Crazy with a side of AWESOME!!!

This fun little guy is part of a plate of Mary Vogel Lozinak stamps that I recently purchased from Viva Las Vegastamps! I love how interesting this particular image is...I immediately stamped it and tried to decipher what it was....I could see several possibilities in the stamps. I hope you enjoy my project and click on the link below to learn how you can be a part of a Blog Hop featuring Mary Vogel Lozinak's stamps!! 

For these ATCs:

cardstock

Perfect Pearls

Distressed Ink in Frayed Burlap

Crayola Watercolors

Archival Ink

saying printed on paper

White Gelly Roll

By coloring just part of the image the "critter"
resembles a one-eyed, one-horned fledgling.

By coloring the whole "critter" green, he
resembles a toad or a prehistoric iguana! 

 

Everything, everything.

Hello again! For today’s post, which is also my last post (for now), I wanted to use this great “Running Lady” stamp that reminds me of Marilyn Monroe. I stamped her on white cardstock, and then colored her with Copic markers. After that, I went over her with a Versamark pen, and then covered her with Viva Las Vegastamps! own Ultra High Gloss Embossing powder. I didn’t cover the shadow, only the lady. Then I used a couple of colors of Distress Ink to color the cardstock as you see in the picture.

I hope you have enjoyed all of my projects. You can see them all at anytime by clicking here. Take care and please be sure to come back to the Viva Las Vegastamps! blog where new projects will be posted every Monday, Wednesday & Friday. There's an all new design team starting in April and it will nice to see what new ideas they come up with! Good luck everyone.

"The Game Is Afoot" - Sherlock Holmes Inspired Steampunk Related Card

Are you familiar with steampunk? It's a style that involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United States—that incorporates elements of either science fiction or fantasy. Works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology, or futuristic innovations as Victorians might have envisioned them.

Gaslight romance or gaslamp fantasy is an offshoot of steampunk. Steampunk stories are most commonly set in a romanticized, smoky, 19th-century London, as are gaslight romances. But the latter category focuses nostalgically on icons from the late years of that century and the early years of the 20th century--on Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes.

This card is inspired by Sherlock Holmes and his quote, The game is afoot!, from the The Adventure of the Abbey Grange. The same way a cat might chase down a mouse, Sherlock Holmes would chase down his quarry. Here's how I made this card.

The background is dry embossed aluminum that's been painted black and then sanded to highlight the embossed design. The silhouette of Sherlock Holmes was cut out using a Zing electronic cutting machine.

Brown paper and a cotton ball were adhered behind the background to form the pipe and smoke.

The silhouette is filled with gears, using the Steampunk Background 4 x 4 #16468 stamp from Viva Las Vegastamps! It was stamped on metallic gold paper using StazOn ink. The background was adhered to a black card base using Miracle Tape.

The cat is stamped on metallic bronze paper using the Steampunk Cat 2 x 2 1/2 #17720 stamp from Viva Las Vegastamps! using StazOn ink.

The mouse was cut from metallic black paper on the Zing and then filled with small clock gears.

The quote was created using a vintage Dymo label maker.

I hope you enjoyed this card and learning a bit about steampunk and gaslight romance. For more of my projects, check out my blog on Create & Craft.
Happy Crafting!
Joe

Life’s A Beach Card with Sand from Cancun!

Last June, I was in Mexico for business and had just a few minutes to run to the beach and feel the water before heading back to the airport for the trip home to Ohio. In those short minutes, I couldn't resist filling an empty water bottle with sand, knowing it might come in handy for some future craft project. Well, the time has come.
I thought these four stamps from Viva Las Vegastamps! would make a great beach scene:
- Alien Sun Tanning 1 1/4 x 2 (#2277)- Sunbathing Lady 2 x 2 3/4 (#2414)- Sunbathing Lady 1 1/2 x 2 3/4 (#14263)- Life's A Beach 1 1/4 x 2 1/4 (#14215)


I stamped the three figures and then cut them out with my new cutting machine - the Zing! It does an AMAZING job fussy cutting because it has a 3-point laser alignment system. And it's fast! It cuts 20" per second!

The stamped figures were colored with Copic markers.

I created the umbrella with the Zing too. Each piece is made by taking a triangle and "cutting out" a circle from the bottom of it. A stir stick inked with Brushed Corduroy makes the perfect umbrella pole.
To make the card base, I started with a cream colored card and used Faded Jeans and Wild Honey distress inks to make the sky. The inks were applied with an ink applicator in a circular motion on a non-stick craft sheet.

To make the beach, I applied three overlapping strips of 1" wide Miracle Tape to the card, trimming the top strip so it had a bit of a wave too it before adhering it to the card. I dumped on some of my Cancun sand, used a brayer to be sure it was pushed down on to the tape and shook off the excess. The tape does a great job holding the sand. Instant beach!

I attached the pieces to the card base using Miracle Tape and foam dots. I added a bit more sand around the base of the umbrella pole using liquid glue.

To see more of my projects, check out my blog on Create & Craft.
Happy Crafting!
Joe

Senior Ladies, Best Friends - A Card For Your BFF

Until this project, I don't think I've ever used a "photo stamp." You know the kind - stamps made from photographs rather than drawings. I've seen many that have interested me, but just didn't know what to do with them or how to use them. That brings me to the pound of rubber I received from Viva Las Vegastamps! For only $25, you can buy one pound of unmounted, deeply etched red rubber stamps. Viva Las Vegastamps! will select, at random, a pound of images and sayings from their collection of over 16,000, mostly "non-cute" stamps. I got a pound and when I sat and went through them I found Senior Ladies 3 1/2" x 4 3/4" (#8671).

