New Years Celebration Blog Hop

"Welcome to 2012"

The Viva Las Vegastamp! Design Team

is having a celebration

and we are taking you 

along...

We are doing an amazing blog hop...

here are the rules:

1)  Must leave a comment on all the blogs

2)  Must become a follower of all the blogs

You are entered

for what - you may ask...

Each blog on this team will give a $15 

on-line shopping spree to our store
(with free shipping).  

and 

ONE lucky person will get $25
(with free shipping) to our

on-line store.

Now here is our list of blogs.  Go see how we

celebrate the NEW YEAR

Monthly Challenge

It's time for our 

Monthly Challenge

ARE YOU PLAYING????

here is how it works...

This Months Theme

"CELEBRATION"

1)  Post a card or project on our facebook page using the theme for that month http://www.facebook.com/vlvstamps

2)  The first Sunday of each month we post a winner

Winner Receives:

There Project or Card featured on our Blog and a $25 shopping Spree to our on- Line Store. 

Hope you stop back by tomorrow and join our Team with a "Celebration" Blog HOP...

Peace...Love...and Naked Men!

Wow it's the end of December!!! It's Susan (again) with my end of the month project. Today's project also features a fun product called Creative Paperclay® now available for sale over at Viva Las Vegastamps! 

This project is using four stamps from Viva Las Vegastamps! This piece begins with Angel Blowing Horn #6303. I also used "I Wish For A World" #1541, Patriotic Shirt Man #18119 and Leafy Border #6292.

 

I started with a sheet of paper that was previously business cards that has been painted over with gesso and other acrylic paint. I make these when I have paint leftover that I've mixed up for a project so it doesn't go to waste. The business cards were on this gunmetal parchment, which on the backside is lovely, but for this I used the painted side. It is a nice base and has a nice texture from the gesso. I stamped the Angel, the leafy border and my naked man with Stewart Superior Memories Regal Burgundy Pigment ink and embossed using VLVS Ultra High Gloss embossing powder. Before stamping the man, I rubbed the area with Stewart Superior "New Canvas" Palette hybrid ink {this is white}. I used the ink pad directly to paper in a circular motion and blended out the edges with a paper towel. This made a nice highlighted area for my guy. After stamping, I added some color with watercolor pencils and waterbrush. I added some coloring with CaranD'Ache watercolor crayons, but left them as pastel state {I didn't blend with water}. I finished off by stamping sentiment in Stewart Superior Memories Black Dye ink and mounting on burgundy cardstock.

For the corner embellishments I used the Creative Paperclay® in a small embossing folder. I rubbed the embossing folder with clear ink before pressing clay into it to help ease release. I gently pulled it out and accelerated the drying process by placing in a pan in the toaster oven on one medium toast cycle. Then I cut it apart, sanded edges then inked with chalk inks.

Detail of the Half-naked man colored with watercolor pencils.

Detail of Corner Embellishment made with Creative Paperclay® in embossing folder.

Today is December 30th which means there's only two days left to enter the monthly VLVS Theme Challenge. Submit your "CHRISTMAS" theme creations using Viva Las Vegastamps! for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate at the VLVS online store. CLICK HERE for info on submissions. Also check out the Viva Las Vegastamps! store - there is something for every occasion and more! Please drop by on Sunday for a special New Year's Celebration with the Viva Las Vegastamps! Design Team Bloghop with a chance to win by commenting on every stop on the hop.

Thanks so much for visiting & if you would like to see more of my creations please visit my blog, sbartist : painting in the dark HERE. Happy NEW YEAR!!! : )

A couple of kiddos and some clouds..

The VLVS! DT has the pleasure of working with some Creative Paperclay® this month (Available @ VLVS! HERE) and I chose to turn mine into clouds! But first.. I had to start out with a VLVS! Stamp..

I picked this stamp:

Boy & Girl with Bike 2 3/4 x 4 1/2 - $12.50

It's so sweet and gentle! Then I grabbed my Memento Tuxedo black ink, my VLVS! Ultra High Gloss Embossing Powder.. and some gorgeous BoBunny patterned paper. I'm also a huge fan of recycling.. so I pulled out some packaging cardboard to my card base and some corrugated cardboard to make my stamp stand out. I stamped the image, doused in powder and heated. Then I cut to size all my pieces.. did a little distressing.. both with scissors and vintage photo distress ink. I got out my Miracle tape and began setting things in place!

