Friday, December 5, 2008

Back and Alive...

Where did the time go???
This is my first FREE WEEKEND after two months without a single free day... Time flew by with the work in my office, holding a lot of lectures and my travel to Atlanta, GA, for the Joint Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the European Society of Ophthalmology. It was such an inspiring meeting! I learned a lot, met the most interesting people and got lots of ideas to work on in the future! Nevertheless, getting along with the jet lag and after that with all the routine work which had been delayed during my time in the U.S., I had a really hard time and had to go through a real STAMPING WITHDRAWAL!!!! UUURRRRRGGGGHHHH! There were so many creative challenges on the web which I would have liked to try my hands on, but no way...
But now things get back to normal, and OF COURSE I had to get ink on my fingers IMMEDIATELY!!!

I have neighbours with very close connections to Israel, and as it is very hard to find Hannukkah cards for sale, they asked me to create some Hannukkah cards. As I only have two Menorah stamps, and one of them obviously buried under tons of other stamps - no chance to find it quickly, LOL - I made my personal challenge: to come up with five different cards, all only with stamping, no Cricut, no computer-printing, and all using exactly the same stamp (by Stampin Up). This is what I came up with:



For this card, I stamped the image with black StazOn onto acetate, then adhered it onto double-sided adhesive tape. After peeling off the backing foil, I brushed thin silver foil onto it. It makes a really lustrous and shiny background which doesn't show well on the photo. I matted the image onto blue and silver cardstock, then on a blue card on which I randomly had stamped a Rhonna Farrer star swirl.



This one was stamped with silver ink onto blue cardstock, then embossed with silver sparkling powder, and finally matted onto silver cardstock. I added a blue sheer ribbon with some rhinestones. The background is a sheet of vellum run through my Cuttlebug.



For this card, I used a K&Company design paper for the background and stamped the image onto green cardstock, embossed it with gold powder and colored with stickles. An easy one, but I love the bright colors, though it's not the traditional Hannukkah color scheme.



Again a piece of K&Company design paper, and this time I stamped the image twice: first with white Adirondack pigment ink, then (just a tiny little bit beside the first print) with Brilliance Galaxy Gold. This gives the image a bit more depth. I added some color with a golden glitter jelly pen and a blue marker. The sentiment is stamped on a blue tag, mounted on a golden tag.



And this is - tatatatahhhh - the last card in this little series: I took some double-sided adhesive tape, stuck it onto white cardstock and embossed the whole piece several times with gold embossing powder to create a thick layer. Then, while the layer was still hot and fluid, I stamped into it with black StazOn. If you try to do this, don't panick when the stamp sticks onto the embossing powder and it seems as if it never ever could be removed from it again... just wait until the embossing powder cooled down, then the stamp can be removed easily. The background paper is created with some blue cardstock which I ran through my Cuttlebug after having inked the embossing folder with Brilliance Galaxy Gold.

Which one is your favorite?

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