Flowers On Wood

One of my neighbours is a carpenter, and he gave me some veneer rests to use for stamping. This was my first attempt to use them. I stamped the image (by Stampington) with StazOn Jet Black onto the veneer, then tore the image (my cutting machine was not able to cut it exactly, so I preferred to tear it). The flourishes are created with my Spellbinders Nesties, and the dp is by Diane's Daughters.
What do you think about stamping on wood?

Who Can Resist Beautiful Poppies?

I have a problem with negative image stamps: I always fall in love with them suddenly but struggle hard with how to use them afterwards. So it was with this beautiful poppy negative stamp by Hero Arts. I love, love, LOVE poppies, so I couldn't resist this stamp, but then I found it difficult to create an interesting image with it. Here's what I came up with finally, and I am quite content with the result.
I first painted an old book page with a thin layer of gesso, dried it with the heat tool, then stamped the poppy image with Versamark ink and embossed it with clear embossing powder. Then I sponged the whole image with green and red fluid chalks and wiped away the excess ink.
By the way, this card is for this week's Splitcoaststampers' Ways To Use Challenge - "Let's Celebrate", and the German sentiment on the card (by Stempelmeer) says "Congratulations".
Large flower punch by Nellie Snellen, little one and Flourish punch by EK Success. I used champagne Liquid Pearls for the little dot in the middle of the flower.

52 Bears for Cathy

Today's Splitcoaststampers' Featured Stamper is Cathy aka Mutnik - she's such a great and creative stamper, and one of the sweetest SCS ladies ever. Recently, she sent to me a smiling dog card (she drew the smiling dog herself, WOW!) and I still owe her a Thank You card for that. So this was the perfect opportunity to create a Mutnik-CASEd card for her!!
I CASEd this card by Cathy.
While Cathy used several inchie stamps, I used a single stamp by the German manufacturer StempelBar which contains all these bears. The bears on the stamp are drawn by the German "Bear Painter" Chris Schlag. If you have a second, take a glance at his website!
Cathy popped up one of the bears on her card - I did the same, but you can't see this very well on the photo (it's bear No.4 in the 4th row...). He's got a three-dimensional glossy nose, too, thanks to some Diamond Glaze. Some other bears have one single sparkling tooth - take a close look at the picture!
Cathy, if you like this card, it will go on its way to California!

New Punch to Play With...

I wanted to play with my new Nellie Snellen flower punch today. It is a double punch for die-cutting and embossing, and I used it for the blue flowers on this card. The pink ones are punched with an EK Success punch and embossed after punching with a cuttlebug embossing folder.
The border punch is by Fiskars.
The flower stamp is by Autumn Leaves (Rhonna Farrer). The sentiment is by Stempelmeer and says "Congratulations". I used pink Memento ink.
I don't know the manufacturer of the dp, it's a Dutch one, this I know for sure.

Art Journey Dagen

Last weekend I had the chance to take part in the Art Journey Dagen. Louise Kolker from Art Journey and her team made these days a real celebration for their clients. We were spoiled with fantastic workshops, excellent catering, fun, laughter and goodies. Star teacher was Rachel Greig, the owner of Darkroom Door stamps, but not only her workshop was great, Sija, Leonie, Corine, Tineke, Jeanette and Liesbeth taught us lots of new techniques. We created a "book of techniques" which meant that we created in eachg workshop a sample for a special technique, and at the end of the day, these samples were assembled to a little book which we can keep and expand.

The chipboard frame on the cover was decorated with Terra paste, then stamped into the paste, then colored with acrylic color and metallic color. Heating the paste with the heat tool causes tiny bubbles which add texture to it.


Rachel created with us this wonderful photo card with her beautiful cottage image. The background pattern was stamped onto cardstock colored with a black Adirondack paint dabber, and clear embossed, then sponged with some brown color and wiped off the excess.


This page was created in Sija's and Leonie's workshop. They taught us to take masking a step further and to create resist effects with oil pastels. The colors used are Adirondack inks. I love the Ingrid Bergman stamp we used (by Stampendous)!



This is part of a page of glossy cardstock we sponged with Adirondack inks. The resist effects were achieved by stamping with clear embossing ink before sponging. Then the sponged background was overstamped with lots of different stamps with StazOn Jet Black. We created a whole A4 page within only ten minutes, and the pieces can be used in so many different projects. And it was fascinating to see how different our pages looked though we only had five Adirondack colors to choose from!



But this was only part of the fun. Look at these photos:

Louise explaining the time schedule.



Leonie and Sija teaching masking and sponging techniques.

Rachel teaching.


Louise's Mom Willy was responsible for the catering. Great job, thank you so much!!!

Well, sitting and stamping a whole day long??? These two nurses made us do some sports in between the workshops - okay, laughing that much, it was not really sports what we were able to do...


So, let's rock...



Louise, this was such a fantastic event!!! So much inspiration - thank you so much for all the great work you and your team did for us!

A Simple Thank You

Recently my Mom created some address labels for my MIL. Now my MIL asked me to create a thank you card for my Mom. I was inspired by this week's Splitcoaststampers Clean and Simple challenge sketch and the three-colors-mushroom card it was based on, so this turned out as a three-colors-flower card. I hope my Mom will like it.
Flower stamp by Stampendous, sentiment by Heidi Swapp, flourish by Tim Holtz. Design paper and fibers by Basic Grey.

Virtual Stamping Night - Part 4

This is for the Mini VSN Spotlight On Ice challenge.
The challenge was to feature one's favorite olympic game using the spotlight technique. When I read about the challenge, I had immediately in mind this cute Peanuts stamp by Stampabilities...
I know that the original spotlight technique leaves the main image monochromatic and colors only the spotlight piece, but I considered it such a pity to leave Charlie Brown monochromatic... guess he would have got a severe depression if I did that, LOL! So i cheated a little bit and colored everything, nevertheless, there's a spotlight, isn't it?! I used all the olympic colors in my image (yeah, where's the yellow??? Take a close look on Charlie's cap!), and I added some Stickles for the snow - hard to be seen on the photo. And because it is hard to see as well: The tab on top of the card says "Snowball Fight", and the epoxy sticker says "Sleigh Ride".
I hope you have the same fun looking at this card I had when creating it...

Border punch by CreaMotion, epoxy stickers and tab by Around The Block, background cardstock embossed with the Cuttlebug Snowflake embossing folder. The image is colored with Tombow markers.