Into Each Day by Jennie Atkinson

Hello Everyone! I am absolutely delighted, and excited, to be guest designer this month with the Artistic Stamper Creative Team. Thank you to Jennie and Emma, for inviting me. I hope to share with you three very different projects using a few of the great stamps produced by Jennie.

I have quite a passion for making my own flowers for my scrapbook pages, mini books and hangings.  So my first project is a hanging with a handmade flower and using this wonderful sentiment stamp - Into Each Day ..............

The hanging measures 7" x 5.5" and is made from a piece of mountboard scrounged from my local picture framer.  Unfortunately the board wouldn't take too much water, so I took a piece of smooth white card and used the Tim Holtz Wrinkle Free Distress technique rubbing Broken China and Dusty Concord Distress Inks onto my craft sheet, misting them with water and then pressing my paper into the watery ink until I was happy with the look, drying each layer with the heat tool before picking up more ink.  This is one of my favourite techniques and I am having a bit of a love affair with Broken China and Dusty Concord at the moment!

I gold embossed the large clock from the Tick Tock A5 Plate in the top left corner and balanced this with the Calligraphic Text 9 plate in the lower left.  Once I had stuck my paper to my board I blended Vintage Photo Distress Ink around the edge of the paper and used a gold calligraphy pen to give the hanging a gold edge.  I made a frame from Dusty Concord Core-dinations Cardstock and cut an aperture for the lovely Into Each Day sentiment stamp which I stamped with Black Archival ink.

My flower was made using the Flower Power A6 plate.  I stamped the largest, middle and small sized flowers lightly on smooth cream cardstock and cut out.  You need two of each.  Spritz them with water and roll and squeeze the outside petals over the handle of a small watercolour paintbrush.  When dry edge the petals with some Dusty Concord and layer them on top of each   For more details on making this flower, you can visit my blog and click on the “dahlia” tutorial. 

www.jennie-livethedream.blogspot.com

I cut two leaves from grungepaper using my Tattered Leaves die, embossed them with a Sizzix embossing folder and used Dusty Concord and Vintage Photo to give them colour.

Add a bit of lace, a couple of glass stick pins and some bendy wire and the hanging is complete.

Thanks for looking and I’ll be back with another project soon.

Jennie x

May Challenge ~ Spots and Stripes

Hi everyone and welcome to our brand new challenge for May!

First of all, we would like to thank everyone, for all your fabulous entries that you submitted to last month's Ribbons and Lace challenge. We will be announcing the lucky winner in the next few days, so make sure you check back to see if it's you. We would also like to thank everyone who has sent in an application to our Creative Team Callout, we have been overwhelmed with all your emails and now, we have the exciting task of looking through them all, and choosing some lucky people to join our talented team.

Last month we had the pleasure of having the very talented Frankie Gaywood join us as our Guest Designer and we would like to say a very big thank you to Frankie, for all her hard work and the stunning creations and tutorials that she has shared with us.

This month, we are welcoming the lovely Jennie Atkinson as our Guest Designer and we are so looking forward to seeing all of her wonderful artwork and creativity that she will be bring to the team.

The new challenge for this month is SPOTS AND STRIPES. To join in with this challenge is simple; make a piece of artwork, include the theme and some rubberstamping, pop back here to link up using the Froggy at the bottom of this post, so that we can see what you've made and then, leave us a comment to let us know you have joined in. As ever there will be candy for one randomly picked entrant - £15 worth of The Artistic Stamper stamps of your choice plus the Kling On to mount them onto. And... if you use Artistic Stamper stamps on your entry, you will be entered twice into the draw! 

Before you start creating and if you need that little bit of inspiration ~  here are our Creative Team's stunning creations for this month's challenge.

SIOUX

Sioux made a journal page.......surprise, surprise! Using backgrounds mini polka dots and dots, punk plaid, houndstooth and graph paper the crown from Crowning Glory, Journaling mini words and Journaling words #1

ALISON

Alison made a card, using Journalling Stamps, the Notebook Background, sprays made with Distress Re-inkers & Perfect Pearls, & the Crafter's Workshop Mini Circle Explosion Mask.

EMMA

For my piece, I used a Manila tag, blended some Victorian Velvet and Dusty Concord Distress Ink over it and then added splashes of paint from the Adirondack Snow Cap Paint Dabber. I then used the Sequin Waste Solid, inked with some more Dusty Concord and randomly stamped this onto the tag before stamping a flourish from the Swirls, Stamps and Dots stamp plate to create the background. I added a die cut heart from the Valentine Silhouettes, covered in gold UTEE and stamped with the Dots Background stamp together with a handmade flower, using Tim Holtz's Tattered Floral Die. The flower is coloured with Dusty Concord Distress Stain, and overstamped with the Dots background stamp. Finally, I added the computer generated text and some hand dyed seam binding. 

We're hope you will join in with this month's challenge and we're really looking forward to seeing your interpretation of our theme and all your amazing creations and artwork. Please, don't forget to add a comment when you post your entry.

I hope you all have a happy and very creative month!

Emma x

Masking and Stamping by Frankie Gaywood

Hi everyone, it's my last time to share my guest spot with you, but I hope they ask me again (!!!) cos I have been thrilled to see your reactions to my work, so thanks everyone who left me a comment here, and those who also left one on my personal blog...

So...  what have I done for this last post? Well, I decided to share the masking technique with you ... many of you will know this one, but some may not, and many of you will have forgotten it. It allows you to use your stamps in whole new ways, and that has been my theme this month... I will put a list of the stamps used at the end of this piece, so you can hop over to the Artistic Stamper site, and get some for yourself... tee hee!!

