Impression Obsession Holiday Hop

Please join the Impression Obsession team this week for some holiday inspiration! You can check the IO Blog each day to see who has a project to share. 

So glad I checked back to my projects from our summer holiday release - I have another Pooh card to share! You all loved this set, which made me very happy. For this card I stamped the wreath image onto kraft cardstock, and chose a limited neutral color palette from my pencils to coordinate with my paper choice. A tip for this type of coloring - color in your lightest highlight colors first and work from light to dark. Prismacolor pencils work best for this technique.

Note: The original Winnie the Pooh book by A.A. Milne came into the public domain in January 2022. All the images in my Pooh sets use original line art by E.H. Shepard with portions added and/or replaced with my own art. I do my level best to preserve recognizable imagery rather than redrawing my own version out of respect for the artist and characters. Disney does not own rights to the book illustrations, and they have no say over the modifications and derivative workings many stamp companies are producing now.

IO Products:

CL1139 Pooh Wreath clear stamp set

PP006 Homespun Floral Christmas 6x6 Paper Pack

DIE1091 Slimline Sentiments Flag die set

We will be giving away THREE Impression Obsession $25 gift certificates for the event so as usual, the more you comment throughout our Holiday Hop the more chances you will have to win! All comments for each of the event days will be open until Tuesday December 13th at 8pm CT and winners will be announced on Wednesday December 14th on the Impression Obsession Blog.

Links for today: 

IO Stamps Blog

Jeanne Streiff

Laura Fulcher

Angela Bode

Anna Wight

Dina Kowal <<<< that's me!

I hope you're having a great week - it is a buuuuuuuuuusssssssssyyyyyy one for me!

When you shop through the affiliate links used here, the company sends a small commission my way at no cost to you as thanks for the referral.
It's a lovely way to partner with these companies that mean so much to our creative community. Everybody wins!

Impression Obsession DT Theme: Spring Colors

The Impression Obsession team has some projects to share today featuring a spring color theme - play along with us! 

I think I mentioned it in a previous post, but in case I forgot... IO has a new feature that kicks off this month! There will be an exclusive red rubber kit offered monthly. I'll be designing some of those kits, and I'm excited about that! If you love a kit be sure to grab it, because these will only be offered in the month of their release. (You can use the discount code at the end of my post for 20% off this one too!)

This month's kit is full of sweet spring critters - I colored up the little bunny pair on a kraft cardstock tag using a variety of pencils and a white paint pen. The loose grass image layers nicely on itself and overlapping the bottoms of the images as well. It's a keeper! 

You can see some of the colored details better here - there are lots of layers of pencil in the grass, working from light to dark, and then fading into the background. Prismacolors work best for this kind of coloring, I think.

IO Products:

RRKIT0422 April 2022 Kit

DIE853-V Button Card

Be sure to check out the other designers' blogs for inspiration - see the I.O. blog for all the details!

Reminder: Effective May 1st, Impression Obsession will no longer produce red rubber single stamps. The final day to order red rubber single stamps (except Cover-a-Card background stamps, our popular Slimline stamps and select rubber sets) is 4/30/22 midnight EST. Look for new clear stamp sets, dies and other new exciting products from Impression Obsession coming soon!

We are having a 20% off sale sitewide that extends through all of April. This includes all the already discounted dies and clear sets as well. Get those stamps you've wanted forever off your wish lists at a discount! Be sure to enter code 2022 at checkout to save! 

Have a great week! 

When you shop through the affiliate links used here, the company sends a small commission my way at no cost to you as thanks for the referral.
It's a lovely way to partner with these companies that mean so much to our creative community. Everybody wins!

Impression Obsession DT Challenge: Give Thanks

The Impression Obsession team's challenge today is to create a project featuring a message of thanks. 
I pulled out a couple of stamps from my 2019 fall/winter collection - I had requests for Christmas stamps that weren't especially wintry, so there are several focal stamps featuring shells. This border can really be used any time of year! There's also a shell wreath, a shell tree, and a branch of shell ornaments. 

I started by brushing a little ink on the background (just the ink that was left in my brown brush), then stenciling and also embossing with the Falling Snow stencil from A Colorful Life Designs. The border design is colored with colored pencils, and then dotted with a white Posca paint pen.

I love this sentiment and this scrawly font. Here are links to the stamps I used: 

J13831 Holiday Shell Border
E13828 Give Thanks

Be sure to check out the other designers' blogs for inspiration, and remember you can enter these challenges too, using your Impression Obsession stamps! See the I.O. blog for all the details - you might even win a $25 gift certificate!! We'd love to have you join us.

