Ready-Steady-Stamp!

Have you seen the new challenge blog called Ready-Steady-Stamp? This is a challenge blog dedicated to the non-cute (plenty of 'cute only' challenge blogs out there), and each challenge has 5 ingredients that must be included in your stamped project. For this first project, the ingredients are:

1. a cat/dog theme
2. black & gold
3. three different brads
4. a faux batik technique (instructions are given on the site)
5. book or newsprint background

I had sooooooo much fun with this. I will definitely be playing the RSS challenge again. All the stamps I used are from smARTworks. Sets used: Do You See What I See?, One Smile, Frames, Palette, & Hummer. In case you're not familiar with smARTworks, they have a huge variety of unmounted stamps and sets, from cute to collage and vintage. This week (July 18-28) all their in-stock rubber is 40% off!


I didn't have any book or news print so I scanned a page from the Young's Concordance...! It was the only book we have here that has vintage type. It works, yes? I stamped the Palette stamp and embossed clear over the scan, applied chalk inks directly to the paper, then ironed the panel to remove the embossing. The cat was stamped and trimmed out, then pieced on the focal panel. You can see in the photo below that his head is trimmed separately and 'popped' up with foam tape. It's not super clear in the photo, but in the line of black brads, the center one is flat, so if you were checking, I do have all the required elements here!


Thanks for the challenge, ladies!