Loved and unused!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "the stamp I love but don't use".  I've had these americana blueprint stamps kicking around in my craft room for a little while now and much as I love them, there's just not much call for 4th July stamps here in the UK!  I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give them an outing :)

I started out by staining the hinged wooden triptych with Walnut Stain distress stain.  The left panel was stamped with the USA and star images and then coloured with Promarkers before distressing with a little Gathered Twigs ink and a blending tool.  I stamped the ticket from the Odds and Ends stamp set and coloured it with promarkers before fixing it to the panel, which I then fixed to the wood background.

The right panel was stamped with the subway places from the Remnants stamp set and I added a vintage Uncle Sam panel from the Seasonal paper stash to hide the fact that the subway image didn't quite reach to the bottom of the panel.  Finally I stamped and coloured the route 66 image from the Road Trip set and fixed it in place, then fixed the panel to the wood background.

On the central panel, I started by cutting a piece of cardstock to the right size and shape to fit and stamped the "rays" from the Psychedelic Grunge set.  Although I inked the stamp with black archival ink, I used a cotton bud (q-tip) to removed the ink from the centre of each ray so that only the outer edges stamped with any strength.  I then coloured them with promarkers.  I stamped Liberty and the flag in black and then stamped them again separately, colouring them with promarkers.  Before stamping Lady Liberty I used mint green promarker as a background, which was too bold, so I knocked it back with 3 coats of Picket Fence distress stain on top.  Once I was happy with the shade of green, I stamped the statue on top and then cut both it and the flag out.  After colouring the background, I mounted the flag and statue on 3d foam and stuck them in place.  As a final touch I added some red and blue stars from the Psychedelic Grunge set.

Phew, that's about it!  It was a lot of work but it was so nice to finally give these stamps an airing out of their packaging! :)

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

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