Into the Woods

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "into the woods".  Those of you who are regular visitors here may remember I had another "into the woods" themed post a few weeks ago.  It's my favourite musical, so I was excited when I saw what this week's theme was.  I immediately sat down and watched the show again, looking for inspiration.  Although all the characters in that show head off into the woods at some point, Red Riding Hood is the one that I most associate with a trip through the woods, so she is my inspiration for this piece.

Of course, your piece needn't be as literal an interpretation as mine - anything woods or wood related, no matter how loosely, is fine for the challenge!  I had originally planned to make a single tag for this, but given the size of the face stamp I used there really wasn't enough room left to show much of the woods, so I went with a two tag spread.

I started by applying Chipped Sapphire distress ink to my tags with an ink blending tool and then stamped and coloured the house.  The tags weren't quite tall enough for my purpose so I added a pieces of green cardstock from the Lost and Found pad to the bottom of the right-hand tag to bring it level to where Red's face would end.

I punched a circle of white card to act as the moon and fixed it in place, then I stamped multiple copies of the tree from the Winter Sketchbook stamp set at various angles and coloured them with a black distress marker.  The path was cut from another piece of Lost and Found card and fixed in place.

The face was stamped on another manilla tag, meaning I didn't have to colour the skin, though I did add some colour to the cheeks, lips and eyes (also colouring the whites of the eyes with a white pen).  The hood is made from 2 pieces of card from the Lost and found pad, shaded with promarkers.  The face and hood were fixed in place on the tags then I printed the text from the computer, cut it out, distress and mounted it in place.  (The font is called Blackadder if any of you like it and want to use it yourselves).

I love large stamps, particularly of faces, they're so versatile, you can stamp the whole thing or cut it up and just use a small part of it.  The girl's face on this piece has such a neutral expression, I think it allows the viewer to project their own idea of what she might be thinking or feeling onto her.  I can relax now and leave you lot to do that last little piece of work yourselves! :)

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! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

All Fired Up About Love

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "#1 ink pad".  I could have gone for Memento Tuxedo Black as it's the one I use the most if I'm using Promarkers, but black is a little boring for an ink pad choice so I went with Fired Brick, my favourite colour from the Distress Ink pad range.

I started this journal page by masking off all but the left hand inch of my base card and applying the Fired Brick pad directly to the card, giving the rich dark red down the left hand edge.  I embossed the rest of the card with one of the Provocraft embossing folders and applied Fired Brick with an ink blending too, giving a slightly darker tone on the raised stripes.  The heart was also coloured directly with the pad itself.

All of the other elements, the face parts, hand and scallops were coloured with Fired Brick applied with a water brush.  I rubbed the ink pad onto my craft mat and spritzed it with varying amounts of water to give different tones of the red, which I then used to "paint" my elements.  The tears were added later with a white pen.

The words were taken from several different stamp sets.  After fixing all the elements in place, I edged the page with a little Fired Brick shading, again applied with an ink blending tool.

I had a lot of fun making this page, it's the first one I've completed to go into my pocket art journal (if you look carefully you can see the holes for binding on the left-hand side).  I really enjoy the challenge of working with a single colour, I should do it more often!

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! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!