Every time I looked at this stamp, a story went through my head. These two woman knew each other for years. They often went to the park together. They fed the birds. They played BINGO. They were best friends.

Given how many times I stopped and looked at this stamp (yes, I go through the pound of rubber over and over again), I knew I had to use it on a project.

I started by covering some glossy photo paper with distress ink. Then I stamped Senior Ladies 3 1/2" x 4 3/4" (#8671) using black dye ink. Once trimmed, the result looked like an old photo!
I picked up some vintage BINGO cards at a flea market this summer and decided to use one as a background for this photo. If you don't have a real BINGO card, you can create your own using Bingo Card 4 3/4 x 5 3/4 (#8431).

For the sentiment, I stamped letters using Scrabble Alphabet Unmounted Regular Size (#1948) on white paper. I applied distress ink, used a Copic marker to color the edges of each tile and then embossed the letters with Ultra High Gloss Embossing Powder. Once cut out, they look like real Scrabble tiles.

The card base is made from Designer Paper (DP) that fits the vintage look I was going for.

Now that I've finally used a photo stamp, I know they will become a standard part of my stamping portfolio. I hope you'll give them a try too. In fact, why not challenge yourself? Get a pound of rubber and see how creative you can be with stamps you didn't select. I bet you'll find it as fun as I did!

Check out my blog on Create & Craft for more project ideas.
Happy crafting!
Joe

Just around the corner..

is Christmas! and I'm having fun doing "creative" Christmas cards this year... 

I picked up some of the Library Pockets from VLVS! and got to work distressing with a walnut stain distress ink. I then cut a tag from some dictionary paper and distressed with peeled paint distress ink.

I love the cream color that manila comes.. so I seriously stock up on manila folders and use them as a regular stamping surface.. I grabbed a folder and this beautiful new stamp from VLVS!:

Jolly Ol' St. Nick 3 1/4 x 3 - $11.75

I stamped him in Memento Tuxedo and embossed with VLVS!'s Ultra High Gloss EP. 

I then did a little embellishing (I love to deconstruct decorative picks and use bits n bobs as embellishmetns) some extra inking.. ribbon snipping and tying.. and of course adhering everything down with VLVS! Miralce Tape...

and...

VIOLA!

thanks so much for checking out my VLVS! project again this week!! -DeeDee

  

Halloween Lantern

I’m so excited to be sharing my first project with you, as a new member of the Viva Las Vegastamps! Design Team (DT)! It was so hard to pick just one Halloween image from the huge variety of stamps Viva Las Vegastamps! has in their 15,000+ collection that I needed to come up with some way to use many stamps. I love three dimensional pieces made from paper and Halloween makes me think of nighttime, so a lantern came to mind.

This is a really simple project to make. I’m providing you with a zip file of the pattern (as a PDF you can print and cut out, as an SVG file you can import into cutting software and as a Sure Cuts A Lot SCAL V2 project file). CLICK HERE to download the Halloween lantern pattern files.

It started with a half-gallon cardboard milk carton. Wash it out well and cut off the top. Leave a small tab at the top of each side so you have a place to adhere the roof.

Cut out four roof panels, four frames and the top piece from cardboard. I used cereal boxes. Use the inside piece of a frame as a template to cut a window on each side of the cereal box about 1” from the bottom using a craft knife.

Once you have all the pieces cut out, cover them with aluminum tape, dry emboss the roof panels (to give them some texture), and coat the pieces with black alcohol ink. Once the ink is dry (about 10 minutes), distress the surfaces with a steel wool pad. This will make the embossed pattern really pop and gives the lantern an old steel-like finish.

Punch a small hole in the center of the top piece so you can attach a wire to use as a hanger.

Got milk? Or juice...or any square carton.

Pieces covered in metal tape.

Milk carton cut down.

Cut out four vellum panels (using a frame as a template) and stamp your images with dye ink. I used these 8 stamps from Viva Las Vegastamps!:

• Grim Reaper 2 3/4 x 3 3/4
• Skeleton RIP 2 3/4 x 3 1/2
• Bat 3/4 x 1
• Spider And Web In Corner 2 1/4 x 2
• Corner Cobweb 1 1/2 x 1 1/4
• Skeleton Dancing 2 x 3 1/2
• Spider Looking For Little Miss Muffet 1 1/4 x 1 1/2
• Skeleton With Cigarette & Drink 2 3/4 x 3 3/4

Adhere the vellum panels to the frames with Miracle Tape and you’re ready to assemble your lantern.

First create the roof by folding the tabs of each roof panel to the back and then adhering them together using Miracle Tape. I stapled each tab too for extra holding power. Then attach the roof piece. Create a wire hanger and put it through the hole. I put a bead on top from an old necklace I picked up at a flea market.

Roof piece dry embossed and top piece with hole punched.

Underside of assembled roof.

Pieces dressed to look like old steel.

Adhere the roof to the milk carton by using Miracle Tape on the tabs you made along the top of the cartoon.

Adhere three of the frames to the milk cartoon using Miracle Tape. Attach the fourth panel with magnetics or Velcro dots, so you can easily remove it to maintain the battery operated votive candle.

For added fun, dangle a spider from a thread under the roof. Just punch two spiders and glue them back to back with a piece of thread sandwiched between them. Coat the spider withCrystal Lacquer for added strength (and some shine). Attach a red rhinestone. Use a needle to punch a hold under the roof and tie up the thread.

Think how fun several of these would look around your house (they stand really well) or hanging in your front yard!

I also want to invite you to participate in the Viva Las Vegastamps! Theme Challenge for October. Submit “Halloween” creations you made using Viva Las Vegastamps! for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate at the Viva Las Vegastamps! online store. CLICK HERE for submission instructions.

Visit my blog at Create & Craft to see my other projects. Have fun!

Joe