Wednesday Stamper

Haven't done Wednesday Stamper for a couple of weeks and missed some really good themes. This week is 'framed' and whilst again short of time have chosen a piece I did a while ago. This was done at a camp and was heaps of fun. Hugs, Carmel xxx

Mothers Day is coming in Aust.

Our school is having a Mother's Day stall for the kids - great idea as maybe not all Dad's can take them to town to get Mum a gift or organise a make a gift at home session. The stall is stocked with stuff from about 20c to $2. Kids usually make cards in class so I decided to make bookmarks for the stall. Lots of cute stamping as they have to appeal to kids but I did enjoy the background. I used the 'waxed paper resist' technique - fold or crush wax paper to make a pattern - lay on gloss card - piece of paper on top, hot dry iron - heat transfers the pattern to the gloss card. Then use dye inks applied with a sponge for colour, I also used alcohol inks. This tech I got from the 'twisted chick' blog page as noted by Genevieve on her blog. I got an extra tip yesterday - when you lay the wax paper on the gloss card, place another piece of gloss face down and then a piece of paper and you get two waxed resist pieces at once!! The pic isn't a great one but here goes. Hopefully the kids will like them. I have also been making charms, one their way Julie!! so can't show them here. I now need to start on the charms for camp and a mystery muse and maybe a few ATC trades. Lots to do and I am getting excited about going. Cheers, Carmel xxxxx

Little bit of play

Well, first week of the school holidays down! hope you are all surviving it lol - have to be quick got to take the little darlings to the movies this morning. Had a play on Friday night with a few girlies and due to the copious amount of excellent conversation all I made was a couple of ATC's inspired by Kelsey's transparent ones, a framed acetate. The embossing was courtesey of Kylie's new cuttlebug beast! Saturday was spent yet again sorting through my stuff - got a new bag with containers in it and of course had to transfer stuff into it - will it ever be done? still looking for the ultimate way of storing my stamps with portability and ditto for my ink pads. Sunday, I had another lovely afternoon with Sulea. This time Sulea was doing Stampscape scenes which she is famous for! I have often been frustrated with trying to sponge on ink without leaving marks, you know that beautiful blending etc. Well, part of it is in the cutting of the sponge! tapering it so you don't have 'edges'. The rest is, you know 'skill' lol which requires patience patience patience, the ability to compose a scene with the stamps and an eye for shading/highlighting/colour combos etc etc - total mindblow. So the first thing to do is......COPY a scene previously done by the master lol - you do need that darn patience as you need to know when to be light fingered and one swipe of the sponge can ruin the whole piece, especially if it's black ink. Anyway here are my first efforts. It was a huge amount of fun and I would love to do it again, and those stamps are to die for. So a huge thank you to Kylie and the girls on Friday and to Sulea on Sunday for the wonderful playtime. Cheers, Carmel xxxx