Impression Obsession January Red Rubber Kit

The design team is sharing projects today using this month's stamp kit from Impression Obsession! Turning the corner into the new year, this kit features some beautiful roses and floral wreaths that will be perfect for Valentines Day (and more, of course)!

I really had fun making this card, so I'll share it today! I started with a base of watercolor paper. The color was added with a 'polished stone' technique, adding rubbing alcohol and then a few drops of alcohol ink to a paper towel and then pouncing the color around the panel until I had the effect I wanted. I stamped the wreath image and then left the stamp in place in my MISTI. I added color using acrylic paint pens, and then restamped the image over the paint. I love how the white paint really pops against the background! 

IO Products: 

IO January Red Rubber Kit

Check the IO blog for links to posts from January 1st & 2nd sharing new projects with the January Limited Edition red rubber stamp set. As a reminder, our red rubber kits are available for 2 months from release. To celebrate the release, we will be giving away TWO Impression Obsession Grab Bags - so the more you comment through our blog hop the more chances to win! Commenting will be open until Tuesday January 10th at 8pm CT and winners will be announced on Wednesday January 11th on the Impression Obsession Blog.

Here are the links for today:

IO Stamps Blog

Giovana Smith

Jeanne Streiff

Laura Fulcher

Angela Bode

Dina Kowal <<<<<that's me!

Happy new year!

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!

Splitcoast tutorial: Tea Bag Stamping

This week's tutorial over on Splitcoast is called Tea Bag Stamping - our author shares some tips for using the delicate filter paper of a tea bag as a substrate for stamped images! This was a lot of fun, and I thought the vintaged background would be perfect for these new stamps from Red Lead Paperworks!

The tea bag paper is delicate, but I love the staining in it, and it took a variety of coloring media very well. I started with watercolor, which mostly went through the paper, but stained a few areas nicely. Colored pencil also did well, with a careful touch (use Prismacolors, if you have a choice!). Zig Real Brush markers seemed to work the best. I didn't try alcohol markers but those should work fine as long as they're compatible with the ink you use.

The stamp set I used is HERE - I'm almost embarrassed that it took me so long to find and support this sweet little company because looking through their stamp collection felt like coming home. I'm an incurable old soul, and I love all things vintage, bookish, artsy, fairies, birds, botanical, along with thoughtful words... there are gorgeous stencils and collage packs - and it's a Missouri business, too! 

A little more about my order - first of all, you guys, the envelope was hand-addressed...

...and then covered with stamped images - which is fun in itself, but also a great way to introduce your product and show sizes in person. Like that little winged girl with the jar and the bird... those will probably be mine in a future order.

These are the stamps I ordered, and they're tied together with some beautiful dyed seam binding - lovely touch!

This collage pack was free with my order - lots of fun things to add to projects, as well as some project idea cards...

And this is just adorable...

Here are a couple of other things from my order - this stamp is pretty much a snapshot of my soul...!

...and these little labels will be so much fun to add to cards for crafty friends.

I know I'll be back to Red Lead - I hope you will pay them a visit to see if anything inspires you! 

Splitcoast Tutorial: Thumping

For this week's tutorial over on Splitcoast we decided to give the old Thumping tutorial some new life! Lydia shares a way to use this technique with layering stamps to give them a little more dimension.

I decided to work with some solid stamps instead - I have started collecting Lavinia Stamps, and I fell in love with this Hedgehog set ("The Wallace Family"~! Acckkk!)

I started with the background, brushing various green inks and then stenciling with the Arty Circles stencil I used yesterday from Darkroom Door. I stamped the hedgies in a light tan, then used 3 different brown watercolor markers for the Thumping technique on their little backs. I added more dimension to their bodies with colored pencil and then a little acrylic paint, since the green was showing through just a little through the dye ink.

Across the top, I brayered a little white acrylic paint to break up the color - this sentiment has been on my mind, and it's one of mine from Impression Obsession.

Remember that Impression Obsession and Topflight Stamps both have 25% discounts this week!

That's all I know! 

Topflight Stamps 3rd Birthday Hop!

It's Topflight Stamps' 3rd birthday! They are celebrating with a fun blog hop, and they invited me to hop too! If you're not familiar with Topflight Stamps, I hope you'll check out their site - they carry hard-to-find and beautiful products from all over the world, bringing them to one place so we can buy them soooo easily. 