I shaped my Creative PaperClay® and let dry.. then I went over it with Picket Fence distress stain.. sponged it with vintage photo distress ink and ran the stamp pad along the edges!! Last.. I adorned my card with a piece of vintage lace, some cream colored pearls, a butterfly wing and a tim holtz charm and my handmade clouds!

 a closeup of the clouds:

 and the stamp:

As a final step to make things "flow" I went arond some extra edges with distress stain in picket fence. Love the effect :D

-DeeDee

It's Fruitcake Time!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! For my last post of 2011, I wanted to make a card that I have had planned out in my head for quite a while. I know it's the day after Christmas, but it's funny, so here it is. I am sure everyone will get a late card or two in the mail this week and I am sure that if you had a fruitcake in your house yesterday, then more than likely, it's still there today. Anyway, back to my project. I am known for my unconventional sense of humor, and this card supports that. People will know who made this as soon as they see it.

I used the following four Viva Las Vegastamps! to make this card:

Handsome Man

Man With Bottle

Santa Hat (reversed)

Fruitcake Time! sentiment

First I stamped all of my stamps on white card stock using a black Memories dye ink pad from Stewart Superior. I wanted the Santa hat to go in the opposite direction, so I stamped it on the smooth backside of another unmounted rubber stamp, and then pressed that image onto the paper to get my reversed image. Then, I colored all my images and cut them out. I embossed the green background sheet with a holly embossing folder. I used a punch for some additonal holly leaves and berries. For the lights, I used a spool of embellishment lights arranged the way I wanted them, and put a drop of glue under each bulb. I let that dry for a few minutes, and then put a drop of glue under the strings to hold them where I wanted them.

I assembled the rest of the card as you see in the finished picture. I put the Man with Bottle behind a holly leaf so he would not be floating in space. I put the Handsome Man on pop dots to bring him to the front of the scene and to show that the guy with the bottle of tanning oil (it's my card, so that is what I have decided it is) is in the background. Of course, the sentiment means it's Christmastime, but I like to think that the man is happy for a lot of reasons.

Visit my blog on the Create & Craft site to see my other fun projects. Happy New Year!

Day 5 and Day 6 - Christmas Tag

Our Amazing Design Team did a 12 tags of Christmas Blog Hop from Dec 1st - 12th.  If you miss it, here is a collage of Day 5 and Day 6. 

This was Day 5 of the Hop

This was day 6 of the Hop

Well if you missed this hop - this amazing Team is doing another Blog hop on

Jan 1st, 2012

So please stop by here on that date 

and

ring in the year with us....

Come back tomorrow and see another project...

Merry Christmas

Terri Sproul

Viva Las Vegastamps! Christmas Ornament!

The design team challenge this month is to use Viva Las Vegastamps! and Creative Paperclay®.  Last post I did a project creating ornaments by directly stamping on Creative Paperclay®.  

Ornament direct stamping

 using VLVS! Santa Holly

click HERE to get instructions.

This time I am combining the two by making an object with Creative Paperclay® and stamping on paper.

 Supplies I used:

Viva Las Vegastamps! Holly Stamp

Creative Paperclay®

Copics - red and green

Stickles - red and green

Tulle

Small Tartlet Pan

Silver tinsel pipe cleaners

Memories In - Black

Snowflake charm

Crop-o-dile to punch holes 

Press clay in to mold and let dry overnight.

Remove molded clay. 

Stamp VLVS! Holly on white paper, fussy cut, color with COPICS and embellish with Stickles.

Punch holes with Crop-o-dile for pipe cleaner hanger and snow flake charm on the bottom. Trim tartlet pan with silver tinsel pipe cleaner,  gather small amount of tulle and glue in pan. Add snowflake charm, molded head and Viva Las Vegastamps! Holly.

The ornament is ready for your tree, as a package trim or a set would make a great gift!.

GREAT NEWS!!!!!!

SAVE 20%

on the

Viva Las Vegastamps! Website

PLUS

FREE SHIPPING!

Through Monday,

December 26!

View Cart

and enter

Holidays

as your Coupon Code

and Apply it.

Note: Applies to already reduced items

in Bargain Basement, Blue Plate Special

and Dollar Deals but does NOT apply to:

Wood & Gift Certificates.

For complete details with pictures,

read our Newsletter HERE!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! 
From Lyneen 
And the Viva Las Vegastamps! 
Design Team

Join us for a FANTASTIC 

New Years Day Blog Hop 

with tons of

Blog Candy!!!!

Circus Themed Card using Creative Paperclay

A couple years back, I took a pottery class through the Lifelong Learning program offered by my city's Parks and Recreation department. We learned to throw pots, work with clay slabs and even did some molding. Back then I used some small face molds to make embellishments for a clay bowl. When it came time to play with Creative Paperclay I remembered the molds and thought it would be fun to cast paperclay.

The Creative Paperclay was really easy to work with and molded quite well. I was happily surprised by how much detail you can get. Once the castings were dry, I used an emery board to smooth the edges so they were ready to paint.

