Wecome to today's Guest Designer, Amanda !

Today we are welcoming Amanda from Ink a Pink as our Guest Designer. Amanda was chosen by the DT as the winner of the Spring is in the Air challenge. So, let's move on to hear from Amanda !

Hello Everyone, Amanda here, otherwise known in the blog world as Ink-A-Pink.

It is a real honour to have been invited to feature as a Guest designer here today. Thank you so much to ALL the Stamps and Stencils team for giving me this wonderful opportunity to share some of my creativity with you all.

I'm a Yorkshire girl ‘born n bred’ living in Sheffield, England. From a very young age I have always had a keen interest in anything Arty or Creative. I’ve knitted, sewed, made cards, hand painted T-shirts, painted in watercolours and pencil sketched over the years - I just loved to keep my fingers busy and though I occasionally still let my pencil take a walk along the page or let the paint flow freely from the brush I now spend most of my time crafting making either cards, journal pages or mixed media projects. I began devoting a lot more of my time to crafting in 2011 when I came across ‘The creative world of Tim Holtz ‘ and started blogging in February 2015 so despite having an arty background I feel my creative journey is only just beginning as I have so much more to learn and discover .

My creativity is something I can embrace; it gives me purpose and meaning, a way of speaking without a voice, and a place I can go to to‘release’! To quote Picasso - 'Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life' - and for me this is never truer!

When I learned that Stamps and Stencils challenge theme this month, hosted by Branka was 'Think Pink' I couldn't help but smile! It had my name written all over it- literally !! Hahaha! So with that I decided to alter a 5x7 inch canvas using tones of pink and an old school photo of this little girl named 'PINK'!

I primed the canvas with a coat of gesso and once dry began laying down colour. For this I used Tim Holtz wrinkle free distress technique and distress paints instead of distress inks. This gave me a general wash of colour which I built upon using both paints and gesso applying the mediums by finger painting, dry brushing and sponge painting. 

Next the Stamping and stencilling. I used Distress inks and a couple of Tim Holtz and Dylusion stencils, a script, speckle and splat stamp and Watering can archival ink . I created some texture on the canvas by applying texture paste through Tim Holtz dot fade stencil. When dry I caught the top of the dots lightly with distress ink.A few lid top paint circles along with 'crazed' corners (using Tim Holtz crazing medium) added more detail. I used a distress crayons to help enhance the subtle cracks of the crazing and to distress the sides of the canvas. A few drips and splats of Picked Raspberry distress paint along with light touches of silver gilding wax finished off the background canvas.

 Close up of the crazing.

 
The crackle panel is a piece of mount board cut to size, gessoed and painted using distress paints. I created a cardboard mask to adhere temporarily to the mount board panel to enable application of the crackle paste to the top, bottom and sides of the panel only thus creating a frame for the photo to be placed within.

 

 Once dry I applied Distress paint to add a touch of colour and enhance the crack.

 

The inner frame is one I found in my stash simply altered with gesso and touches of distress paint and silver gilding wax. I kept the embellishments simple - just 4 hex nuts topped with black gems to each of the crackled panel corners,a stamped acetate butterfly,

 and a small talk sticker - a personal 'note to self...'

 

I really enjoyed creating this canvas and am pleased with how it turned out . I hope you like it too.

You are very welcome to stop by my blog to see a few more close ups.

Huge thanks again to all the team at Stamps and Stencils for the Guest design spot today. It has been a real priviledge and honour and I've loved every minute.

I'm sure you'll all agree that Amanda's project is stunning and has provided even more inspiration for the current challenge which is Think Pink !