WIP: Libélula (dragonfly) Stamp Carving

You might have noticed that one of my fave creatures with wings is a dragonfly. It was ages ago when I used my carving tools last and they were calling to me again. So last week I finally sat down and did this carving.

And let me tell you it felt SO GOOD to get those tools out again! I worked at this one for about an hour and a half (I think) and it was really fun and relaxing. The stamp size is about 8x6 cm and I purposely wanted a larger dragonfly to use for a mono printing idea I had.

 

This is the first set of prints I made and I was really happy with the design at the first go! All I had to do was clean up the edges around the image and the stamp/ soft lino block carving was done.

And here she is, Libélula (is Spanish for Dragonfly for which I have my IG friend Ana to thank ) I'm super happy with the result and it's such a great feeling to finally make something you had in your head a while! I already am using this one for some art journal pages and postcards swaps.

Carving this has inspired me to do a "bug series" so I hope to share more carvings with you in the near future :)

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great day!

Mailart Monday: Trick or Treat?

Seeing the time is nearly there, I thought it would be fun to do a little Halloween Mail Art tutorial for this week's Mailart Monday.

I started off by using a piece of 100gms white A4 paper and used it to blot off some excess orange and violet ink for another project I was working on. Purple and orange are in my eyes the best color combo for this time of year! I have a few envelope templates and I used this wooden one from a Japanese brand which makes the 6x4 inch envelop when folded.

After I traced the template with a pencil, I took the heads stamp from Stampotique Originals and stamped it on the page a few times inked with Kaleidacolor Autumn Leaves. I made sure I stamped the reverse on the lower part seeing that is going to be the back side folded up. Oh and I used a bit of post it tape to mask the part where the address is going to be before I went stamping :)

The I took a couple of more stamps which fit the theme, from Inkadinkadoo and the focal point was going to be Linda by Daniel Torrente.  She is naturally spooky and fit well with the Trick or Treat theme.

I then cut out the envelope and added more color to it by using the blending tool and dusty concord and spiced marmalade distress inks. Took away the mask and doodled around the space to mark off that address border.

The I stamped Linda again on a piece of sticker paper, colored her in with complementary colors in Letraset Promarkers and adhered her to her spot on the envelope after cutting her out. Then folded the envelope and glued the flaps in place and called it done!.

The end result: this is the front. Linda pops out and the address block is definitely light enough for writing but also distinct with that splash of color in it.

And the back; I kept it simple and mysterious by just adding a few stamps and making sure the heads were visible through the lighter spots. When the address is written on I am planning on applying some varnish to seal it so it travels safely to its destination. 

The creative people at the Stampotique Desigener's Challenge have a lot more examples for fun Halloween mail projects and I am entering this for their fun Halloween fortnight challenge.

Also entering this one for the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge for October with the Halloween theme

Next week monday it is actually Halloween, do you have anything special planned? Either way, hope you have a fantastic week and thanks for stopping by!

Namasté

Mail Art Monday - tribute to David Bowie

Exactly three weeks ago the news hit that David Bowie passed away. It really seemed like the whole world was grieving this loss. I sure was and I have shared my process of this grief with you here. A weekend later I made a limited edition run prints of 12 that I put up for sale on my personal FB page to share with friends. They were gone within a day. For the envelopes I made customized stickers and I sent 12 pieces of mail art the following monday.

Prints made with archival chalk versamark ink on A4 white matte sticker paper.

It was quite a process coloring and cutting them all out, but the result is very pretty, if I may say so myself.

All prints carefully packaged and ready to be mailed out. I love seeing the reactions of my friends when they get them in the mail. A few of them from instagram

My friend Tarah (@missthundercat) is talented stamp carver. 😻 She made this stamp last week, just for herself. But then kindly shared some prints among her friends.⚡❤ What a wonderful expression of emotions. #artwork #davidbowie #stampcarving

Een foto die is geplaatst door Ama (@missminoes) op 20 Jan 2016 om 8:54 PST

My friend @missthundercat is truly amazing, she hand carved this Bowie Ziggy stardust rubber stamp and create lovely A5 cards. I bought one of them, I just love it! Thank you Tarah!

Een foto die is geplaatst door R a q u e l (@marionbcn) op 21 Jan 2016 om 12:19 PST

Bowie sitting amongst my records. A beautiful print by my talented friend @missthundercat . Proud to have it ♡ #davidbowie #bowie #vinyl

Een foto die is geplaatst door Orit (@oritphoto) op 24 Jan 2016 om 10:53 PST

Due to requests from others whom missed out on the first run of the print, I might make more Limited Edition runs of this carving to sell in the near future. If you are interested in a print, please follow my facebook page for updates. 

