PaperFections

Thomas Kinkade Silent Night Frame

Another dollar store find, this 8" x 6" black wood frame was jazzed up by stamping the Victorian Leaves backgrounder with Versamark on the frame, then silver heat embossing it. The Silent Night image was stamped with black Versafine ink on whisper white cardstock and then colored with dye-based markers, highlighting only the house's lights, lamp post & holiday decorations. The whitest snow areas (snowbank by lamp post, rooftop & moon) were glittered with Dazzling Diamonds and 2-way glue. The rest of the image's snow areas & sky were brushed with Micro Pearl PearlEx to give them some soft shimmer, too. The image was trimmed to fit in the 6" x 4" opening and then the sentiment and hardware attached at the side with a brad at the bottom and black narrow organdy ribbon on top. To stamp the sentiment (which is all one horizontal line), I lightly traced inside the hardware frame to have a template on which to stamp. Then, using a Stamp-A-Ma-Jig, I inked one word of the sentiment at a time with a black marker and stamped within the template I had drawn. Took a while, but I was happy with the results: Supplies - Stamps:... Read more →

Thomas Kinkade Make A Wish

This card started off with an artichoke base. The Victorian Floral backgrounder panel was stamped in olive dye ink on celery cardstock and the corners clipped with a ticket corner punch. The beautiful wishing well was stamped with Ranger's Peeled Paint (green) Distress Ink on Arturo celadon paper (from Ellen Hutson's store) and lightly colored with watercolor pencils. The flowers were dotted/colored with gel pens, to give a raised shiny surface to them -- that's where I wanted the focus to be. The image was trimmed around the stamped rectangle and then placed on the floral panel for proper placement. I lightly traced around the well image with pencil and then cut the window opening. The well piece was adhered flat to the artichoke card base and then the floral panel mounted with dimensionals to the card base, over the well image. The sentiment was stamped in olive dye ink on the celadon paper, the edges inked and distressed and mounted with dimensionals to the floral panel. A piece of olive narrow organdy ribbon was tied thru the window opening, around the right side of the card. Supplies - Stamps: Make a Wish Cottage Vignette & Delight Yourself (Thomas Kinkade),... Read more →

Thomas Kinkade Foxglove Cottage Plaque

Here's how this plaque started out -- a 5" square dollar store find from about a year ago! I liked the basics of it and knew I could cover it with a nice stamped image of my own. After stamping the cottage on vanilla cardstock with Palette Noir ink and taking quite a bit of time coloring with Prismacolor pencils, I knew I wanted to do more with this image than just place it on a greeting card. Searching thru my stash (and we all have a pretty good stash of crafting supplies, don't we?!!) I found this plaque that was the perfect width for this image, but I had already trimmed it too short to cover the whole plaque (adhered with ModPodge). Solution: stamp the sentiment on another piece of vanilla cardstock in Coffee Bean Brilliance ink and piece it at the bottom of the plaque, then cover the seam with cream grosgrain ribbon! The edges of the plaque were also inked in the Coffee Bean Brilliance ink and some Prima flowers with brads finish it all off. Design note: At first I was stumped with how to color these highly detailed images when a lot of the stamped... Read more →

Cornish Heritage Farms & Thomas Kinkade Stamps

I've been given the go ahead to let you all know that it was Thomas Kinkade's gorgeous paintings that have been made into rubber stamps by Cornish Heritage Farms -- how cool is that?!! I was awe-struck when contacted to be on this design team and then to find out who the artist was! It was a long & painstaking road for Richard & Liz at CHF, to transform such detailed paintings into rubber stamp images, but the end results are beautiful. I'd love to share my projects with you and give you a few design notes and tell you what I found to work well with these highly detailed images. First up -- I think my favorite of the first four designs I created was this prayer journal: I started off by stamping the Paisley backgrounder in chocolate pigment ink on copper cardstock and clear embossing it. This was mounted to two 4" chipboard coasters using glue stick. Then I cut filler paper for the inside of the journal and rounded the corners. All this was bound at the top with the Bind-It-All (from Eclectic Paperie) and black 3/8" coil. The chapel was stamped in StazOn on shimmer vanilla... Read more →

Announcement!

So here's that announcement I mentioned earlier today (see post below). Lisa Strahl posted this on her blog this morning: "When they asked me to pull together a Design Team for this project, I knew I needed a group of stampers that could handle a new genre and figure out how best to showcase the images. I can't share the name of the artist just yet, but I do want to announce the talented group of women who have each put their own distinct spin on this new line: Design Team: Valerie Stangle Anna Wight Debbie Olson Sharon Harnist Ellen Hutson Linda Bullard Asela Hopkins Keri Sereika Over the past few months I have wanted to shout from the rooftops so many times how stinkin' talented these ladies truly are. (not to mention, a pleasure to work with) They have displayed patience and diligence and I almost get misty-eyed just thinking about how proud I am of each and every one." Isn't she sweet?!! Lisa has been an angel to work with, too! So be sure to watch the Cornish Heritage Farms site tomorrow (Thursday, June 28) at midnight CST to find out who this Internationally-acclaimed artist is and to... Read more →