OK, I lied...

I didn't get back to the Cricut cartridges (I promise I will soon). I have been playing with backgrounds. Not just the ones that go with the stamps we like best, but the ones that sit in the drawers, unloved and unused and have never been considered a "background" stamp. I recently saw a video by Art Impressions on how to make one picture out of a dozen stamps using watercolor pens and rubber stamps. That led me to my stash of stamps, trying to find the ones that I thought would work for a cute background or addition to my Maggie stamps (or some other ideas I'm working on). This background is a Penny Black grass stamp that I've never used. It looked a little plain by itself, but as a background, it rocks. I inked it up with a water color marker and stamped it over a mask of Summer Tilda. The nice part about this technique (and something I learned from the video) is that you don't need to ink the whole stamp, just parts of it. It’s much easier to control the ink with a marker. And you can use a different color and stamp over what you already stamped. If you do this on watercolor paper, you can use a damp paintbrush to pull the ink, or pat the ink to diffuse it and make a softer look. I was pleased with the way this turned out, but now it's led to lots of other ideas, I couldn't fall asleep last night because ideas just kept popping up (I actually got two of these cards done today). Take a new fresh look at some of the stamps you have and try to image them in a different way. Leave a comment and let me know if you come up with any other ideas for mixing stamps and backgrounds, I’d love to hear your ideas.


Paper: from the stash, Stamps: Magnolia Summer Tilda, Penny Black, Cornish Heritage Farms; Spica: Red, Lemon, Mint, Clear; Copics: E11, E00, E25, E27, Y18, YG11, YG23, R27, V06, V01, C1, C00, C3, Ink: Memento Black Tuxedo, Versafine Smokey Grey, Tombow 158

Things I wonder: Why the UPS guy passes my craft room window at 9:30am on every day I'm not expecting a package, but shows up at my door after 5:00 pm on those days that I am?