Viva Las Vegastamps! has several circus themed stamps and for some odd reason, when I look at them, I'm drawn to the Unicycle Lady 2 3/4 x 3 1/2 #14619.
I thought she would look great in brightly colored costume that sparkled. So, I stamped the image with dye ink, colored it in with Copic markers and then used a glue pen to add glitter. After I fussy cut the image, I knew I had the focal point of a card.

The sentiment, Perhaps You Were Just 1 1/2 x 2 1/4 #7834 from Viva Las Vegastamps!, seemed like a good companion to the unicycle lady. The molded faces could become part of a crowd, watching her perform. I found a vintage crowd photograph, printed it in sepia tones, and painted the faces a similar shade using an acrylic wash.

I love texture and wanted the bottom of the card to look like the dirt floors I had seen in circus rings. I had saved some sawdust from a previous project (I save everything! LOL) and applied it using 1" wide Miracle Tape and it gave me just the looked I was hoping for.

With all the components complete, I assembled the card. I used pop-dots to lift up the circus ring wall from the crowd, so they would appear to be sitting behind the wall. I used pop-dots again for the unicycle lady so she would be in front of the wall. It took a double layer of pop-dots where he body was above the crowd (versus the wall).

I hope you enjoy this card and it doesn't give you any nightmares about your past at the circus!

You can see my other projects on my blog on the Create & Craft website.

Happy crafting!
Joe Rotella

Winner and Day 4

As promised I am posting the amazing tags our Design Team made during the 12 tags of Christmas.  We had some amazing blog candy too.  We all hope you played with us.. 

This is all the tags from our Day 4.  

Now it's time to tell you who won this amazing step of stamps 

Leslie Rahye

please contact Terri Sproul to claim your prize

terri@ultimatescrapbookretreat.com

Now for more exciting news...

WE had so much fun doing this hop - WE are doing it again on New Years Day

We hope you join us on Jan 1, 2012 for another amazing hop with our Design Team

There will be LOTS of Blog Candy.. 

Merry Christmas

Terri Sproul  

Day 3 of our 12 tags of Christmas Hop

Here is a recap of Day 3 Tags our team made during our 12 tags of Christmas Blog Hop.  I will be post the winner on Sunday along with another set of tags.  We hope your enjoy our blog hop and your join us for the next one.  We are doing a Jan 1st - New Years Blog Hop with the whole team and LOTS of blog Candy.  We are starting the New Year out right - by thanking all of our customer and followers to an amazing blog Hop with amazing prizes - did you see the "s" - yes we are giving LOTS of prize away on Jan 1st 2012.  WE hope your join us...

Again another amazing set of tags.  Thanks again and stop back by on Sunday to see who won the blog candy...  I am so excited...

Terri Sproul

Inside, Looking Out at Who's Naughty and Who's Nice

The blog hop was so fun, I used Santa with his List from plate 1363 again!  The card is a 3 fold card and I cut a window so that Santa can peek out! 

A simple tag was cut from Creative Paperclay® and a hole punched with an awl so that I could attach it to the card.  I used part of the word "Santa's Coming" from plate 1363 as well. 

The inside is a similar motif to the outside.  I cut a stretched scallop and after I colored Santa, I cut him and adhered him on top of the scallop with Miracle Tape.  "Have a Blessed Christmas" is also from plate 1363. 

Extras are holiday stickers.  This plate is a very versatile plate filled with wonderful images to mix and match to create a plethora of cards, tags, and vinette's for Christmas.

VLVS Images:

Christmas Plate 1363

Next weekend is Christmas - I wanted to do this card to send everyone a greeting  to say have a Blessed Christmas! 

VLVS is having a 20% off Christmas Sale and FREE SHIPPING.  Ongoing until December 26th!!!  Just key in "Holidays" in the coupon spot at checkout.  Santa has been good to us all this year...so pick up some fabulous images to add to your VLVS collection.

See you January 1st for the New Year's Blog Hop!  Double blog candy for all!!!

Take care, Lea

Day 2 of the 12 Tags of Christmas

I want to take some time to THANK everyone who came to our 12 Tags of Christmas Blog Hop.  We had an amazing turn out.  Special "THANK YOU" to all of you.  

Our Design team is truly amazing...  I put out a challenge for them to make 12 tags out of one plate of stamps and they did me proud.  I will be posting the collection of tag the team make - when they are not posting you a brand new project - They do that on Mondays, Wednesday, Friday and a few Saturdays.

Anyways, here is Day 2 of the tags the team made using plate #1363.  

This is the set of stamp our team used and was our blog candy. 

I hope you play along with our hop

Next TEAM hop will be Jan 1st

There will be amazing blog candy for that Hop.  hope your join us!  

Are these just amazing or what... 

Thanks for stopping by

Terri Sproul

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

  

12 Tags of Christmas - Day One

In case you didn't follow our 12 Tags of Christmas, here are the six Tags for Day One... each Tag had to use at least one image from our Plate #1363.



