Against the Grain and Something New!

Hello Crafters!

It's Kelly here and I'm so excited to share my Sweet Stamp Shop projects with you! But before we get to the cards I have something even more exciting to share with you :)

Did you know that the Sweet Stamp Shop has a Flickr group?! Flickr is such an amazing tool not only for you to see our projects (even though there is a whole years worth of inspiration in the gallery) but for us to see yours too! :) We love seeing all the creative ways you all use Sweet Stamp Shop stamps! Plus it will give us a chance to tell you why we love your projects and share them with others!

Need another reason to go visit our Flickr? . . .hmmm . . . How about a challenge? Yep I said it, CHALLENGE! Squeel!! Every Thursday we will be posting a new challenge in our flickr group and we hope you'll play along! Nicole is super generous so there will be stamps to win as well as Guest Design Team spots! Are you excited? because I sure am!! The challenge will officially start next Thursday August 23rd and I can't wait to see what you make! Speaking of making things I do have some cards to share with you today :)

Today I decided to work with Against the Grain. Now for those of you who don't know me I should tell you I'm all about stretching my stamps. The most bang for my buck if you will :) So I'm sharing three cards with you using this one stamp set differently. Also all the sentiments are from Packaged Pretty. Ready?! Here we go!

For this first card I embossed with clear after stamping in black. I then dabbed on some super bright inks! I love bright colors with black and white, makes my little heart pitter patter :) I used the circle from Packaged Pretty but I masked the sentiment so I could replace it with the thank you. A little tip, my embossing came out really terrible because I didn't use a good black ink. My bad :( Since I wanted the black to really pop I went over the embossing with a black alcohol marker. You don't need anything fancy, a sharpie will do :) Alcohol markers will color embossing quite nicely making my dirty gray dark black! 

Next up Make your own embellishment

For this card I did the exact opposite of the previous one. I rubbed picked raspberry, squeezed lemonade, and dried marigold all over my paper. Once dry (seriously you guys, if your distress ink isn't 100% dry you will have an embossing disaster! I learned the hard way :) I stamped the wood grain in versamark and heat set in clear. Then I rubbed black soot distress ink over the entire thing. Once you buff off the extra those colors POP! I die cut them into hearts and added some glitter. I think they look kinda zebra striped :)

Lastly, selective coloring

I heat embossed the wood grain again, this time using actual black powder (I swear I don't normally emboss this much! hehe) then used an exacto knife to cut out only portions of the background. I put the background down temporarily to trace where I needed to color with the distress inks. Once they were colored I just adhered the panel down flat. I thought it provided enough interest it could stand alone, after I added stickles to the colored parts of course!

Thanks for visiting us on the blog today! I hope you found something to inspire you :) Don't forget to check back on August 23rd for the new challenge, so excited to see your projects!

XoXo

Kelly

Pin It