Impression Obsession July Release Hop Day 1

It's time for a new release from Impression Obsession! All the new stamps are on the site now and you can check them out HERE - I'll wait! This month I added a few beachy slimline stamps to the mix - I hope you like them! Another fun thing about this release is that I have a new image code! You might not have noticed, but up until now all my stamp images have started with "13" - well, now they start with "22". That means I have over 1000 stamp images in the IO catalog (and that doesn't count sets and background stamps)!

We are kicking off the month with a 2-day hop, showing off the new releases. If you're already hopping and you came from Anna's blog, you are in the correct place. If not, head over to the Impression Obsession Blog for the start of the hop so you don't miss anything!

Instead of a slimline card, I used the lighthouse stamp for a regular A2 card. I started with yellow orange cardstock, masking a horizon line for the ocean and a circle for the setting sun. I brushed a little orange ink lightly against the edges of both masks, just enough for contrast. 

The birds are a separate stamp - looks like I got a little extra 'squish' when I stamped them! Oops! The sentiment is stamped on the largest sentiment banner die cut from the slimline set - I will link that up below.

IO Products:

P13996 Lighthouse

C22018 Drop Ocean

D22016 Scene Birds

DIE1091 Slimline Sentiments Flag

Keep hopping for more inspiration - I hope you'll see more samples from my collections on the other blogs! Today and tomorrow (July 5-6) you can find a list of participants on the Impression Obsession Blog. We will be giving away THREE Impression Obsession $25 gift certificates for the event - so the more you comment through our Release Celebration the more chances to win!

All comments for each of the event days will be open until Monday July 12th at midnight CT. All winners will be announced on Tuesday July 13th on the Impression Obsession Blog.

Thank you for visiting me today! Hop along!

Impression Obsession Blog 

Kia Gibson Clapper

Laura Fulcher 

Laura Williams 

Lee Ann Barrett 

Vicki Garrett

Angela Bode  

Anna Wight 

Dina Kowal <<<<<<< you're here!

Giovana Smith 

Ilina Crouse  

Jeanne Streiff 

Splitcoast Tutorial: Corner Flip Card

This week's tutorial over on Splitcoast is a Corner Flip Card.  True confession ... I actually accidentally (because I am left handed and use my trimmer upside down) made my card upside down, which was fine until I tried to stand it up. Not a huge deal, but maybe I will pay more attention next time! 
I pulled out some vintage stamps - the cat is from Stamp Cabana, and came in a full bundle of wood stamps that had at some point in the past been a stamp show special. They're hilarious, all cat themed. The sentiment is from a company called Stampola that had some great and quirky designs as well. I miss the old companies! I'm really enjoying collecting vintage stamps lately... I guess that is my creative rebellion at the moment as everyone else stresses over getting all the newest releases every month. Ha!

The sentiment fit just perfectly on the square created by the flipped corner, so I placed it there and added another panel to the inside of the card.

Fun huh? I'm all about cats this week, hoping to finish this triple portrait by Friday! Good times.

Impression Obsession - Die Cut Obsession

There are so many amazing dies at Impression Obsession - this special Wednesday feature lets them have the spotlight! We hope you're inspired!
I actually made this card for last week's Splitcoaststampers tutorial - if you missed it you can find it HERE! This is a layered tag card, and these new birthday dies made the front very easy to assemble.

To create the tags I cut three pieces of cardstock to 3.5" x 6.5". I flipped the top layer over on the 2nd one and used the curved hill die to cut both edges so they would mirror, then trimmed the top panel for a better overlap. I cut some 1/4" strips from all 3 pieces to line a portion of the bottom tag.

The die cuts on the front of my tag are cut from watercolor paper and the words and numbers are lightly brushed with ink. I used Copics to color the balloons. Before adhering them I traced the edges where they would overlap on the green balloon, and colored inside those lines just slightly lighter than the other balloons so they looked like they were showing through. The second tag holds a gift card - the die I used there is one of my designs from IO but it's been discontinued. 

IO Products:

DIE1080 Party Balloons

DIE1076 Birthday Words

DIE1074 Big Numbers

DIE1079 Number Add-Ons

DIE343 Hill Landscape Layers

L13922 Big Bow

Be sure to check out the other designers' blogs for die cutting inspiration - see the I.O. blog for all the links and details! Have a great week!