To begin with, I decided on a theme of postcards, and had chosen some bird stamps as the main images. I used my deckle edge scissors on 2 pieces of shiny cardstock, and crimped around both bits, stamping one card with the post card stamp and a postage stamp.  I drew the line with a sharpie pen.

Next I stamped my birdie images in archival black then embossed with clear embossing powder. Then, I  attached my masking paper... you can see where I had already had a practice 'cos the paper is overprinted with brown...

Having masked all the bits I wanted to stay clean and clear, I inked up the music background stamp with sepia archival ink, and printed just off centre, over my masked pieces.

Here it is with the finished overprinting, and the masks removed - simples!!!

The next process was to ink and distress the background, which I did with old paper distress ink. Then I did the sprinkle thingie - you know, when you spray  clear water on to your fingers then splatter it on to the ink. I used a roll of kitchen wipe, that I keep for just such a purpose, to blot up the excess water, to leave spots of lighter colour.

I stamped a ickle postie card and letter and distressed them in a similar way. The uneven dotty stamp came in very useful for adding age dots to my piece. For this I used frayed burlap and bundled twigs.

And this is the finished article, all mounted together on a distressed background, and made to look like a set of old letters and cards in a pile...

My Tim Holtz paper distresser came in handy here!!! I used it quite heavily to rip and tear too!!

This is the main image close up, showing the distress and "mould" spots and

This is the whole thing full on to the camera...

I hope you have enjoyed seeing this ickle card get made, and how the background stamps can be used differently, overstamping with masks... I also hope that I will see you again very soon, either here or on my own blog, where I would love to share some more pieces with you... meanwhile, get inky and ENJOY!!!

Love and light

Frankie

xx

Those Stamps

birds of a feather plate

music background

grid background

random dots background

ephemera plate

postage no1 plare

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS, Frame

Hi all Kat here,
I am very excited to show my first piece of art work showing off my first ever set of stamp designs,
still having to pinch myself about it,
I hope you like them cos there's more on the way, fingers crossed.
here it is,

the frame was painted with black acrylic paint

& aged with a bit of inka gold in antique silver,

the images are from my stamp sets HERE

I have my own button on the website entitled

kat's creations how cool is that!

every thing is stamped with Jet black archival ink

& coloured with a verity of Distress Inks

I used the stipple background 

to give a bit of texture to the sky.

here are some close ups of all 3 panels.

Hope you like it!

if you are wondering where I have been

I have put a brief explanation on my blog 

kat's craft creations

for those of you that would be interested to know.

I would love to know what you think about the house stamps,

please leave me a comment

hope to be back to full capacity very soon

thank you for being so patient,

Kat x.

Home Sweet Home by Alison

Hello Stampers! This week I've been playing with Kat's gorgeous new stamp designs, which can be found HERE.

My base is a little 3.75 inch square block, 0.75 inches deep. I covered the front & sides with Ideaology Tissue Tape, then inked it with juniper & willow Alcohol Inks. If any pieces of Tissue Tape don't want to stick, just glue them down with some Studio Matt Medium.

Next, I took some silver Ten Seconds Studio metal sheet, & stuck it to black card, using Humungo Tape. I stamped the houses, flowers & phrase from Kat's Creations Plates, using jet black Stazon ink. I dried this with a Heat Tool, then traced around the houses & flowers with an embossing tool. I cut out the images, leaving a small border, then used a Wheel Tool to edge them. 

I painted the images with Alcohol Inks Lights, using a fine paint brush. I did this very lightly as the alcohol inks tend to react with the stazon. Finally, I used Studio Matt Medium to glue the images to my base.

Thanks for looking,

Alison xox

Make your own memories by Sioux Jenneys

Hello everyone! I'm sharing a card today :)

1. I stamped the arched window from the Architecture 1 057 plate in Archival coffee onto a square piece of card then colourised the edges with Distress Ink brushed corduroy.

2. Stamped the word door key from Time and Keys plate in Distress Ink worn lipstick and mounted this onto a mat colourised with the same colour.

3. The border round the card was created using the A6 borders 2 plate that had been inked with brushed corduroy and worn lipstick.

4. The journaling mini words were added and I utilised another word "Own" from No Bird before mounting the whole thing on a larger mat colourised with the brushed corduroy again.

See you again for the May monthly challenge.....ooh er May nearly here already!

xoxo Sioux

Friends Together by Emma

Hi everyone!

I hope you've all had a lovely week and now, you're looking forward to the weekend. I'm here to share my final post of the month and today's creation is a tent card featuring another of the gorgeous Mabel Lucie Attwell stamps. I hope you like it...

To begin with, I made the tent shape from black card. I then inked the "It's My Balloon" stamp with black Archival ink and stamped onto watercolour card, before handpainting the image using Distress Marker Pens, scribbled onto an acrylic block and applied with a water brush. I blended Antique Linen Distress Ink around the edges for an aged look and then matted it onto layers of black and cream card before attaching it to the front, folded section of my tent card.

I embossed some cream card, (blended with some more Antique Linen DI) using the Harlequin Crafter's Workshop Templates and then with the stencil still in place, I blended Stormy Sky DI through the stencil. Remove the stencil, distress and tear the edges of the cardstock and matt onto some black card. Add Vintage Photo DI to the distressed edges. I then attached the completed background to the back of my tent card.

I added some words from Tim Holtz's Chit Chat Stickers and a paper roll to the bottom of the card. Finally, I dyed some cream seam binding using Chipped Sapphire Distress Stain, tied it into a bow with some twine and added it to my card for decoration, together with some buttons.

Thank you for stopping by to take a look and I always love to read all your comments and can't thank you enough for taking the time to leave them!

Don't forget that we still have our DT call, which you can find details of HERE and you have until the 30th April to contact us!!

Have a lovely creative weekend.

See you soon.

Emma x