Look Ma, No Ink!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "stamp without ink".  I decided to stamp with water and gesso.  This year I feel like I want my Christmas to have a more hand-made feel to it, so I will be making some of my own decorations for the tree and around the house.  This ornament seemed to be the perfect starting point!

I had some blank round beer mats kicking around in my craft room so decided to use one of those as the base.  I applied Broken China distress ink to it and edged with a little Faded Jeans.  The snow flakes were stamped in water and gesso, so that some were clear and bold while others were blurry and would appear further in the background.  If you try this yourself, don't forget to clean your stamp immediately, before the gesso dries on it!

The nutcracker was stamped onto the ornament in black, and then stamped again onto white typing paper.  The copy on paper was coloured and cut out and then lined up with the image on the ornament and fixed in place.  He doesn't actually have eyes or a mouth on the stamp, so I added those with a black Distress marker.  He was coloured with a range of Promarker colours.

I cut a piece of "snow" freehand from white card and fixed it to the top of the ornament (with a liberal application of rock candy distress stickles on top!).  The final step was to cut out a piece of card for the top of the ornament.  I coloured it with brass distress stain and added an eyelet so I can easily hang it onto the tree.

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!

Bienvenue Au Cirque Français!

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "inspiration francais".  I thought I'd play around with the puzzle over the identity of the model for the Mona Lisa, which, of course, hangs in the Louvre in Paris.

I usually stamp in black, I love the stark contrast of black ink on white card stock, to the extent that sometimes I don't add colour to them.  When I'm aiming for a distinctive vintage feel though, sepia ink can often give a better result, and that's what I went for with this piece.

One of my favourite techniques is the Versamark resist technique, the faint ghosted images it leaves behind add a little more interest and intrigue than a bold, white resist would give.  I stamped the Carte Postale image in Versamark Clear ink and dried it with a heat gun before inking on top of it with Fired Brick and Peeled paint distress ink.

The Eiffel Tower, Cirque and dark Carte Postale were stamped with Archival Sepia ink and elements coloured with Promarkers.  I added a torn strip of Tattered Time cardstock to the edge of the Mona ATC stamp and cut along her hairline to insert a 2nd Mona behind her.  Finally the whole piece was edged with Gathered Twigs ink and mounted onto black card then onto my white base card.

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!