Stamp A Faire 2017--Carissa's Challenge: 10th Anniversary, Tin & Aluminum

Well, I've come to my final project, #21, of the weekend!  What a great event!  Even though I missed hanging out with my crafting buddy, Kristie, I'm glad I played along and took a few extra days off from work so I could fully participate in Stamp A Faire.

Carissa showcased gilding flakes for her 10th anniversary project.  While I have purchased the Nuvo gilding flakes, I actually stumbled across an old package of gilding sheets in my stash and opted to use that instead. 

I went with a wedding themed card for this one, and pulled out Propose a Toast for the glasses, bubbles and sentiment.  The "bubbles" at the top of the champagne flutes are supposed to be hearts, but my gilding flakes made a bit of a mess of them.  The flakes left behind some residual sparkle dust that didn't seem to want to come off, and I liked that look so I decided to just let it be, rather than start over.  I adhered a die cut black heart from Enclosed: Heart on top of the pearlized white panel and then layered the die cuts, sentiment and bubbles on top.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Stamp A Faire 2017--Laurie's Challenge: 10th Anniversary, Tin & Aluminum

We are at the final anniversary year, 10!  I've mentioned throughout my various posts about this last weekend that I've had several favorites, but I have to say, I think this may be my most favorite card of the bunch.

Halloween crafting will always have a special place in my heart because it's the holiday that introduced me to stamping.  I still remember my mom coming home from the local art store one fall weekend in 1992 with several Halloween stamps and sitting down with me, my sister and Grandma and we all created cards together.  Back then we used printer weight colored paper that we folded into fourths to make a card, stamped our image directly onto the card front, and used Crayola color pencils to color our images.  I think we had two ink colors at that point--black and orange.  One-layer cards is what we made.  If we added any embellishments, it was either a sticker or some glitter, that was applied with Elmer's glue.  Man, the crafting industry has sure advanced and the different types of tools at our disposal now are amazing!  My love of crafting began back in 8th grade and it still excites me just as much today as it did then!

If you're still reading this post, thanks for hanging in there with me while I reminisced!  Back to my card...Laurie showcased a unique technique for creating a tarnished foil project.  I decided to make a Halloween card as I was anxious to try the new Wicked Elixir stamp set and dies.  I found the small skull embossing folder (from Tim Holtz--another Tuesday Morning score!) in my stash and embossed the creepy image onto my tarnished foil paper, then started to die cut and stamp the labels for my bottles.  I didn't have a specific plan, but my card ended up turning into what I see as a witch's pantry!  All of her potion bottles lined up on a shelf, which have provided a nice resting point for the gleaming red-eyed spider!  Feel free to click on the photo for a closer look.

The black background paper is a scrap from a decorative envelope that was junk mail I salvaged from the recycle pile!  So glad I saved it as it provides a cool wallpaper look for the witch's pantry!

Stamp A Faire 2017--Nichole's Challenge: 9th Anniversary, Pottery

I will admit, this challenge to create a dough tag didn't excite me at first.  Seemed like an awful lot of work, but I did end up enjoying the creative process.  I'm certain that my tags didn't turn out as nice or as professional looking as Nichole's but it was still fun to try the technique!

I used the Wet Paint Holiday stamp set to stamp the word "Peace" into my dough ornament before I baked it.  Then I used the Peace Be Still stamp set to stamp my snowflake images onto tissue paper.  I noticed that the fixative spray actually made my images bleed a bit, so I'm not sure what happened there.  And while I had a brand new bottle of Mod Podge to use, it seemed like the tissue paper didn't stick very well to edges of the ornament, even though I covered them pretty well.  Still, it was fun to try, and if I had littles in my life, I think this would be a good project to try with them.

Stamp A Faire 2017--Lexi's Challenge: 9th Anniversary, Pottery

Lexi challenged us to create a pottery-inspired, clay/paper clay embellishment for the 9th anniversary.  I still had half a package of Creative Paper Clay in my stash from the baking theme Stamp A Faire a few years ago and pulled that out.  It seemed pretty dry and I thought I was going to have to toss it, but I added a little bit of water to it and that revitalized it to the point I could work it again.  So if you're in the same boat, try adding a bit of water to it before you throw it away!