Falliday Fest

We're kicking off our annual Falliday Fest event today over at Splitcoaststampers! We've got two weeks of challenges and tutorials planned, along with lots of chatter and just general togetherness, while we stock up our holiday card and gift supplies. It's a lot of fun, and I hope you'll join us! Today each member of our SCS team is sharing a challenge - mine is to make a card depicting a source of light (such as the sun, a star, the Northern Lights, Christmas lights, a menorah, fireplace, lantern, light bulb, or candles). I'm recently obsessed with vintage wood mount stamps, and this was one recent purchase in a lot - it's a large stamp from Comotion. I stamped directly onto red cardstock, then used colored pencils, white acrylic paint and some diluted gold Nuvo paste to color the image in.

I'll be adding some vintage stamps either to my Etsy store or my Destash sale on Facebook - or both, who knows! So if you're into that sort of thing, keep peeking!

Impression Obsession - Old is New

With such a huge collection of wonderful stamps from so many artists, sometimes the older stamps in the Impression Obsession catalog find their way out of the spotlight. We don't want them to be forgotten, so we like to feature them regularly. We hope you're inspired!

SS-459-L Porch Flag
B13590 Begin with Me

I'm sharing an image from the Serendipity Stamps line today, paired up with one of my sentiments. I went with a simple coloring scheme, using just a red and blue pencil on the flag, and then adding in the sky and some shading in watercolor. 

Such a beautiful image for so many reasons - it would be beautiful in full color too, but I love the simplicity of this spotlight coloring today. The sentiment is a simple one too - I have it filed in my "Be the Change" category, and it's such a good reminder that change in the world begins with a heart change in each of us individually. "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Be sure to check out the other designers' blogs for inspiration - see the I.O. blog for all the details!

Impression Obsession - Old is New

With such a huge collection of wonderful stamps from so many artists, sometimes the older stamps in the Impression Obsession catalog find their way out of the spotlight. We don't want them to be forgotten, so we like to feature them regularly. We hope you're inspired!

I chose this classic Tulip Bouquet image for today's card, and a simple friendship sentiment - all the things that are happening remind me how much we are really affected by separation and the inability to sit down and really converse deeply face to face. Now is a time for good conversations and learning by listening. And pretty tulips, before I get too deep! This stamp is one of the original IO images. I started off by stenciling a 6 block pattern with a brand new stencil from A Colorful Life - this new release has several background block designs which are great for CAS cards and breaking up solid backgrounds.

I added more texture to the background with a couple of stamps that live on my desk (G6148 Porcelain Crackle, L9724 French Word Background). I spritzed water, which caused some bumps to stay raised on the cardstock (happy accident, since I thought this was watercolor paper!), and dragged a light inkpad down the panel as well. The white spots were made with a Posca pen, just bonking it on my finger to cause the ink to splatter.

Be sure to check out the other designers' blogs for inspiration - see the I.O. blog for all the details!

Spellbinders January 2020 Glimmer Kit + an add-on!

More Valentine love from Spellbinders - now for the January Glimmer kit! This month there is also a matching add-on set, and I have to admit I went for that one first. 

These heart-shaped plates reminded me of school days, so I made a shaker card with a playful notebook paper background. Instead of foiling the hearts, I inked them up with Stazon Pigment ink. My shaker frame was made with rectangle dies, and there's glitter paper in the background from a recent card kit. 

I cut some hearts from this kit and added some jumbo glitter and sequins to the shaker - the larger hearts inside are glued to the back. The sentiment is from this older glimmer kit, which is a great everyday set to have!

So here's the add-on kit, and those hearts are the same size as the ones in the Glimmer kit! Both sets come with a heart die that leaves a sweet white border around the foiled or inked impression. 

Here's the monthly kit:

The kit comes with 2 foiling borders that are designed to line the points of a mini envelope like you see above, along with dies that cut the edges (imagine one cutting the outside flaps that you see above, and one cutting the inside side ones).

I wanted to use the scalloped border to edge an angled card panel instead of making an envelope flap, but the die has a cut line across it. To just cut the scalloped edge, I lined the die up so it hung over the edge of the bottom cutting plate. I had to hold it up to the window to line it up just right, then I taped it in place (sorry it's hard to see!) and ran it through my die cutting machine. 

After the edge was cut, I just cut up straight from the ends of the foiling and squared off the top to create my panel. Here you can see the shine of the foil - this is the magenta foil that comes in this month's kit. So pretty!

This carefree bear is from a card kit extra - those are always fun to check in case you don't want a full kit! I colored the image up with Copic markers (just the base color) and colored pencils, scribbling in a background and some ground for his dancing feet.

Here are the club details, if you're interested!

Spellbinders Monthly Club benefits: 

 Past Club Kits at Member Rates

 10% Store Savings

 Members Only Offers & Deals

 Earn Creative Rewards for Each Purchase

 Monthly Inspiration

 Cancel Anytime

 Skip Any Month

 Annual Membership Gift

 Exclusive Deals 

Have a great week!