Have a great week!

namasté

Three times a poppy!

As you can probably tell from my blog back ground, I like poppies. I like them a lot. Ever since I saw the poppy fields in the Wizard of OZ. They are such beautiful flowers and I love the symbolism of them. Recently I found a wonderful clear stamp by Joy Crafts Silhouette Poppies and I was so inspired I created a few cards with them right away.

The poppies stamp you can see on the top right corner. I stamped it first on a white background (actually on the envelope it came with) to see the details and then on water colored backgrounds I made.A few close ups of the end results.

This was stamped on the envelope to test. I colored the poppies in with pro markers and used blue fountain pen ink to color the background (diluted Iroshizuku Kon Peki ink). The saying 'Each flower is a soul opening up to nature" is from the flower rubber stamp set I got from The Octopode Factory a long while ago. Seemed like a good fit for this card. I had bought a bunch of 'frame note cards' in a sale lot and I just ripped the colored image off the envelope, placed it the way I liked it in the frame and sealed the back of the image with some thicker tracing paper. The border stamp is from Dylusions and I accentuated it with a copper metallic gell pen.

These two are 'day and night' cards. The background is Maruman watercolor paper from Zuan B5 Sketchbook and I used Pelikan aquarell watercolors to paint on them. The paper holds up REALLY well, no bleed through or warping! The 'day' card I used diamine shimmertastic inks to color the flowers with and on the 'night' card I splattered some of that shimmertastic ink after I colored the flowers with promarkers. I like the effect it gives on both cards. I matted the cards on black card stock and then fixed them onto a red double sided note card. 

It's definitely a fun and versatile rubber stamp image to play around with. I used a few other joy craft stamps in my watercolor cards in combination with Diamine shimmertastic inks before. Definitely a fan of that flower/letters series. I will send these cards to people who can use a 'pick me up' .

Hope this inspires you to create some cards this weekend :)

Thanks for stopping by! 

namaste

Craft review- Teresa Collins Stampmaker

I had written this years ago, but I still wanted to post it. It's a craft machine I had wanted for so long, used lovingly and then got discarded. I wanted to take it up and use again and found this review I had written about it from years ago. With a few adjustments, I decided to still post it because it can be helpful to others whom have (or want) this machine. 

A while back (so a few years back actually) my lovely husband gave me a really wonderful birthday present, the Teresa Collins stamp maker by Imagepac/Photcentric. And what this machine can do? Basically turn any image you have into a clear stamp using photocentric UV light technique! So naturally as stamp carvers, we were really excited to get this machine to see if we could turn our stamp making into the next level. After seeing TC reviews on you tube I knew I wanted it! And I can tell you I was so excited to test it out, as it looked so pretty and sleek and so easy to make stamps with! We ordered this off a Dutch website and after several months of waiting, the machine finally arrived. I was in ready to make some stamps…but first had to pass a few hick ups. 

First being, the machine was not made with an EU compatible plug, you have to buy a plug converter for it. Our machine came from the UK so we didn’t have any problems with the voltage the machine uses, as that is basically the same, so we just had to buy a simple plug for the EU-NL socket. But be aware that if you are in Europe and the machine comes from the USA, you need to buy a whole other convertor to make it work with the electrical system. My poor heatgun that I bought from a vacation in the USA comes to mind. I put in just a simple plug, turned on my heatgun and poof the thing broke instantly huffing a cloud of smoke. So my first tip would be, chose to buy a machine compatible to your country’s electric voltage network. We couldn’t actually choose ours, but by a happy coincidence, it was a UK machine… thankfully! NB: Photocentric now offer the machine with a EURO plug, so problem sloved!

So when the correct plug was fitted, instructions read and understood, an image I wanted scanned and printed… and I was ready to rock that machine! But sadly my first few tries, actually my first 5 tries were a total DUD (yes a whole pack of mini A8 gel packs… wasted!) I was so heart broken! They made it looks so easy on the videos, why in the world couldn’t I get my stamps out right?! I was really doubting my ability to work with the machine! My first stamp was a complete solid block, the second one had a little imprint on it but still solid, the 3 stamps after that did have an outline of the stamp I wanted but still very blobby looking and just didn’t stamp right. I really thought I had done everything to the letter of the instructions! So utterly devastated I was thinking ‘well this isn’t for me, I can’t work with this machine, it’s a waste of money!’ so I put it away and didn’t look at it for a whole month. 

