WSW-Wonderful Stamping Week!

Yes, it was week of fun stamp and lots of creative stretching! I enjoyed lots of fun creative challenges at 2 Peas in a Bucket this week as well as lots of inspiration at the Stamp Shack and across the net in general!


One of my favorite challenges was creating from the inspiration of specific pictures. These one was inspired by a green/black/white office with lots of swirls.



















A warm and beautiful solstice weekend gave a few more hours of sunlight than usual to being able to stamp and create! Challenged to recycle some items for a card I used the inside of a soda can and die cut it with my cuttlebug.

Celebrations to remember the historic events that led up to Alaska joining the United States 50 years agoare now beginning in our community. A fun project this week was creating this collage celebrating statehood. Thanks Tami/teabear for the challenge of figuring how to incorporate a playing card in a card.

Donna/countrycowgirl created a wonderful tutorial for the folks at the Stamp Shack. So I ended the week playing with some alcohol inks. If you haven't seen her blog you should check it out she too loves techniques. Thanks Donna for the fun!

World Stamping Week at 2 Peas in a Bucket

Yes, I am playing over at 2 Peas in a Bucket all week in their 30 plus challenges. In between several other Saturday activities I made a few challenge cards.

This first one is a business envelope size and has a wrinkle free background made with distress inks. The grass stamp from Stamp Zia had been waiting several months to be used and I am so excited about the butterflys that are from the Stamp Barn that I purchase in Victoria on my cruise.

This geranium card was created for an orange and pink challenge. I love this new stamp! I did a lot of cutting on this one so I could pop-up the flower.

Oh wow, I used my new Ink Blending Tool(it looks similiar to the alcohol ink applicator handle but holds cut n dry sponge) with a hand torn mask for this one and I am totally sold on it! Thanks Roni for sharing those great tips for using the IBT on you blog! I love how even the new Ranger pigments inks slide on the paper with this tool!

Stamping with a friend!

My wonderful friend, Jennifer of "Thimbles, bobbins, paper and ink" and I continue our challenges. This month we tried a little something different. We made 2 sets of inchies and sent one set to the other person. Then we were to make a mini-album or something to display them.

Unfortunately a big catastrophe happened for me when I went to make my album. Two of Jennifer's inchies had an up-front and close encounter with a blue dye ink pad. The best I could do without altering her work was to cutout the images which worked perfect as embellishments (a frog and a bee). Once again I send off my sincerest apologies to Jennifer that they are not featured in their original natural beauty!

Now I will let you scroll down to enjoy the album and of course remember to stop by Jennifer's to enjoy her view of this challenge.

Texture!

Oh don't you love different textures! This is a fast and easy technique that I learned about on Roni's Ink Stains . You will find the link in the right column of her home page where she lists her favorite top 10 techniques for the blending tool and links to her previous posts. I used the Ranger's liquid pearls although her directions for her#10 technique called for Ranger's dimensional pearls. This is the fun results I got.
I can tell that I will be trying many more things with this technique!

Doodle the stress away!

Wow this is such a relaxing card to make! I started with the "winkle-free" distress technique and filled in the background with open doodle type stamps. Then it is all about breathing deep and using 2 pens-1 black and 1 white to add lines, dots and doo-dahs and I was happy to use the simple layout sketch Roni at Ink Stains provided this week. If you like Ranger Ink products I highly recommend that you make Ink Stains a regular stop on your blog list!

Painting on acetate with alcohol ink

My favorite project on the Cruise with Tim Holtz was this clear photo album. I had tried my hand at painting with alcohol inks before taking the cruise. The medium to make this work is Ranger's blending solution in an aquabrush. Learning to control how much blending solution is used and the effects of the differences takes some experimentation. Tim provided us with a palette with about 6 drops of alcohol ink in each well. I real-ly liked using the palette over the butter dish lid. Having all the colors ready at my fingertips gave a different encouragement to try various colors. A deepest color is often at the top rim of the well. Colors stay liquid only about 5 seconds so the palette can be easily stored and pulled out for reuse at any time. He also provided the Koi aquabrush. I love the long thin tip for both swishing a lot of color for a background wash and for fine details. I prefer it over the aquabrush I had been using. This brush can be filled directly from the bottle and has a small cap to seal the barrel if you want to store it filled. Tim warned that water and blending solution do not mix and can deteriorate the plastic if you mix uses of your brush. The transparencies that we painted are Prima Paintables.

I am not nearly done with my album so to get back into this type of work I stamped some images in stazon ink on transparencies and painted on the opposite side. Here are my results.