Welcome to today's Guest Designer, Jennie !

Today we are welcoming Jennie Atkinson of Live the Dream  as our Guest Designer. Jennie, I'm sure, is known to many of you and her work is beautiful. So, without further ado, let's move on to hear from Jennie.

Hello! Jennie of Live The Dream here and I am very honoured to have been asked to share a project with you today as Guest Designer for the current challenge Happy Holidays. Like everyone else my style has certainly evolved over the years and I really love where I am at the moment reaching for stamps, stencils, paste and gesso for everything from scrapbooking to card making. Gone are the days when everything was clean! Those of you who know me will know that I love making flowers and I love experimenting with new dies and inks to create different shapes.  They are normally the signature style on my shabby chic projects, but today I am sharing an art journal page with you celebrating a wonderfully happy holiday I had in New York back in April - so no flowers!

I really enjoy this crossover style of art journalling and scrapbooking, creating a mixed media background for a photograph and paper collage.

I started with two pieces of cardstock to fit my art journal which I taped together with tissue tape to keep the two pages unified. Texture paste through a stencil came next and then everything got a coating of gesso.

Then the exciting bit! I used Faded Jeans and Broken China Distress Spray Stains. I use plenty of water and mop up a lot before drying with a heat gun. I used Faded Jeans Distress Ink through another stencil for the lettering and also stamped with it here and there.

Then it was stamping with Jet Black Arcival Ink and a bit of spritzing. I find now is a good time to separate the pages and scuff the edges.

Well I was finding the colour a little too strong for the elements I wanted to put on the page, so ………. I sprayed everything with water…… mopped it up …. and hey presto I got a more subdued look.

Whilst everything was drying I put together the items I wanted to use for the collage - all things which remind me of the wonderful time we had.

And then I started layering. A little stamped flourish creeping in there when I thought it looked a little bare!

Finally I sat and dry brushed gesso over the metal and added a little blue and brown ink to tone everything in. 

A fun page bringing back some lovely holiday memories. 

Once again thank you to Sue and the team for the invitation to be here with you today.

Jennie x

Absolutely stunning page Jennie! Thank you so much for sharing it with us and providing even more inspiration for the current challenge, Happy Holidays. If you would like the opportunity to join us as Guest Designer make sure you play along, you still have plenty of time !

Lots of Layers

Hi everyone, Yvonne here with my mid challenge inspiration post.

This time I have decided to share one of my  favourite ways  to make a card using numerous layers.

Many of these layers will only be seen at the edges on the finished card.
But I have enjoyed making  them, that's the fun of crafting.

Also, keeping to this months  challenge theme of  'Happy holidays', I 'm taking a City Break

So lets start with the base layer

Layer 1--- Dry embossing, using a wood grain folder and a pretty  pale  paper,
which at the assembling stage was lightly shaded with Cracked Pistachio distress ink.

Layer 2--- Stencilling  I mixed the modeling paste with some acrylic paint.

Layer 3 & 5 --- the same stencil  onto a plain pale patterned  paper using distress ink, Cracked Pistachio

Layer 4  --dry embossing, which was lightly rubber over with some silver gilding wax

Layer 6 --stamping elements Crafty individuals post card

Also the main image using Archival Inks Cornflower Blue for the cards and potting soil

Indigo Blu main image stamp

The main image was simply torn around all the edges and curled over using a pokey tool
and again the same colour distress ink for shading, which was used on all the layers.

Starting to layer,  after going round all the edges  with a blunt pair of scissors,

sometimes this will tear the card, but this adds to the shabby look.

Once all the layers were in place, I wanted to add a little more texture using
 Stampendous Aged Ivory Embossing enamel.
I used folded greaseproof paper to mask an area, covering this with a piece of tin foil.
I did not get a good photo with the foil , but I think you will be able to imagine that bit.
Sprinkle with the powder, which can be heated from the top, it spreads a little depending on how close you get to the card with the heat tool. [thats why I use a mask]

Thank you  for reading how this card was made.
 I hope you will join  our Happy Holiday challenge,
which  is still  open for  two more  weeks .

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.