gothic arches sunday postcard and an Inka Sale

The theme at Gothic Arches is pink and brown and the theme at sunday postcard art is Once Upon A Time, so I combined these two challenges to make this arch/postcard. The piece is postcard sized, but folds to form a card.

The gorgeous collage image and stamps are all by Inka. And on the subject of Inka Stamps I am pleased to announce the following Sale for the month of March.

Inka Stamps is proud to announce that we have a new design team member Cynthia Powell! To celebrate if you put Cindy in the message to seller box on the check out order form you will get a 30% refund within 24 hours. If you are ordering snail mail you can just deduct the 30 % off qualifying merchandise.

This offer is not applicable to prize awards, items already on sale, grab bags and items on the "Vintage found items and mounting supplies" page at Inka Stampstheme

wednesday stamper : silhouette

The silhouette theme at wednesday stamper could not have come at a better time. I recently bought these skateboard silhouette stamps from I brake for stamps to make some birthday cards for my son's friends who are approaching their teen years. It's such a difficult age to make cards for, so when I saw these stamps I had to have them. The paper is basic grey, the splatter stamp is from Cherry Pie, the alphabet is hero arts, and I stamped the name with chalk ink. I was really impressed with how well it showed up on the dark card.

lisa vollrath again!

ten two studios are offering free images to celebrate St Patricks day from the 1st to the 17th March HERE

forever friends black and white..

...oh and a touch of red!
the theme at the the forever friends challenge blog is black and white, but we were allowed to use colour on the bears so I used a touch of red on the flowers, but then I "accidentally" used a red button too, but it's just worked so well that I had to.
The image has some very subtle colour on it with a grey copic marker (the only colour of copic marker that I own!)

theme thursday: labels

The theme at theme thursday is Labels. There are some links on the site to download some lovely free Labels from Inka, so I decided to celebrate getting a new printer by using some of these on this ATC I made for the challenge. I have also used an Inka collage image and there is also a little bit of a gothic flourish stamp on there as well.

forever friends again!

I am certainly getting value for money out of this stamp. The challenge this week was to make a "general" birthday card!
I am also going to enter this for Cute Cards Thursday where the theme is signs of spring, as I think this is quite a "spring like" card

my heart has wings

The theme at mixed media monday of hearts and wings was just the push I needed to use these fabulous wing stamps that I just got from Inka, aren't they beautiful? I combined them with the floral heart (already one of my favourites)and a few other bits to make this quick hanging.
as the theme at lots to do is also wings I am entering this piece for that challenge as well.

well what would you do with a child free hour?

This card came about because my husband and I had a child free hour this afternoon, so what did we do with the time? well some colouring in of course!! My husband had been admiring my colouring on his valentine card so I said I'd show him how I did it as he likes to draw manga. Then I remembered that I had this fab manga stamp from DewDrop crafts. So we had fun with coloursoft pencils and sansodor! It seemed a waste to not make something with the result of my colouring so I made this to fit with the wednesday stamper challenge (to use hearts in a different way, I used two punched hearts to make a bow to match the one in her hair) and TGIF (The number 13, I thought this would make a suitable card for a 13 year old's birthday)

The pink isn't quite so bright in real life (but almost)

flowers

The theme at Artygirlz is flowers, I made this for Chris's birthday and as it contains quite a lot of flowers I thought I would enter it. All stamps are by Inka

sunday postcard art

The theme at sunday postcard art is chairs. I have this image from Inka which reminded me of grabbing the last chair at musical chairs, so that is the theme I went for. All stamps are by Inka

you know you might have too many rubber stamps...

...when you have one that says this. I got this from Inka as I thought it would be perfect for the back of cards. This is the back of the forever friends valentine card from an earlier post.

rubber stamp body art

In this month's craft stamper magazine I noticed the prize for the ATC competition included tattoo ink (Bombshell stamps - Temporary Tattoo Body Ink Pad -BLACK) for rubber stamps from 3D jean. I immediately thought, "I gotta get myself some of that!"
It arrived today so I thought I would give a quick review. First thing I noticed when I opened it is that it is not a raised ink pad, which means inking large stamps will be difficult. Then the hinged lid, does not lift all the way back so you can't "take the ink to the stamp" very easily. Also the pad itself doesn't look very moist. On top of that it doesn't come with any instructions, so you don't know how long the tattoo is supposed to last, etc.

