Showing posts with label Sweet Stamps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sweet Stamps. Show all posts

Double kissed ATC

DISCLAIMER - my shift key is busted.  If it isn't on the first row or accessible with my capslock, I can't type it.

Kissing techniques - the first one I was forced into.  Too much colorwash spray on one piece of watercolor paper inspired me to 'kiss' it to another piece to spread the ink around a bit.  Once I had kissing on the brain, I had to try kissing my stamps, too.  The solid bird is from nordic noel by AMuse Studio, and the leafy branch which I used both for the kissing and for stamping around the edges is bird on a flowering branch by SweetStamps.

I used a waterbrush to drag the ink on the leaves around, and a tiny bead of embossing frames the image.

Challenges -
Ugh - I need a new keyboard...

Juliet Arrighi

Center Step Card

Believe it or not, I started this project with the idea to make a Christmas card with a dancing bear on it.
The stamp is from SweetStamps, and the sentiment is pieced from an old CTMH alpha.  This is the first time I've tried to spell a word vertically with it. The outfit on the woman is paper pieced. My flower did not come out the way I originally intended, either.  I don't know what happened here, but I think it is all right.

Challenges:


Juliet Arrighi

Paper-pieced Snowman

This is a very simple looking card, but I'm kind of proud of it because of a couple of techniques that I used that were new for me.
First off, this is a new sentiment for me.  SweetStamps has tons of vertical sentiments like this, and it is fun having your words go in a different direction for a change.  I felt very tricky getting the color to change in the middle of a word like this.  I embossed the sentiment in white on the blue, tore the white paper and embossed part of the sentiment onto it in denim blue, then lined up the words until the overlapped perfectly.  I used a much larger piece of white than I needed, and just cut off the excess.

The stamp is also new, and I tried coloring it with copics (not my favorite method, but it is okay).  As you can see, I'm not great at coloring.  However, since I was cutting out the snowman, it didn't matter too much that I couldn't stay inside the lines.  Fortunately, I am better with scissors than with markers.

I knew I needed a little something more than just the words and the snowman, so I thought holly would echo the small sprig in his hatband.  I just bought this new holly punch, and was arranging the leaves, when I noticed that the snowman's buttons were actually buttons, and also the right size for the holly!  I was even happier when I found out that the buttons fight perfectly inside a 1/4 inch punch!  So, I stamped the buttons from the snowman onto red and used those for holly berries.  Finally, I used some Diamond Glaze to give all the buttons a little dimension.

Juliet Arrighi

Rose fairy ribbon doll

I have been admiring the ribbon dolls at Ten Two Studios, but never really wanted to make one just like Lisa's, and didn't have another body that I wanted to use.  However, I felt very enabled to create my own doll body after reading Collage Couture  by Julie Nutting, and I had some roses that I thought would be perfect on her outfit, so I went to work.
The Rose Surround is one of my favorite rose stamp sets, because it is designed specifically to accent other images, and it is very easy to cut out.  It was a little fidgety trying to get the pinks right - I ended up painting the roses and the dress with metallic shimmer paint.  The wings are from this butterfly, which I embossed with vintage lavender tinsel embossing powder (my friends wondered when I bought it what I was going to use it for, but this is the second time in as many months that it has been the perfect shade and texture for what I wanted to do) onto heavy vellum.  The ribbons are an assortment from my ridiculously large collection.  I did add a ribbon to the head for hanging, but because it is fairly light and flat, it hangs just as well with a glue dot:
 I will be mailing this to another lady in my altereddesigns group, as I made it for the torso mingle.  It figures that I couldn't limit myself to just a torso.

Challenges:

Juliet Arrighi

Western Accordion Card

I made this for the western challenge at the SweetStamps blog.  I have to admit that I am no cowgirl, but I love the colors and textures of the western style.  Ginham, denim, leather and silver - all those cowboy textures are so fun to mix and match!
I embossed the horse silhouette on silver paper, to make it look like a concho.  The red strip with the sentiment is actually a belly band, holding the card shut - funny thing about gluing layers together, they don't want to bend very much. The gingham paper is very old, from CTMH - I love gingham, but I rarely make something that I think it suits.  I wanted a little bandanna technique to set off all the blue and brown, but I couldn't find a milky gel pen that would work, so I reversed the technique by stamping in white and highlighting in black.  I inserted a white framed panel to write on; you can see the corner of it poking out in the back.

All stamps used are from the SweetStamps store.  I love the SweetStamps collection - they are so well suited to technique stamping!

Juliet Arrighi

Glittery Stained Glass ATCs

This week I've been making these ATCs using one of the new SweetCuts dies.

The cuts are super thin, even thinner than Memory Box dies, but they are sharp and cut cleanly, and are designed with techniques like this one in mind.  To see how I did it, look on the Sweetstamps blog.

