Garden Cards by Craftytrog

Hello Stampers! I have a couple of inky cards to share with you today...one for each of the Mums for Mothering Sunday tomorrow ;o)

For this first card, I randomly inked an acrylic stamp block with Picked Raspberry & Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink, spritzed lightly with water, then stamped onto watercolour paper.

I stamped the text from Katy Fox's new Encyclopaedia Botanica plate in Picked Raspberry Distress Ink, then stamped the flowers over the top in Jet Black Archival Ink.

I tore around the image & glued it to the left of a square kraft card.

I stamped the phrase onto watercolour card, cut it out, inked the edges with Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink, then attached it to the card with foam squares.

For my second card, I used Broken China & Dusty Concord Distress Inks, but this time I inked the edges of the image before mounting it on the card.

So, two simple cards that didn't take very long to make. I hope they inspire you.

Thanks for looking,

Alison xxx

Oh for the life of a sardine! by Titbelsoeur

Salut les patouilleuses, c'est Titbelsoeur aux manettes !

Sardines are good for the health, one says... and they are good for mixed-media, I say ! don't you agree ?
Look, I have taken a basic sardine can, covered it with a slight coat of gesso mixed with blue acrylic paint, showing a very clear blue...
Glued images from the internet on the bottom and glued the children on a cardstock to strengthen it.

The stamp I used comes from the Kat's Creations "our house" plate

I hope you like my sardine can (I really hope, because I may show you others in the coming days ;-)

Thanks for stopping by, I am really looking forward to reading your comments !

A tout bientôt !

Titbelsoeur

Art Moment by Sioux Jenneys

Hiya! It's tag time from me today :)

1. Stamp the dragonfly from Insects and Butterflies No1 in Versamark and heat emboss with black powder. Mask this and stamp the clock face from Tick Tock A5 in Archival sepia.

2. Leaving the dragonfly mask in place...mask the clock face too and stamp the Marbled Background on one half of the tag in Distress Ink weathered wood. Stamp the Calligraphic Mat 13 on the other half in Distress vintage photo.

3. Stamp the small clock gears from Borders A6 around the edge in Archival coffee.....the word Journey from Journaling Words II in Archival aquamarine and over stamp the All of Life is a Journey sentiment in Archival black.

4. Take off the clock mask and replace with the reverse mask and stipple Distress Ink brushed corduroy over to colour and stamp the word time from Tick Tock A5 in the same ink.

5. Remove the masks and stamp the words Art and Moment from Journaling words 3 in Archival coffee.....tatter the edges and ink with Distress Ink vintage photo.

6. Finish by adding an Ideaology metal crown from Adornments Regal and some hessian strands.

That put me in a happy place :)
See you again soon...don't forget the monthly challenge is to make a tag!

xoxo Sioux

Winner of the February Challenge

Hi,
It's time for the winner of last month's blog Challenge...Hearts and Flowers! Thank you to everyone who joined in, we loved all of your creations.  Mr Random.org picked the winner, by very kindly generating a number for me!

Shar

with this gorgeous creation

 

Congratulations, and please email me to arrange your prize.
We have a great theme this month, one that is always close to my heart- TAGS! If you would like to join in, just show us your creation, and don't forget to include some stamsping too :)
We look forward to seeing your creations.

Have a very creative day
Jennie

Let's Dance by Buttons

Hi everyone! Jenny Marples (still known as 'Buttons' by many of you) reporting for duty - and you have no idea how thrilled I am to be here! Much like Alison it didn't take any thinking about when I was asked to be Guest Designer for The Artistic Stamper during March. Enough of the introductions, I can here you thinking "cut to the chase and show us what you've done!"

Thought I'd start my month with one of my trademark cards. There are a lot of photos coming up to show you the details as a lot of processes have gone into creating this.

First the music background - some of you who follow my blog will know I did a lot of experimenting with texture paste and embossing folders.

In this case I used white paste which reacted with the water and became beautifully distressed at the edges. Swipes of Archival and Distress inks helped to highlight the score even further.

The next layer made use of the background stamp which the talented Sioux Jenneys created for her dance stamps set. Love this SO much as it is based on a dictionary entry and stamps really clearly.

