inchies

Another day another challenge. Over at Artful Times this week they want to see inchies. All the time I have been stamping and I have never made any ! I knew I wanted to use these teeny weeny stamp sets from Chocolate Baroque because they were the only stamps I thought would be small enough. I used distress inks in festive berries and rusty hinge for the background and stamped in Ranger black archival ink. In hindsight I think it may have been better to sponge a whole piece of card for the background first before cutting to size because they were fiddly little blighters Lol. I mounted them all onto a piece of black card afterwards. Every tonning piece of background paper that I tried was then too much so I ended up making my own background with masking tape and just going for black and white. The only stamp different is old french writing by Hero Arts, a favourite of mine because it just goes with everything. So there you go , my first attempt at inchies. x Lavinia

stampotique challenge

Well, here we are, the first day that all three of my children have gone back to school. Peace at last Lol, its not that I don`t love my children very much , its just at times the volume level gets a bit too much. Anyway even though I SHOULD be doing the wretched housework because the poor house now looks like a tournedo has gone through it I thought I would do some stamping instead. I have not managed to take part in the stampotique designers challenge which you can find here for yonks. I really did enjoy their blog hop showing the new images being released as well, do pop over and have a look, there are some amazing ideas. Anyway back to the challenge which is to combine two stamps to make a new image. When I first saw this, I did think ook eck how on earth do I do that then ? I bought a copy of this months Red magazine and there was an advert by Louis Vuitton showing ladies in very oversized hats and big goggles, aha very steampunk I thought to myself. So it was in my head that the steampunk hat from Chocolate Baroque steampunk travel set met the lovely Stampotique monster by kira Nicolls. I think the two make a very lovely marriage myself, he looks rather dapper. Must treat myself to some proper masking paper as I have to make do with copier paper and temporary adhesive. I used distress markers to colour the main image, masked the whole thing again, and coloured the background with distress inks in wild honey, tumbled glass, tea dye, antique linen and brushed corderoy. I used Ranger glue and seal to glue the piece of text paper for him to stand on at the bottom. Now I must confess that I have got a bit of a `halo` where I have done my masking but I have left it like that because I think it actually makes the image pop a bit more. I prefer to think of it as a happy accident. So there you go, it all wasn`t so hard to do after all so a big thank you for taking me out of my comfort zone and trying something new to Stampotique. Thanks for looking, if you have got to the end of this post you deserve a cup of tea and some chocolate biscuits ! x Lavinia

less is more pink and brown

Over at less is more this week the challenge is to use two colours pink and brown. Have to admit this is not a colour combination that I have used very often if ever thinking about it. I had to have a real rootle about to find brown ink as well Lol. I found an adrionrack ink in expresso to stamp my cat in. Don`t think this was the best ink for this stamp in hindsight, I think an archival or versafine would have been much better but never mind. The squares of paper were from free papers which came with a magazine as well as the border. I hope I`m forgiven for the hint of blue in there. The sentiment seemed to match the cat perfectly. I know he`s reading but he does look very intense doesn`t he. So there you go, one quick make snatched inbetween trying to do everything else. Is it time to go back to school yet pleeeeease . Thanks for looking x Lavinia