So I wasn't holding out much hope for a convincing tatto. But, I was pleasantly surprised, as you can see the result is pretty good. You have to be careful when inking your stamp to avoid catching the rubber, as stamping onto flesh is obviously nothing like stamping onto paper. The ink dried quickly and held up well to gentle rubbing and rubbing against clothing (not sure I'd risk it against light clothing though). I purposely got it wet amd the tattoo remained, but if rubbed while wet it does smudge easily. The tattoo removes easily with soap and water and gentle rubbing.

So if you are considering getting this pad, I hope this review helps. I'm glad I got it, but I think it has definite room for improvement in the design of the pad.

p.s. yes my arm really is that freckly!

(the stamp is rather unsurprisingly from Inka!)

forever friends valentine

The forever friends challenge this week is valentines. so could I make my one forever friends stamp do another week... I think so! I've added some hearts on wire to his bouquet. I will be giving this card to my husband for valentines day, so I've tried really hard not to make it too girly.

Happy Birthday Make a moo or two

This week Make a moo or two are celebrating their first birthday. so we are asked to make a moo with the number 1 on it, so here is mine, all the stamps are by Paperartsy and the dog is from one of Inka's new collage sheets. The background is shimmery which unfortunately you can't see on the scan

is that really an Inka stamp?

I think it's rather obvious from my blog how much I love Inka's stamps, and how much I love being on the design team. One of the reasons for this is the sheer variety of stamps and collage images available to me. I think this stamp sums that up. I can even do "cute" with Inka's stamps. This is Zina, and isn't she adorable? I've made this card to fit 3 challenges, sketch saturday, Secret crafters,where the theme is recycling (I've used corrugated cardboard from an amazon delivery) and Cute Card Thursday where the theme is metal (I've used gold zoomz and some green wire).

The patterned papers are by Papermania, and Zina is coloured with a combination of derwent colour soft pencils and sansodor with a hint of whispers pens and a bit of paper piecing.

pretty paper hearts

the theme at Pretty Paper Hearts is "Cracked". Which I took as an opportunity to use this amazing technique which has been demonstrated by my super talented friend Carrie in the current issue of Stampers' Sampler.
This technique allows you to make the most fabulous crackle background using only acrylic paint and PVA glue. If you like messy techniques, they don't come much messier than this one!
first I painted the card with cerulean blue acrylic paint, and allowed it to dry. (I do not do well waiting for things to dry, I'm about as patient as Mr Impatient of Impatientsville) then I painted this with a layer of PVA glue and immediatly with a layer of white acrylic paint, then waited....and waited.... and went for a bath...then came back and WOW!! how cool is that effect! after leaving it to dry a bit more (spot the impatient fingerprints), I finished it off with collage image and stamps from Inka and embellishments (including the most perfect button that was in the Blog candy I received from Marie)

mixed media monday : Fruit

As soon as I saw the theme at mixed media monday I knew the image I was going to use. I absolutely adore this image from Inka, it's almost too good to use! But I've done it as it was just so perfect for the theme. The background of this ATC is whispers ink brayered onto glossy card and in real life looks just like a green and red apple. Other stamps are floral spray, sequence waste and large collage words all by Inka.
I have used a white pen to accent the leaves.
The collection of "junk" on the left hand side covers up a rather unattractive bubble caused by using a heat gun on glossy card.

lisa vollrath does it again

if you are looking for free valentine images tentwo studios are doing a free valentine countdown HERE

forever friends tall and thin

That's the theme at the forever friends challenge blog this week, tall and thin, which I thought was quite funny as that's just the opposite of what forever friends bears are!
but it meant a tall and thin card.
I made this from half of a 5"x7" card blank, which I then folded in half to make a tall card. I used the other half of the card to make the petals.
because of the way this card is made it will open out to fit into a 5"x7" envelope. protecting the petals in the post.
I still only have the one forever friends stamp. I wonder how many weeks I can get away with using it!

circles postcard

The theme at Sunday Postcard art is to make a 6"x4" postcard with the theme circles. I have used circles on the background by stamping with water onto a distress ink background with a ringer stamp and stamping in distress ink as well.
I have combined this with the lots to do challenge "in stitches" by stitching some circles with string. The base of this piece is corrugated cardboard.

The main image (from Inka) is on vellum, hence the various ways it is attached to the background.