroque Motifs swirl using the  Shady Layers technique that came up with to use with Big Blossom last winter.  You can kind of see it but there isn't enough contrast between the top two layers so I'm going to have to try it again with a different selection of paper or cardstack.  You do have to roughen the edge of the designer paper a little when you want to use the Perfect Layers tool or the edges won't catch the way you need them to. 

I had also wanted to try using twill with this paper to bring down the formality a few notches.. When I couldn't get the layers piece and the twill to work together in a portrait layout I turned the card and added an image and word from Carte Postale to provide some balance. 

I realized it truly was becoming a rather masculine card but with mon amie I think there's only one guy I can give it to.  So I added the "K"  and I have an anniversary card done more than two months ahead of time.  That never happens!  (Shhhh!!)

Stamps: Aida, Baroque Motifs, Carte Postale, Letterpress
Inks: Chocolate Chip
Paper, Baroque DP, Ivory Naturals, River Rock, Chocolate Chip
Accessories: Brads, Twill, ribbon from Micheals, pinking shears to trim the twill

Sister cards

This was made for LSC123,  the challenge being to case a card from the new catalog. I used the Farm Fever card on page 71, changing the color combo to some of the new In Colors: Wild Wasabi, Groovy Guava and Blue Bayou and the stamp set to Zoofari.

I've also noticed that there are a lot of color-blocking  - or should I say color-banding type cards. I used my leftover Paisley pieces to make this groovy cat:

BTW, I've been setting my cards into a yew shrub just off our patio.  It's handy and the colors usually turn out closer to true.

Saffron Daisy

When I start playing with Soft Sky I think I've died and gone to heaven.  I've been hoping Stampin' Up! would add a color like this for years.  This card is another that was inspired by one in an "old" stamping magazine. (Card Creations, Vol.2 by Paper Crafts: Thinking of you Daisy by Bonnie Lotz on page 13 - if you happen to have a copy) .

The card is  5 1/4" square Mellow Moss with a slightly smaller dotted Soft Sky layer attached to it. All Stamping is done with Timber Brown Stazon. The flower and ivory layer are Ivory Naturals. I made the leaves by stamping the flower on Mellow Moss and then trimming off some of the extra loops around a couple of petals. I stamped the flower again on So Saffron Prints Designer Series paper and cut out the center.   A  So Saffron marker gives a little more color to the edges of the petals.  I took a departure from drawing stitches and just plain doodled around the edge or the Soft Sky layer. 

I really like the "from the heart" stamp from Holidays and Wishes. It's so delicate!  I didn't know how I would incorporate ribbon ( so I could use this as a Ways to Use it Challenge 120 - Ribbon Revisited: I wanted to do another card for the challenge without tying the ribbon, just to keep the post office happy) until I stamped these words on the strip.  From then on I knew that everything else I added needed to be subdued. Out went my plan of an extra moss layer.  I punched two 1/8" holes on either side of the message and threaded the So Saffron grosgrain through the left hole back to the front through the right hole, around the right edge to the back af the card and back to the front through the left hole.  No tying as I've done before with this trick.  The two ends are just out there giving dimension without a hard knot, but held firmly in place by the slightly snug hole.

I've added a little more soft dimension to this piece by using lots of dimensionals: under the Ivory naturals layer, the flower and the message strip. 

Now, I've made a card that has dimension without violating the USPS no ridges rule BUT... it's square  and needs extra postage anyway!!!

Posies of Gratitude or what to do while you wait for your 1st order of the new catalog

So since I've ordered the question is what to do while I wait, I mean besides getting ready to sell about 100 retired stamp sets (not all from this year) and all the regular non- stamping stuff.  Well, one option I discovered as I was reorganizing my stamp room is to rediscover old stamp magazines.  When you look at an old magazine with new stamp images in your mind all sorts of ideas start popping up.

I picked up an October 2005 Paper Crafts the other night and noticed a Petal Pusher's card I had always admired. It used the retired French Script and Petal Pushers.  You can see  kmccon's case on SCS.   Soon I was trying to imagine what would happen if I used it with my All About Occasion's hostess bundle .  I ran the thank you wheel through my Stazon black pad and wheeled a quarter sheet before going to bed so that it could dry overnight - it's humid here!

The next day I ran my embossing buddy over the the quarter sheet and clear embossed the posie stamp that comes with the bundle.  Choosing Cameo Coral, Pixie Pink and Summer Sun I sponged randomly over the entire piece.  Bummer!  With the bigger lettering this was much busier than the original card.  But, I loved the color combination so I kept playing.  Soon I had trimmed down the quarter sheet so I had just the piece in the card above.  It really helped to make it smaller so that you could focus on just a few of the words. I layered it and tied a black gingham bow over some of the extra words to help focus on what I wanted to be the main words.

Now it's time to layer this puppy! 50=50 Pixie Pink and White was OK but just didn't have enough pizzazz for these colors. I ended up dry embossing the Pixie layer with my Seeing Spots stencil and adding a black scallop and stitches.  I was beginning to regret not getting the Three for You Punch Box on my preorder when I remembered the little flower on the Spring Bouquet punch.  It was perfect.  Black centers  and voila! Posies of Gratitude.

Thanks for checking my blog today!  I'll try to be back tomorrow.