Marbling with Shaving Foam

Hi, I'm Sharon and I will be showing you what Inspires me for the Inspiration Post here at Stamps And Stencils.

I have signed up for a online Art Journaling post with Valerie Sjodin a very talented lady who creates the most beautiful art journals. I haven't completed my journal yet but I am really enjoying the Marbling technique, working progress I should say!!!!

You will need a baking tray, unperformed shaving foam, window scraper and some cocktail sticks. Most of the other items you will have in your stash....


Golden Paints, kitchen roll it does get messy, shaving foam the gesso is for later. Sign up for the online course and you find out why?

Combs made from cardboard and cocktail sticks. Warning they are sharp!!!

Spray the foam into the baking tray, smooth it out as flat as possible so that when you dip the paper in  it gets an even cover.

Start adding small amount of paint. Three or four colours of your choice.

Then with the combs gently pull them through the foam. You can go both ways, try not to mix into a muddy mess.

Or as I did below, do a figure of 8 with a skewer.

Close-up of the marbling.

The golden paints colours are "Golden Green Gold, Phthalo Green and Diarylide Yellow"

This is the first tray I did, but I did not like the colours as much as the greens.

Here is the watercolour paper placed onto the foam....

Sorry the colours are not consistant but I got carried away with all the foam....

Paper before swiping with the scraper.....

Revealing  the marbling and you never know what it will be like?

Hope can see the details...

So this is the front Flap of my new Journal Book.

I hope this inspires you to have a go, it is great fun but be prepared with a dust bin bag and plenty of kitchen roll. Most of all enjoy.

Many thanks for joining us at 

Stamps and Stencils 

Sharon xx

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Winner and Top 3 - Small is Beautiful

Hello and welcome back. Today we're announcing the winner and Top 3 of our 'Small is Beautiful' challenge. With such a small area to work on you really demonstrated your creativity and produced delightful pieces of miniature art. As usual the standard was very high which made it very difficult for the DT to decide...but we got there in the end. We're very happy to announce the winner is

Lula

Congratulations Lula! Your altered tin is stunning, a delight inside and out and just packed with gorgeous details. As the chosen winner Lula will be invited to Guest Design for Stamps and Stencils at a future date.

Now on to the top 3:

Jennie

Coutureuse

Rupa

Congratulations everyone, please email carringtons22@yahoo.co.uk for your top 3 badge. 

All of the winners will also be pinned on the Stamps and Stencils Pinterest Board! 

The current challenge is Happy Holidays and you've still got plenty of time to join in.

Ruth x

Happy Holidays !

It's that time of year where you may be thinking about dusting off your passport and digging out your swimsuit! Yes it's holiday time ! Whether you're a lover of the seaside or someone who enjoys a city break, we would love to see your holiday inspired projects. This could be journalling, altered art, a card or layout. Just remember that we are a mixed media challenge blog and your project should reflect this and as the name of our blog  suggests, don't forget to include some stamping and stenciling. I turned to a box of old family photos as inspiration for my project. A few old snaps of a childhood holiday made me feel very nostalgic. I decided to honour the memories of some very happy holidays, by making an album to store prints of the pictures. I think you'll agree that there's some fabulous inspiration from the rest of the design team. I hope this will get you in the mood to share your interpretation of 'Happy Holidays' with us.

Toni

Yvonne

Ruth

Sue

Julia

Sharon

I hope you get chance to join us for this challenge, looking forward to all your fabulous entries ! 

An InLinkz Link-up

Baby wipe mini book...

Welcome back to Stamps and Stencils, Ruth here with our next inspiration post and yes it does say baby wipe! I'm sure a lot of crafters will use baby wipes when creating but instead of throwing them all away, do you sometimes dry them and save them thinking that could make a nice background? A lot of mine are just plain grungy and dirty and discarded but sometimes they have possibilities...and in keeping with Julia's current theme I've created a mini book.

So how did I start?

All sorts of colours and all sorts of babywipes, I buy whats on offer so the quality varies.

Sometimes you can see the potential of a lovely background. I posted this one on my blog a while back, I used a JOFY set because they are quite an open stamp and coloured in with promarkers...carefully

So for this post I looked for another suitable background and found this one which I've again used JOFY stamps on.

