Congratulations!!

I love CAS cards but rarely make them these days as it involves having clean hands and I end up forgetting and getting smudgy inky marks on the card!  But that's what little birds are for right?!!

I suddenly remembered the other day that I'd not made a congratulations card for a friend who had a beautiful baby girl so I got out what I'd call 'bunting' and my sewing machine and set to work.

I stamped 'baby girl' using a variety of stamps before free machining 'hello' above it.

Stampotique Stamps Used:

Alphabitties  #6010  by Jill Penney and Daniel Torrente 

Banner  #10001  by France Papillon

Barcode Text  #10020  by France Papillon

Unleash Yourself Text  #2431  Roc Nicholas

Just Be U  #2422  Roc Nicholas

luxuriant moustaches

I mentioned in my last Stampotique post that I was itching to colour in these cheeky monsters, so that's exactly what I did for this week's project.

I love the idea of boring beige coloured monsters sprouting (or maybe they dye them, maybe it's all a ruse?!!!) fantastically coloured moustaches.  The inspiration for the background came from a paper gift bag ...

.. so I started by pasting down strips of brown paper then added some simple pencil lines.

I used watercolour paints to add colour to my monsters ...

... and created some coloured strips of watercolour paper whilst I had the paints out.

After colouring my monsters and cutting them out, I stamped them a number of times so I could cut out the moustaches.

There was a lot of fussy cutting involved with this page, but then, that's ideal when you've got your feet up post op!!

Stampotique Stamps used:

Alphabitties  #6010  by Jill Penney and Daniel Torrente

Smitten Moustache Monsters  #4040  by Kira Nichols

French Journal Page  #10015 by France Papillon

"French Journal Page?!!!!!" I hear you ask?  Yes, it's on there, can you spot it?

a handful of cards

I've been playing with some new Lavinia Stamps and my gelli plate ... I really love using the Adirondack inks with the gelli plate.  

I rarely make cards but had decided to enter this month's Lavinia Stamps challenge which was 'birthday girl' so ended up making a couple.

I know I've said it before but I love adding splashes of water to the inks, and also painting in stamped areas with the inks or water.

Despite having made a couple of cards I still needed to make another one as my niece was one at the weekend.  I was pleased with this quick card using a Mabel Lucie Attwell image from the Artistic Stamper :)

lavinia stamps challenge #5

It's my husband's cousin's fiftieth birthday on Saturday so he asked me to make a card and, although I've made a couple of others (which I'll share soon), I decided to enter this one into this month's Lavinia Stamps challenge as this really is a card for a 'birthday girl'.

I added some more layers to a gelli printed piece of card then cut the numerals '5' and '0' from it.  I knew I wanted to add some flowers but it took me ages to work out an effective background.  This one is adirondack stream sponged over white card, french verse 2 stamped in stream, then splashes of water to give texture.  This was my third attempt at a background; I recycled one of the others into two tags...

..I decided to be a bit brave and use some different coloured inks to stamp the flowers.  This proved a bit busy for the background of my 50th birthday card but worked perfectly with some fairy silhouettes on my tags.

I particularly liked using some of my newest Lavinia stamps, the zen blossoms, around the edge of the tags.

smitten moustache monsters

I just LoVe Kira Nichols' smitten moustache monsters so decided to have a play around with them in one of my journals.  They have so much potential though that I know I'll be using them again!! [I so want to colour in their moustaches but decided this page had enough colour!!]

I appear to have a good collection of love-themed stampotique stamps!  After spraying my page with Dylusions inks, and splashing some water on them and dabbing it off, I stamped 'metal love' three times, thinking of the Beatles song 'all you need is love'!  I then repeatedly stamped the heart from the top of 'Oh...Tree' because I couldn't find my 'Daniel's hearts' stamp ...

... then found it and went to town with looooooooooooooads more hearts!!  I had a good time colouring some of them in with my watercolour pencils.

The smitten moustache monsters have been stamped on top of the words and then I stamped them onto paper too and cut them out - it's just a good way of keeping the little details that are impossible to cut out (like the curly ends of moustaches!!)

For those of you in the UK, the new release stampotique stamps are on their way and you can pre-order smitten moustache monsters, amongst others, at The Stamp Attic.

Stampotique Stamps Used:

Smitten Moustache Monsters  #4040 by Kira Nichols

Metal Love  #7234 by Amy Wilson Wellenstein

Oh...Tree  #6152 by Daniel Torrente

Daniel's Hearts  #6109 by Daniel Torrente

Barcode Text  #10020 by France Papillon

Barcode  #10019 by France Papillon

the art of practising gratitude

"The benefits of practicing gratitude are nearly endless. People who regularly practice gratitude by taking time to notice and reflect upon the things they're thankful for experience 
more positive emotions, feel more alive, sleep better, 

express more compassion and kindness, and even have stronger immune systems."

http://www.happify.com/public/articles/the-science-behind-gratitude/

I've wanted to keep a gratitude journal since reading Ann Voskamp's excellent book 'One Thousand Gifts' but I'm not great at keeping 'proper' journals or diaries, or calendars even ;)  But I find a challenge is a great boost to creativity so I was keen to join in with Bernice's challenge to practise gratitude for 21 days in May.

This is a fabulous blog with, amongst other things,  quotes, videos, songs and a creative technique to try each day.  I am only up to day 2: be positive, but that's ok because today's words are 'be kind to yourself' and I've had a minor gynae op so haven't been able to do much, and there's really no pressure to get the journal pages completed (plus you get the weekends as catch up time!)

I'm using a diary that I bought at the start of the academic year and have set aside the May pages to write in every day.  I'm using the other pages as journal pages.

The creative challenge for day 2 was to use bubble wrap to print with.  For me, 'being positive' is about looking at the good things in life so I cut my bubble wrap into cloud shapes and adapted the traditional 'silver lining' saying!

It's not easy to see but I added some silver stitching to the white stitching around the cloud.  [That's all I managed to do today, I now have my feet back up!!  I don't think journal pages have ever taken me so long!]

Stampotique Stamps used:

Raindrops by Madga Polakow

Dog by Roc Nicholas

inlayed die cut honeycomb tag

I won some blog candy!!  And it arrived in the cutest little parcel earlier this week.  Thanks so much Neet, 

  

I got the large bee stamp from Stampotique so I could use the wings to create fairies but now I own the Tim Holtz - Sizzix frameworks honeycomb die I just had to try out the whole bee!!

I used the die to cut out the honeycomb from a tag, inked up the pieces then laid it all down on a second tag which effectively creates an inlay from the die cut.  I saw this idea on Jennifer McGuire's blog here

I seem to be playing with really bright colours at the minute!  I started out with orange inks on the honeycomb, had some overspray of lime Dylusions on my work mat and decided that would be the colour to use for the background!  Lots of different text stamps as the background and ....

...I have another inky tag to add to my growing collection!

Stampotique stamps used:

Journey Collage  7148 Amy Wilson Wellenstein

Big Bee  3008 Jo Capper-Sandon

Barcode Text  10020 France Papillon

French Text Journal Page  10015 France Papillon

Row of Numbers  7313 Amy Wilson Wellenstein

Don't forget to visit the Stampotique Designers' Blog where there's daily inspiration for using your Stampotique stamps.