I opted to do another fall project and used a small leaf image from Autumn Pumpkins to stamp all over the rolled out paper clay in Terracotta Tile and Orange Zest inks.  I vaguely recall seeing the cover of a Martha Stewart magazine several years go where leaves had been carved into a pumpkin and I thought it looked so pretty, so that was my inspiration.  Then I used the coordinating dies to trace and carve out paper clay pumpkins.  I noticed as the paper clay dried, the ink seemed to really fade out, so I went back after the clay had mostly dried and re-stamped the leaf images to bring the color back. I also stamped the green pumpkin stems at that point.

I die cut a vellum square and the pinked edge leaf patterned paper square from Limitless Layers 2.5" dies and a couple of vines from Winterberry dies and layered my clay pumpkins on top. I thought the vellum softened the patterned paper a bit and brought a little more attention back to the clay embellishments so they wouldn't get lost against the busy background.  I also used a couple of patterns from the Leaf Prints patterned paper collection for the background panel and the sentiment layer.  The sentiment is from Autumn Pumpkins.

Stamp A Faire 2017--Jessica's Challenge: 8th Anniversary, Bronze

Jessica inspired us to create another project using bronze metallics for her 8th anniversary challenge.  Since I didn't have copper embossing powder in my stash, I couldn't even make my own bronze powder by combining it with gold, so I opted to make another project with the Perfect Pearls since they were still sitting on my desk.  I liked Jessica's theme of grouping multiples of the same item together and drew that as my inspiration for the butterflies I created.  Since I made each one a bit different, I wanted to make sure the details of each butterfly didn't get covered up and laid them out in a square grid.

Unfortunately the lighting wasn't great when I took the photo above and a lot of the shimmer is missed here.  I took another picture from a different angle, but had to hold down the corner of the card with my finger to see the shimmer, so pardon my non manicured hand!  ;-)

I used the Beautiful Butterflies dies and the Beautiful Butterflies Layers stamps and dies for this card.

Stamp A Faire 2017--Kimberly's Challenge: 8th Anniversary, Bronze

For the 8th anniversary of bronze, Kimberly challenged us to create a project using Perfect Pearls or another metallic pigment powder.  It's been ages since I used Perfect Pearls, and I ended up using them on multiple projects this weekend.  I should keep them in a more accessible location in my craft room because for something so simple, they sure pack a big "wow" punch!  The only downfall is that they are messy and get everywhere...

I used the Leaf Prints stamp set (that got a lot of use this weekend!) and stamped the leaf image in Versamark ink on a brown die cut from the Limitless Layers Oval 2.5" collection and then applied bronze Perfect Pearls to the leaf.  I adhered the oval onto a scalloped oval die cut from the same collection.  This was added on top of the Autumn Abundance patterned paper panel.  Then I stamped the sentiment from Infinity Frames Sentiments on the small banner die cut from Tag Sale #10 (perfect size for really small sentiments!) and added some foam adhesive to apply it over the focal image.

Stamp A Faire 2017--Debbie's Challenge: 7th Anniversary, Wool

Oh. My. Goodness.  Felt cookies?!  Debbie's 7th anniversary project was so clever and I loved how she went into detail showing how to create the different types of cookies.  Zero calorie, guilt free cookies in whatever type you can dream up!  I had so much fun with this challenge and took a break from my autumn inspired projects to think ahead a bit to Christmas.  I pulled out my Shaker Shapes die sets of trees and stars and thought these would work nicely for creating holiday sugar cookies. (Sure wish there had been a candy cane one, too!)  The cookies got me thinking about my friend Carla, who for several years hosted cookie exchanges in her lovely home.  I thought the felt cookies could be a cute way to invite someone over for a cookie exchange party, and that's where I got the idea to insert a "cookie" into the glassine bag and then attach the invitation to the outside with a small decorated clothes pin.

This was another one of my favorite projects from the whole weekend!  I used Debbie's idea of taking the small, half moon like pieces from the Damask Snowflakes dies to create the sugar cookie sprinkles.  I chose to just glue everything together for this project and abandoned the notion of sewing since I figured it would take me too long!  The clothes pin is embellished with a small Holly Jolly die cut, and I used the Monthly Moments Journal Card 1 to make the invitation panel, which is stamped with cookie images from Sweet Holiday Wishes.  The "cookie exchange party" is from the Holiday Button Bits stamp set, and the invitation text is from the By Invitation stamp set.