Challenges:


Juliet Arrighi

Parchment Stiletto

Although the only way I would ever wear stilettos would be flat on my back, I loved the lacy look of this particular shoe (stamp is from SweetStamps), and thought it would be perfect for a faux parchment technique on vellum.
 The paper underneath the vellum is that homemade paper I made a couple of months ago by smashing azaleas into white cardstock.  It had a very muted purple color, so I tried to match it with purple cardstock, which just made the color look gray.  I figured the only thing to do is to match it with gray cardstock, so you can really see the purple.  I had to punch and doodle a couple of butterflies to match the one on the shoe.  Three brads hold the vellum to the paper - I hate trying to glue vellum!

Challenges:


Juliet Arrighi


Twinkling ATC

On the ATC_World yahoo group, we were discussing the virtues of Twinkling H2Os versus other paintable mica powders.  Finally, one lady pointedly hinted to me that she would love a sample to see in real life.  I generally avoid people who request cards outright without even an offer of a swap, but I am feeling benevolent in my old age - I have thousands of ATCs, and make them because I enjoy making them, and certainly not because I want to have more of them to store.
The thing that I love about twinks is that they are more like watercolor paints with a little sparkle to them than they are mica powder.  You can't see the sparkle at all in this scan, just the pigment.  You get the transparency and shading of a watercolor.

The tiny tag is resin, I think.  I complimented another ATC maker a few years back on how cute a similar tag looked on one of her ATCs, and she sent me a packet.  I love how cute they are, and how well they take ink.  Unfortunately, I hate to use them, because I have no idea how to replace them.  I shouldn't hoard my goodies, I know.

The bird image is from SweetStamps, and the kanji is from TAC.

Challenges:

Juliet Arrighi


Techniques for roses

I have recently come into two different rose silhouette stamps - the wild rose from a•muse studio, and this rose from Sweetstamps.  To be honest, I probably have dozens of roses in my stamp collection.  They are my favorite flower to stamp.  However, these are my first rose silhouettes, and I am excited to be able to use some different techniques with my roses.

This technique is called Copic Colored Embossing.  Some places refer to it as Black Magic, but since Black Magic is now a type of paper (black paper with a colored core, part of the Coredinations line), I'm not calling it that.
It's a very simple card layout.  I tried various embellishments, but ultimately I thought the image was too pretty to cover up.  I can probably sneak a sentiment into the lower left corner if I need one.  The framing element is a Nellie Snellen die.  it is actually a square die, but I cut 2 and pieced them together.

Challenges:

Juliet Arrighi


Just like I hoped

It's very rare that I buy stamps with a clear vision of how I intend to use them, but these stamps from SweetStamps just called out to me.  The roses fit perfectly around an oval focal point, and I thought that the vintage lady looked perfect with them.
 The ovals were cut with a new Little Stackers die set I just bought.  The set contains 6 dies in the sizes I would actually use for making cards, with less than a half inch difference between each die - this makes it possible to layer them without huge borders (the one thing I hate about spellbinders dies).  My copic coloring still needs work, but you really can't mess up roses; they are a naturally messy flower.

So, what I have here is a nice card that has fussy details while still being nice and flat for easy mailing.  I think this will be good with red and purple for my Red Hat friends, too.

Challenges:

Juliet Arrighi


Cracked Glass collage

I love techniques!  This project has a few.  I started off with coffee paper, one of my favorite things to do when I forget to turn off the coffee pot in the morning.  I then stamped this vintage image from SweetStamps and colored it with the Penciled Marker technique.  I Then applied a ton of clear embossing powder for the Cracked Glass technique.
Tissue tape, a french book page, old tickets and diecut flowers, a doily, a charm, all kinds of stuff made it onto this 4 by 4 collage that I made for my altered designs yahoogroup.  

Challenges:
SweetStamps - cracked glass technique
Delightful Challenges - add hearts
Frilly and Funkie - follow your muse
Quirky Crafts - something new (the stamp is new) + pink

Juliet Arrighi





Sympathy Snowflake

I usually put butterflies or Dragonflies on y sympathy cards, but this time of year, a snowflake seemed better; their unique and ephemeral nature makes them a good allegory for the fragility of human life (yeah, I'm overthinking it).

I have been wanting to try this technique ever since I got this medallion stamp from SweetStamps:
The parts that look gray in the scan are actually silver.  The large silver rectangle is a piece I painted myself a while back, and the silvery accents on the medallion are done with Stargazers.  All the stamping here is heat-embossed.  I love the look and texture of heat embossing.  It is one of the reasons rubber stamps will never go away.

Challenges:

Juliet Arrighi




Pedestal Pop-up card

I was intrigued by this challenge on the Sweet Stamps blog to make a pedestal pop-up card.  Since I just bought this stamp from them, it was a natural to put the two together:

The sentiment is an old SU stamp, and this butterfly on the inside is an old TAC stamp:
It looks like it's flying over the card!  I left plenty of white space for writing.  The framing lines are drawn with a marker and clear ruler - it's an easy way to add a little color and definition to the inside.

Other challenges:
Kaboodle Doodles - Thank you card
Squigglefly - new technique
Cutie Pie - border/frame
Stampalot - flight


Juliet Arrighi