Splitcoast Tutorial: Contact Paper Transfer

It's my turn to share a tutorial over on Splitcoast, so I've got the Contact Paper Transfer tutorial up today! This is not a new technique (though I hadn't done it with contact paper before) but I couldn't believe we didn't have any image transfer techniques on the site! I've done this for years with packing tape, but I like that the contact paper gives us more area to work with than just a 2" wide strip. I made a window card using a laser-printed image of a Van Gogh painting (thanks to all who thought this was my work!) - I've been using this image for transfers onto jewelry components as well. One of my favorites, no surprise!I've been working on a project for publication, a portrait of 3 cats, and I'll have a booth in a pop-up show for local entrepreneurs and artists this Saturday. Busy, as usual! Hope you're well and enjoying these summer days. Cheers!

Sugar Pea Designs

One last post for SugarPea Designs - I hope I've encouraged you to think outside your box a little bit with these sets! When I saw all the small elements in the Beautiful Books set, my first thought was to do some wreath stamping. There are several ways to do this, but my favorite is just to use the corner of my stamp positioner, and rotate the card for even stamping in sets of four. 

I determined just to stick with a 4 colors and enjoy the process. The process took a couple of unexpected turns, but I went with it! If you'd like more ideas for wreath stamping, I do have a tutorial HERE.

Here's how my process started off - I stamped two of the florals at once, keeping my 5.5" square panel aligned in the corner, and rotating after each impression until the pattern was complete. From there, stamps are switched out and the process continues until the wreath is full.

 

Here's how the stamping portion looked when I finished. I added some doodles with colored pencil, and then used the teeny 3-dots stamp to add some more flowers and to add texture to the branches. I used hybrid ink for most of the stamping, but for the green dots I used Oxide ink so I could blend them out with a little bit of water.

My design took a turn at this point because I wanted to use the die cut glasses and the black was a little too harsh in contrast. To make it work I needed to add some black to the wreath, so I pulled out a liner pen and started scribbling, then used that 3-dot stamp again for some black accents. There are dots of white gesso as well as white matte enamel dots. That pulled it all together, though it felt a little crazy!

I used the scalloped rectangle die from the Card Front Element Builder set for my sentiment. I stamped the words first, then used a ruler to draw in some guidelines for aligning the die. I cut the long way first for the top edge, then used the other pencil line for straight placement of the die on the bottom, lining up the scallops and stitches on the sides. I made one more cut to center the sentiment on the piece. 

I didn't have the right weight of acetate for glasses lenses, so I just layered in some vellum there and added some reflection lines with a paint pen. That's it! 

SUPPLIES: 

Beautiful Books clear set 

Open Book die set (glasses) 

Floral Envie clear set (Hello word stamp) 

Card Front Element Builder die set

Hope you learned something from my process. Thanks again to SugarPea Designs for having me as a guest - I have enjoyed it! 

Impression Obsession June Release - Team Favorites

The IO Team is back today with a little hop to share our favorite cards from this month's release, so here's mine! If you're already hopping and you came from Anna's blog you are in the correct place. If not, head over to the Impression Obsession Blog for the start of the hop so you don't miss anything!
I've got another slimline card to share - I love the drama of these waves! This is a great stamp for a standard size card too. I did a lot of layering with watercolors, using lots of horizontal strokes. The sky (of course!) is done with my favorite cloud stencil, and I'm always delightfully surprised that it can do these small clouds as well as big billowy ones. 

My favorite part of this card is the fun splattery mess in the corner - I usually do my splatters at my desk and end up with paint evvvvvvverywhere, but this time I laid the card down in an Amazon box to do my messy work... and I should do that more often. I like to use diluted gesso for splattering because it stays pretty opaque, even with the extra water.

IO Products:

3266-LG Ocean

We will be giving away THREE Impression Obsession Grab Bags this week! Each comment you leave along the hop will give you a chance to win. Comments will be open until Monday June 21st at midnight CT. All winners will be announced on Tuesday June 22nd on the Impression Obsession Blog.

Impression Obsession Blog 

Laura Fulcher 

Laura Williams 

Lee Ann Barrett 

Lynda Pleckan 

Vicki Garrett 

Angela Bode 

Anna Wight 

Dina Kowal <<<< you're here!

Giovana Smith 

Ilina Crouse  

Jeanne Streiff 

Kia Gibson Clapper 

Thank you for visiting me today! Off you pop!

Sugar Pea Designs - Let's Stay Home

Happy Monday! If you know me at all, you know that I'm a shameless introvert, so the Let's Stay Home set from SugarPea Designs spoke to my very soul. There are sooooo many ways to combine the images into sweet and homey scenes! 