I started by swilling my cardstock around in various shades of blue and brown Distress Paint - the colours were chosen to emulate those used by Edgar Degas who painted the most amazing works depicting ballerinas in rehearsal. The text was stamped on top using Archival Ink to keep it crisp.

Distressing the edges complimented the music score panel and provided a contrast with the clean edges of the vellum and antique gold cardstock.

I love adding faux pearls as an accent (made from drops of PVA glimmer glue.)

This delicate lace had Distress Ink blended onto the top and ribbon layered over it.

And now for the dancer herself. Or is she? The brilliant Sioux had the ingenious idea of including wings in her set of dancer stamps, so for those who don't have ballerinas in the family you can create fairies instead!

Having stamped her onto card it was time to layer Ferro metallic texture paste on top to give her some depth. . Some heating and moulding, and a layer of Ranger Snowflake embossing powder (to add twinkle/more texture) and she was ready for painting. I created a mask so that the head, arms and legs could be covered in Antique Linen Distress Paint and the dress in Picket Fence Distress Paint.

Her wings were made by using white/blue pearl embossing powder on vellum so they would be delicate and would catch the light in the sun. And finally another genius move by Sioux - there is an outline version of the dancer included in the set so I could use that to create the beginnings of the faux shadow. By stamping this outline with Walnut Stain Distress Paint over all the layers on the card I was able to fill it in accurately regardless of the difficult textures that could have been a problem.

So there you have it. Hope you've enjoyed my first (lengthy) project. There's more from me to share this month so I hope you'll be back to take a look. For now take care and enjoy crafting.

Jenny Marples

Pushing The Right Buttons

Stamps used - Dance Stamps

March Challenge ~ Tags

Hi everyone and can you believe I am already saying, welcome to March?!? Where has this year gone!!!

Thank you so much for all your wonderful entries for February. We had so many fabulous creative pieces from you all and we will be announcing one very lucky winner in the next few days, so make sure you check back to see if it's you!!

During February, we had the pleasure of having the very talented Alison Bomber join us as our Guest Designer and on behalf of the team, Jennie and I would like to say a big thank you to Alison, for all her hard work and for the stunning creations that she made and shared with us. This month, we have Jenny Marples joining us here on the blog and I'm sure you will all love what Jenny has to share in her first post tomorrow and throughout March.

The new challenge for March is all about TAGS and the whole team are all looking forward to seeing all the wonderful and varied creations that you submit. To join in with this challenge is simple; make a piece of artwork, making sure that you 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 with the challenge. As always, there will be candy for one randomly picked entrant - the winner will receive £15 worth of The Artistic Stamper stamps of your choice plus the Kling On to mount them onto. And don't forget....if you use Artistic Stamper stamps on your entry, you will entered into the draw, twice!!!!

If you do need any inspiration, then look no further than our Creative Team's stunning creations for this month's challenge.

TITBELSOEUR

I cut my tag in a strong cardboard and covered it with a slight coat of gesso. Then I stamped Family values on the top to make a background.All the things I glued on it come from my recycling stash (flower and ribbon from an old pair of jeans, lace from underwear, etc..).

The fabulous dress-maker is stamped on a kraft envelope.

ALISON

My large size 10 tag has a background of Tim Holtz Tissue Tape, lightly gessoed, then I used stamps from the following sets...

Journaling Mini Words, Borders A5, Botanical 3, Seaside No. 1, Home Sweet Home A5, and Architecture 3.

EMMA

Seeing as Easter is only around the corner, I thought it would be nice to bring some sunshine to this long winter and for my piece, I used a large size 10 tag and covered it with Distress Ink, before stamping the background with one of the stamps from the Borders A6 #2 plate and the Swirls Splats and Dots. I then added die cuts using the Easter Element Die and the Tattered Floral Die. I painted the chipboard bunny and his little bow with Adirondack Paint dabbers and the flowers are coloured using Squeezed Lemonade and Shaded Lilac Distress Inks. The Butterfly is die cut from Grungepaper and coloured with Shaded Lilac DI and then I stamped over the top with the Mini Polka Dot Background Stamp. To complete the tag, I dyed some seam binding using Squeezed Lemonade and Shaded Lilac Distress Stain.