My Favorite Fruitcake Recipe!

For my Viva Las Vegastamps! design team post this time, I wanted to use this funny fruitcake recipe stamp that I have admired for a while now. I used Spellbinders dies for the mat, recipe card, and cake platter that my fruitcake is on. I used a Sizzix embossing folder to add the dot texture to my mat and then used Colored Sakura Crystal Lacquer to highlight some of the dots so that they would accent the pieces of fruit in the fruitcake.

Now here is the fun part! This month, we got to try out a product called Creative Paperclay. I used the paperclay to make my fruitcake and I was surprised at how much like regular clay it is. I expected it to be more like paper pulp, but it was very easy to use, like real clay. Here is how I made the fruitcake:

First, I drew a circle on a piece of waxed paper. Then I put red, green, yellow and orange rhinestones all over my circle. After that, I started putting small pieces of clay over the stones and I pressed the clay down until I could feel the stones. Once I covered all of the stones, I rubbed them to get the clay off the tops of them. Then I trimmed off the excess clay, while also trimming the waxed paper at the same time with a craft knife. I shaped and evened it out to my liking and then put it away to dry over night. The next day, the edges had curled up a little, but it was still a little wet. I gently pressed it flat and smoothed out any tiny cracks with a wet paintbrush. The next day, I painted it with some watered down brown acrylic paint to give it that "bake until golden brown" look. Normally I wouldn't recommend using the waxed paper, but in this project, it gave the bling something to stick to, and also added strength since my project was very thin. Other embellishments you could make this way, could be things like pizza, cookies or a wreath. You can see other projects for Creative Paperclay on their blog by clicking here.

Feel free to stop by the Create & Craft blog to see all of my Viva Las Vegastamps! posts in one place as well as projects from the rest of our team. Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to come back every Monday, Wednesday & Friday to see the newest posts!

Viva Las Vegastamps! and Creative Paperclay® Ornaments

This month the Viva Las Vegastamps! design team was challenged to use Creative Paperclay® in their post!  I usually give home make ornaments as gifts to some of the people on my Christmas list and decided to make them with Creative Paperclay® this year!  For one stop shopping Creative Paperclay® is now available online at Viva Las Vegastamps! 

Work on a flat surface, a glass surface seems to work the best. Tip: I place a transparency on the glass surface to allow easy moving. Sorry you can't see the transparency, believe me it is there! Work with small amounts of Creative Paperclay®, first roll it into a smooth ball, then between the spacers roll out the clay.   For spacers I used 3 pieces of chip board taped together with Viva Las Vegastamps! Miracle Tape, making them about a 1/4 of an inch thick. The spacers help keep my clay a consistent thickness. While working with Creative Paperclay® be sure to keep the unused portion of the clay sealed or covered in plastic so it doesn’t dry out!

After rolling out the paper clay stamp your image in the clay.  Do this before you cut the clay.  If you stamp after cutting the clay you may distort the shape of the cut image.  Note: Once you use items from the kitchen with clay the tools should be used exclusively for clay or other craft projects in the future!

For my ornaments I used Viva Las Vegastamps! Swirls Plate 1333 and Santa Holly.

After stamping your image cut your shape, press hard so that you feel the glass surface below the cutters.  Tip: Gently pull the extra clay from around the cutters while the cutter is still in the clay.  Using the end of the paint brush put a hole in each ornament.

Halfway through the drying time turn your ornaments over.  Sand the rough edges gently with an emery board or fine sand paper.  For a sealed surface paint ornaments with a matte medium or gesso,  set aside to dry.

Paint your charms with acrylic paints or any other craft paint you may have around, set aside to dry.

With gold paint cover the ornament and then wipe the paint leaving the gold in the impression made by the stamps.

Set aside to dry. 

Add a bow to each ornament and 

a set is ready to give as a gift!

Close up of Holly Santa!

Supplies:

Viva Las Vegastamps! Holly Santa

Viva Las Vegastamps! Swirls Plate # 1333

Creative Paperclay®

Cookie cutters, 

Cutting surface-Glass cutting board 

Transparencies

Roller 

Spacers made from Chipboard

Paint brush

Emery-board

Gesso or Matt medium

Acrylic Paints

Ribbon

REMEMBER to join the monthly Viva Las Vegastamps!

 the Theme for December  

is CHRISTMAS! 

One winner’s card will be featured on our Blog and the receive a $25.00 Gift Certificate to shop at Viva Las Vegastamps! 

Find out more HERE... 

The 12 Tags of Christmas Blog Hop is in its 7th day plenty of time to hop along with us and win some BLOG CANDY... 

Start the Hop on Terri Sproul's Blog.  CLICK HERE!