I decided to do some no-line coloring, so I started by building my scene, stamping the images with a pale grey hybrid ink. Since I'd be using colored pencils, I didn't bother to mask the images - the ink is pale enough that the overlapped lines don't show. (If you plan to use a wet medium like watercolors or inks, the lines of this type of ink will show through, so masking or selective inking would be necessary.) 

Here's my scene all stamped - I did reverse the chair image, so here's what that looked like! To reverse the image I needed to stamp it onto another stamp first, so below you can see my setup. I backed the chair stamp with a piece of acetate so I could remove it and put it back into the same position. I inked up the chair and stamped it to the back side of another stamp so it was on a solid base. (I used the book stamp, which you can see on the door of my MISTI below.) After inking and pressing the stamps together, I removed the chair stamp, and put in the foam sheet and my card panel. I pressed the inked back of the book stamp to the panel, and voila! The image was reversed. 

There was a bit of layering involved in the pencil coloring - I didn't document that process but these are the pencils that I used. Following my color wheel again, I used a color triad (3 colors, equidistant on the wheel) of yellow-orange, red-violet, and blue-green. I added in a few horizontal lines with a mechanical pencil (baseboards and molding), and then drew in the ceiling lines using a ruler.

Here are some details from the scene - they're quite a bit larger here than they are on the actual card, so be kind! They were very fun to color, and as you can imagine, my pencils had to be very sharp to get all those details in!

That's all I know today - I'd love to know what you think!

Topflight Stamps Summer Blog Hop

Come celebrate Summertime with Topflight Stamps! I’ve teamed up with some of their designers and special guests to showcase summer cards using the unique products available at Topflight Stamps. If you'd like, hop along for a chance to win! 

You should have arrived here from Lisa Hoel's blog if you're already hopping. If not, you might want to start at the Topflight Stamp Blog so you don't miss a thing! I've got the full hop list below as well.

One of my favorite things about summer is the classic car shows and cruises - I've mentioned before that my dad loved cars, and he'd always take us to car shows when we were growing up. He had an amazing memory for details, especially the vintage makes and models. Every time I see a classic car on the road I think of him, and I imagine that's his way of letting me know he's looking after me and things are going to be ok. My mom is "babysitting" a friend's Mustang right now, and I know he'd have a kitten if he were there! 

I've been eyeing the Classic Cars sets from Darkroom Door for a while now, so I'm excited to have them to play with for the hop! My first card looks just like it did in my head, so that makes me happy! You can find instructions for the Burst Through technique over on Splitcoaststampers. I lightly sketched an oval where I wanted the car to come out, then cut out from the center of that area. Each little wedge is torn away, and then rolled.

I've used a quilling tool in the past, but this watercolor paper didn't quite fit in the slot, so I used a paper bead roller instead. I ended up splitting the paper and doing a little more tearing after this step too. 

Here's a closer look at the dimension on the card - I had a lot of fun with this one! The car image is watercolored and fussy cut. I used a white colored pencil and white Posca pen to add reflections on the body and windshield.

++++++++++++++

One more card, because these 2 sets deserved more play time! I stamped two of the car images onto a 4" x 8.5" sheet of cardstock with black ink, overlapping the images for a collaged effect. 

I cut the panel in half, and then into 1" strips, then cut those strips on the diagonal. Here's how I arranged them on the top panel of the card - I think that was about 3.5" x 5". I trimmed all the overhanging edges, and trimmed the panel down to 3" x 4.75" for layering.

Here's a closer look at the top panel - I wanted my color combo to mainly be black and white with the car carrying the punch of color, so I love how those wedge pieces fill space and add bold interest, while pulling your attention to that amazing car!

The car again is watercolored, with a few accents added with a white colored pencil. So fun!

Topflight Products:

DDRS173 Classic Cars

DDRS199 Classic Cars V2

Darkroom Door Polka Dots Stencil

Visible Image Scripted Streets clear set

Now it's your turn!! Topflight Stamps is giving one lucky winner a $50 Gift Certificate to the store. For a chance to win, make sure to comment on every stop on the hop by June 18th. Winners will be announced on the Topflight Stamps blog on June 20th. Good Luck!

Also don’t forget to check out the Summertime Sale going on now - all summer, beach, and patriotic themed items are 20% off through June 13th, and no code is needed! For everything else, feel free to use code YAYDINA! for 12% off!

Hop on!

Topflight Stamps

Ericka Strange

Lisa Hoel

Dina Kowal <<<<<<<< you're here!

Autumn Clark

Connie Mercer

Natasha Vacca

Kathi Rerek

Cornelia Wenokor