They're heroes.

Today, I hope you'll enjoy the hop! Everyone has made a beautiful project or two with a birthday theme to celebrate. If you're already hopping, you should have arrived here from Karen's blog. If not, you might want to start at the Topflight Stamps blog to take it from the top!

I've drooled over the stamps and stencils from Darkroom Door for a verrry long time, and Topflight has a great selection! Definitely my style - photorealistic, and perfect for collage, clean coloring, mixed media and more. I started off my card by stamping the Cupcake, then covered it with a fussy-cut mask. I taped off a horizontal line for my table top, then did a little Stencil Stacking for the background using the Arty Circles and Polka Dots stencils from their line.

I used colored pencils for my coloring - a variety of brands.

I really took my time on each section to be colored - it's been a while since I slowed down to color a card front, and I really enjoyed the process. (If you're new to my blog, I'm a professional artist, and most of my coloring is done on commissioned pet portraits!)

There was one other birthday stamp set I couldn't resist (and how amazing is it to be able to order products from Australia and the Netherlands in one cart?!), and that was this Sloths set from Craft Emotions. The set comes with 2 sloth images and then some extras - jungly leaves, a birthday hat, balloons, and some tiny circle and star accent stamps. So cute!

There are a lot of layers to my coloring, but here's one little trick for coloring the balloons - with the lightest color, I filled in a full shape for each balloon so the colors would overlap. This make the balloons look like they have a little mass, and a little transparency.

I did my coloring on watercolor paper so I could fill the background more easily with a wash of greens. When the panel was dry, I used some white acrylic paint and that Arty Circles stencil to create a little bokeh effect.

The sentiments on both cards are from a single sentiment block - I left the full stamp together, but masked off these 2 sentiments with sticky notes so I could just ink where I wanted.

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CELEBRATE and SAVE! Everything on the site is 25% off through the 29th!

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NOW for the fun stuff!! Of course, it wouldn’t be a birthday celebration without prizes! 

Topflight Stamps is giving one lucky winner a $50 Gift Certificate to the store.

Each stop (even mine!!) on the hop has an additional $15 Gift Certificate 

up for grabs for a lucky commenter. 

For a chance to win, make sure to visit every stop on the hop and leave a comment by March 28th.

Winners will be announced on the Topflight Stamps blog on March 31st.  Good Luck!

Topflight Stamps

Lisa Hoel

Jennie Atkinson

Cornelia Wenokor

Jenny Colacicco

Karen Bearse

Dina Kowal <<<<<<<<<<<<<  you're here!

Kathi Rerek

Connie Mercer

Toni Maddox

Lindsay Weirich

Ericka Strange

Jenny Marples

Autumn Clark

Rachel Greig

From here you're off to Kathi's blog - thank you for visiting me today!

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've got a full house this week, with my son and an extra college student home to study, the rest of the kids out of school and my husband only working as needed - I'm used to having a lot of quiet space to myself during the week, so I'm working hard to maintain my routine and mental health. It's a battle! But I just keep reminding myself to go on to the next thing.

This image from the Serendipity line reminds me of simpler times, and I imagined all these dresses in mini calico prints. While the stamp and my stamped watercolor paper were still in place, I picked out three scraps from my stash and laid them over the image to stamp again.

Before cutting the pieces out, I did some shading with colored pencils and added some highlights with a white pencil and Tsukineko's white all-purpose ink - it's got a little bit of a pearl finish to it, which is so pretty. The brighter white dots (below) are white acrylic paint, dotted with a pencil point.

IO Products I used:

SS-017-G Three Dresses

B13862 Tend Little Things

DIE860-WW Large Frame

In case you missed it, you can find all these products and evvvvvvverything on sale at IO! 

Use code TOGETHER to save 25% on your order (a $50 order gets you free shipping too).

The code is good through March 29th.

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!

You know I love large florals... so I'm back with another one from the Serendipity Stamps line! These are gorgeous, and so detailed! I built up several layers of watercolor on this card, then deepened some shadows with a sepia colored pencil, and went to splattering with diluted white acrylic paint and some shimmer spray. You can see a bit of the sparkle below. It was a lot of fun to complete!

Can't wait for my lilacs to bloom! So far the weird winter weather hasn't confused them too much. They were beautiful last year!

These are the IO stamps I used:

SS-200-L Lilacs

A13282 Better Tomorrow

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