The Creative Life

Imagine That: Trumpet Flowers Card

In The Studio

One of our prompts this month over on the Imagine blog is the color Sangria. I love a good, deep red–there’s lots you can do with the color. While the holidays are coming up, and I had another project that scooted into that territory, I wanted to do something more general for this prompt.

I’d recently seen a picture of trumpet flowers and for whatever reason that gut stuck in my head and I was desperate enough to try my hand at carving my own stamp just so I could create the card I saw in my head.

I’m actually really pleased at how it turned out, and if you’d like to see the carving process I’ve posted it over on my own YouTube channel: Stamptember: Carving a detailed flower cluster stamp! It was a good 4 hours or more of work, spread out over three nights, but totally worth it!

After putting in so much effort into carving the stamp and then coloring the image, I didn’t feel like the card needed at lot of extra bits added to it. Does this count as a CAS (clean and simple) card? Maybe?

At any rate, make sure to head over to the Imagine blog to check out the video of how the finished card came to be.

And if you’d like to make your own version of the card but aren’t quite into carving your own stamps, I made a digital stamp set from the finished image–complete with separated elements as well as the finished arrangement–and put it up over in the Crafty Branch Etsy shop. I’d love to see what you come up with!

While I was add it, as a thank you for reading this far, I took those digital elements and made a wreath image you can download now for free! Make sure you tag @scrapsoflife and @thecraftybranch on Instagram when you make something with it!

Download it by clicking this link: TCB_JLV_TrumpetFlowerFreebie

 

Imagine That: Faux Metal Stamping

In The Studio

Lately I’ve had puzzle pieces on my mind. Not so much the desire to put together an actual puzzle, but more their use as a metaphor for life.

  • Picking up the pieces
  • Missing piece
  • Piece of my heart

And so on…

Puzzles make fairly inexpensive crafting materials, since you can usually find some at the thrift or dollar stores. It doesn’t matter what’s on them, because you’re going to transform them into something else.

I have a whole list of projects planned for puzzle pieces (watch the blog and, more often, my Instagram feed for works in progress), but today I’m sharing a fun faux finish project over on the Imagine Blog–faux metal stamping. The metallic silver Creative Medium is pretty much perfect for this technique, and I hope you’ll give it a try!

Imagine That: Moonlit Leaf Stenciling

In The Studio

Fact: Stencils are super-versatile in the craft room.

Another fact: I so often forget to use mine!

This month one of our prompts was to use stencils in something. I always have such fun with them, I really need to get in the habit of using them more. Without needing to be nudged.

At any rate, I had a blast making this simple, yet striking, background using a leaf stencil, VersaCraft, and All-Purpose ink. The light chalk ink stood out just fine on the dark background, but when I added the Plantinum API, it really popped!

The effect I went for with the fourth layer of color (all with the same stencil) I thought looked like the ripples of a pond or a soundwave echo, so that’s why I’m calling it a Stencil Echo technique.

Head over to the Imagine Blog to check out how I did it and give it a try yourself!

Imagine That: DIY StazOn Markers

In The Studio

While at Creativation, someone asked if the new VersaFine Clair inks would work with alcohol markers. Not having any on hand, I devised a quick substitute using Fantastix, StazOn All Purpose Stamp Cleaner, and a StazOn ink pad. VersaFine Clair appeared to hold up quite nicely in this quick trial, by the way*.

It’s been my plan since then to play with it a bit more, so in today’s Imagine project I made a set of StazOn markers in varying shades of 4 different inks, enough to color a pretty floral bouquet (stamped in VersaFine Clair, of course).

You can see how quickly this came together on the Imagine Blog!

*StazOn markers are solvent-based, so not 100% the same as the more common alcohol inks on the market, but the properties are similar. Always test your ink/marker combos before committing to a larger project, just in case!

Imagine That: We’ll Always Have Paris

In The Studio

Or, if not, we can make a memento of it in about an hour and a half!

Longtime readers may have a sense they’ve seen this project before, but that’s because the inspiration came from one of the pieces I did as decorations for my 40th birthday party. I used the same basic techniques, this time in a smaller (8″x8″) format with strictly Imagine products and, of course, filmed the process so that you can follow along and see exactly how I used the wash tape to “draw” the figures.

Head over to the Imagine Blog for the full supply list and the video of the project. Enjoy!