I've turned it into a journal page which I stitched onto some photocopy paper, to give it some stability.

So with the 'fluffier' ones, I've stamped and stencilled and then ripped and layered!

I then stitched, randomly to secure the loose pieces. If you didn't want to do this you could use a spray adhesive and faux stitched stamping.

Once I started using the sewing machine I couldn't stop, wonky stitching which I excel at is perfect for this! 

I became more confident and thought these colours would be good for leaves so having sewed wavy lines one way, I stitched rough leaf shapes the other.

So this is my haul of ready made embellishments. You'll notice some hearts in there which is really where the inspiration for the post came from. It was our wedding anniversary a few weeks ago and I was looking around the craft room for inspiration and my eyes landed on the used baby wipes, so I created 2 baby wipe hearts and thought maybe I should explore this idea more.

Above is the original card and below I've added some more colour to the hearts I made this time around.

Having promised last time that this would be a quick post, I'm failing so I'd better get to the mini album.

There were 2 large leaves that were almost the same size. I cut 10 pieces of cotton paper in the same leaf shape. Cotton paper is a bit more sturdy.

On each leaf I used peeled paint and blue violet archival with various stamps and stencils. I then picked out some phrases to go on each one and embossed them in gold. You'll notice the back of the leaf cover is a lovely blue which is another bonus.

On the reverse of each page I used peeled paint and dusty concord through an Emma Godfrey stencil. It adds a little bit of colour but will also allow me to do some mini journalling if I want to.

Hope you enjoyed this inspiration post and if your wondering what I've made with the rest of my embellishments I'll be posting some cards on my blog later this week.

Don't forget you've got just under a week to join in with our current 'small is beautiful' challenge.

Welcome to today's Guest Designer, Amanda !

Hello and welcome! Today we are welcoming Amanda of Treasured Moments of Inspiration as our Guest Designer. Amanda was the winner of the Three of a Kind challenge and was asked to join us as Guest Designer. So, let's move on to hear from Amanda !

Hi everyone, Amanda here and I am delighted to be here following my win of last month’s challenge

I am a “Craftaholic”! I have been crafting for about 6 years now and love nothing more than escaping into my craftroom to just get all inky and messy. My style is continually evolving and I love trying new techniques and products and create, in my opinion, many “Happy Accidents”! I suppose I would class myself as a mixed media crafter but also like creating within many other genres it just depends what crafty mood I am in. I also do like to collect the odd stamp or two, an obsession that I am considering seeking medical attention for, but I think I am beyond help!!

For this month’s challenge “Small is Beautiful” I have created “The Little Book of the Sea” which is housed inside a small matchbox.

 

Here’s how I made it:-

I first started by die cutting my matchbox using Tim Holtz Alterations matchbox die, for this I used a heavy kraft card.

Then to make my little book to put inside. The inside measurement of the box is 4.5cms x 6.5cms so to ensure that my little book fitted, it needed to be 4cm x 6cms when finished.

I cut a piece of A4 white card into a 6cm strip and then scored at 4cm intervals.

I then prepared my background. The first layer was a layer of blue brusho, I then stencilled the bubbles over using first PaperArtsy Fresco paint in white and then bump stencilled again with shades of blue Fresco paint. When that was all totally dried I applied Antique Linen Distress Ink with an ink blending tool.

 

 I then added some background stamping using blue Archival ink.

Then to add my images. I stamped a selection of sea themed stamps, from Crafty Individuals and Chocolate Baroque, onto white paper using Potting Soil Archival ink and set about cutting them all out.
 

Then to create the pages. You will notice the last page is blank, that is because when folded up it sits under the cover to complete the book.

 

A layer of white fresco paint roughly applied, same stencil technique as above. Then I added some bandage, to mimic fishing net, that I had coloured with the watered down Fresco paints and Vintage Photo Distress Stain and some of my left over cut outs. 

Text has been typed out on my vintage typewriter and applied with 3D glue gel. I even added to the inside of the box for the book to sit in.

I hope you like it.

Love

Amanda X

Fantastic Amanda ! What a beautiful little book and housed in such a gorgeous match box home. There's still plenty of time to join us for the current challenge of Small is Beautiful and I'm sure that Amanda's project has give you even more inspiration.