Wyatt in the Shadows

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this week is "This is where the cowboy rides away".  The words are taken from a song so you can feel free to create something inspired by a song you love, or any kind of wild west or cowboy theme, even if it's only the colours of the desert, a sheriff's star, it's up to you imagination :)  Create something and enter it into the challenge and you will be in the running for a $50 shopping voucher at Simon Says Stamp!

I'm not particularly a cowboy fan, in fact I've never liked watching western movies but somehow I managed to drag the name "Wyatt Earp" from the depths of my memory - I only hope this looks like him!  Did he have a droopy moustache?  I kinda feel like he did, but if not, then he does now! :)

I started by stamping the Stampers Anonymous Heavy Metal Quilt stamp onto white cardstock and colouring some of the metal plates with Promarkers.  I tore a piece of card from the French Industrial paper stash and added that to the panel.  I stamped the moustache from the Ringmaster Blueprint set and coloured it with Promarker and then set about building up the face from a variety of sources.  The hair, nose and lips came from the David stamp in the Artful Artifacts set and the eyes came from 2 stamps in the Classics #5 set.  The name came from the Worn Text stamp set and the star was from the Psychedelic Grunge stamp set.

That's Wyatt :)  It might be a small thing but I'm particularly pleased with his hair on the left edge of the card.  The David stamp that provided the hair doesn't have a left side, so I built that part using leftover bits from the right side.  I think if you didn't know that you would never suspect it.  Come to that, why did I spoil it by telling you? :)

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!

A is for... Annie Lennox!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this week is "A is for...".  My inspiration this week was Annie Lennox, in particular her song "Love Song for a Vampire" which was written for the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula.  The line from the lyrics that I've includedin my piece is the particular jumping off point for my tag.  Why don't you think about an A-related inspiration and join us this week and make an entry for the $50 prize challenge? :)

I started with a manila tag and used white gesso dabbed through the stars layering stencil to create a resist layer.  I applied distress inks on top of the paint once it had dried and used a wet wipe to remove excess colour from the paint surface.  Using a black pen, I placed the stencil back on the tag, slightly mis-aligned, and traced the outline of each star before wiping again with a wet wipe, which removed a lot of the black pen but left a shadow on one side of each star.

The angels and wings were all taken from the Classics #9 stamp set.  I chose to restrict my colour palette to a shade each of blue, yellow and a vibrant red.  The movie that formed part of my inspiration for this is noteworthy in it's use of colour, particularly vibrant shades of red in places, and I wanted to echo that here.  The heart came from the Rock Star stamp set and I used the same shade of red to tie things together colour-wise.

I printed the quote on my computer, cut it out and matted it on black card then fixed it to my tag.  As a final touch I used a glue pen to draw stars in various places and once the glue had dried I used sheets of gold leaf to gild the stars (the dried glue is plenty sticky enough to adhere gold leaf).  I used a paint brush to burnish the stars and remove any surplus flakes of gold leaf.  That's my piece for this week's challenge, I hope you like it.  Now  all you need to do is get started on one of your own! :)

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!

Anything Goes in 2014!

Before I say anything else this week, let me start out by saying that this is the last week on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge team for the amazing Candy Colwell :(  She has some fun projects planned that are going to take up a lot of her time so she's decided to move on.  We have been on this team together right from day 1 and I will greatly miss her company!  Good luck in all your future endeavours my friend!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this week is "anything goes".  This is always such a popular theme, understandably so, what could be better than letting your imagination wander with no fixed goal in site?  That's how the best creativity happens! Why don't you join us this week and make an entry for the $50 prize challenge? :)

The other day I was sitting at my computer reading up on Martin Luther King Jr (I've never known much about him, but then again, I *am* British so it's probably understandable) and I stumbled across an amazing quote from him - "Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted".  I identified so much with those words that I simply had to feature it in my art journal in some way, and this is the result.

I started out by stamping the tree trunks and then used a water brush and distress inks to paint in the grass, sky and trees.  The hands were stamped separately, coloured with Promarkers and shaded with distress inks, then cut out and fixed in place.  The flowers were drawn with a white pen and the leaves and centres were added with Promarkers.

As a final touch I printed the quote from my computer, cut it down into single words and fixed them in place, using Promarkers to add shading in several areas.  I used my Fiskars corner rounder to round off the bottom corners, to match the corners of my journal pages.  There you go, that's it, all done and dusted.  To the creatively malajusted among you, I salute you! :)

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!