We 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.

See you soon...

Emma x

The Good Old Days by Alison Bomber

Hello everyone, Alison (butterfly) here for my final post as Guest Designer this month with The Artistic Stamper.

So, I promised you something simpler for my final piece (in the hope of writing a post shorter than War and Peace for once)... and I did make something simpler, but I ended up making it in two different versions!

I knew I wanted to work with the glorious Victorian advertising bills - they are so much fun: fantastically detailed in their wording, with brilliant cartoons.  They are simply wonderful pieces of print ephemera that rocket me back in time when I look at them.

So my first thought was that I wanted to stick them on a wall; a grimy, crumbling wall in a forgotten alleyway, with these three ancient posters still clinging on.  So I had to create a wall background... lots of ways to do that - you could use the Decorative Strip Die by Sizzix, or some texture paste through a stencil.  I used an embossing folder, Tim Holtz's Bricked Texture Fade on a large tag (running it through twice to emboss the whole thing).

Then I set about it with some inks - Vintage Photo, Pumice Stone, Black Soot and Aged Mahogany - until I had a suitably grungy look.  I used the Paper Distresser on the edges, and then ran the Black Soot DI pad around them to give it a good strong inky edging.

For the posters themselves, I did a bit of TH's wrinkle free distress technique using Old Paper and Antique Linen DIs - not too much ink, as I wanted age spots rather than a complete change of colour.  (I'd already done one version with darker inks, very beautiful, but once I'd stamped the images, they didn't really look like posters.)

So with this new, paler version, I stamped the three adverts in Black Archival, and then did lots of distressing - ripping, rolling, using the TH paper distresser, and adding Vintage Photo to some of the tears and creases.  It's one of my favourite things to be able to age a piece of paper like this!

Simple enough then to stick the bills on the wall (hope I don't get prosecuted), all in a row, and add some trimmings.  And you can read what you like about Victorian society into those trimmings: it's raffia, inky twine and some leather all tied up with a beautiful shiny satin black ribbon.

I was pretty pleased with that, but I still had those spare stamped images still sitting on my desk, stamped on the darker inky paper (two sets in fact, safety in numbers you know).  I started shuffling them around, thinking that they'd look pretty good in a slightly grungier version of the tag.

I grabbed some corrugated card, and added Distress Stains and thick Gesso to it randomly and roughly.  I created a background like this for a recent project and really liked it, so it was fun to resurrect it.  It creates a fantastically grungy, textural mess - no other word for it really.

I gave my three posters the distressing treatment again, and started positioning them on the tag.  They seemed to want to go in the other direction for this one, so I let them.

It was crying out for some metalwork, but I didn't want to go too smart, so I used some black alcohol ink to grunge up a key and some pen nibs from my stash, as well as an Idea-ology clock.

I particularly love how the clock looks, with the black face and the figures sanded back to reveal the gold underneath.

I've always sort of thought that I was born in the wrong century, and I'd love to go back in time and visit, but looking at these images did just make me wonder whether my historical glasses are a little rose-tinted... were they really the "good old days"?

So I added a little slogan at the bottom asking just that question... stamped in black on paper inked to match the advertisements.

Again, I added some varied trimmings: string, raffia and some black paper string to tie them together.  So there are my two variations on a theme using these fabulous little stamps, and I think I've brought it in under the 10,000 word mark!

I'd like to say a huge thank you to Jennie and Emma for having me here - I've had a ball; and thank you also to the rest of the DT and all of you for your fantastic support.  Happy Crafting!

Ingredients:
Stamps: Goose Grease, Phineas Pinchbeck and Squaretoes Continuous Lunch
Distress Inks: Vintage Photo, Aged Mahogany, Pumice Stone, Black Soot
Distress Stains: Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain, Old Paper, Antique Linen
Ranger Archival: Black
Alcohol Inks: Pitch Black
Gesso
Idea-ology: Time Pieces, Game Spinners
Decorative Strip Die Brick Wall (as an alternative to Bricked Texture Fade)
Tim Holtz Paper Distresser
Manila Tags