The failed stamps - booo!

My husband, who really encourages me in all my craft endeavors, told me not to give up so quickly, and that it SHOULD work the way it was advertised, so chin up and look for help/support sites to see if you can fix the problem (and I really didn’t like the idea that his gift was starting to collect dust in the closet …). And so I did! I found an excellent support group on yahoo about the TC stamp maker. It was founded by someone who purchased the stampmaker and had some similar issues. There were photocentric/imagepac staff members on that group too for help and advice. And really, if it wasn’t for them, the machine would still be in my closet & not being used!! So extra special thanks to Linda Warholl from photcentric UK who contacted me, helped me with the issues and even sent me replacement gelpacks for the ones I effed up! Top notch customer service!!! 

And now I hear you ask, how did they help me? Well, they made me understand what I did wrong with my first few tries, how I could correct the problem and now I’m using the machine am making kick ass stamps in indeed 15 minutes tops! No no, I assure you, they did not pay me to tell you this ;) So what went wrong with my first few tries? One thing was for certain, that not the whole instruction package was included with my machine. Just one printed sheet with instructions. So that was a bit of a downer to find that out! But I found the whole instructions on the support group, with images to explain. One thing I didn’t do was ‘flash’ the gelpack for 3 counts and you also really have to stick with the timing of it all. The golden tip was that EVERYTHING but the image you wanted to be made a stamp out of needed to be blacked out. So make sure that no light from the sides is filtering through, because that will fill your pack solid. Yes, I had light strips filtering through my first few tries. Also my negative wasn’t printed dark enough (had printer stripes in them) so the UV light shone through and filled the pack solid. 

The second try went a whole lot better. The time stamps are the negatives provided with the stampmaker itself. The lady is a drawing from a sheet of  stationery I have. It's The Swirly Girly I based my hand carved stamp on. I scrubbed too hard on her hair and that came off, but the tries after that, you have a feel of how hard you need to scrub.

To avoid further problems like this in the future, I made a checklist for myself and maybe you’ll find it useful as well;

• Leave a dark aria around your image (at least 1cm) if you use photoshop (your canvas size set to 13 cm by 9 cm but the image must be no bigger than 11 by 8 cm) The imagepac negative printing program (which is on the CD that comes with the machine) already provides this for you. I prefer to print the image straight from photoshop, because the imagepac program sometimes deforms the image to a smaller scale, and sometimes it also pixellates the picture. With photoshop you can work on a higher resolution that can avoid pixellation. 
• Print your stamp negative set on grayscale, setting on photo and paper choice ‘Epson matte’ for a smooth printed out solid black negatives (for Epson inkjet printer SX100 series) 
• Make sure no light comes through from the sides between your gelpack and negative sandwich inside the clamp. 
• Flash the pack for 3 COUNTS not 3 seconds
• Be exact with timing, so 3 minutes exposure exactly (use a stopwatch/timer on your phone)
• Wash the gel off with a soapy brush in luke warm water, firm but gently with circling motions. I really, really hate the gel! It sticks, it smells and it’s just so hard to get rid of off your hands. Wear gloves! Use enough liquid soap! Keep scrubbing until all the bits patches of gel are out, but not too hard!
•  Expose the cleaned image in a tray with water for 2 minutes (non exact exposure is okay in this step but never longer than 3-4 minutes) – the longer you expose in this step the less ‘tacky’ the stamp will be.
• Gently dry your stamp and cut off the excess around the image.
• Adhere cling mount on the back and the stamp is ready! The kit provides a stamp handle and cling for that handle, but I prefer to just adhere UM cling mount to my stamps so I can use them on other blocks – not a fan of the big handle of the acrylic block provided... The stamp can be a bit too tacky at first, but like every cling stamp, you have to ‘break them in’ a little. You can also use an eraser and rub gently on the surface of the stamp. Dab it clean with a damp cloth and it should be less tacky. 

And there you have it! After initial trial of error and well… terror, I managed to make some pretty awesome stamps from my own carved and edited images! Some of them are so detailed and have quite fine and delicate lines. And I can indeed make them within 15 minutes! See another in depth review by Rachel Johnson of Swap-Bot here. 

I made these supernatural themed stamps for this specific themed swap.

Hope you found this review useful!

Thanks for stopping by!

Weekend activities: Tilburg Penshow and SeinFestijn Haarlem

TGIF! Time to relax and plan some fun things to do for the weekend! Need some recommendations for what to do? Here are my picks :)

This saturday is the 27th Penshow held at the Natuurmuseum in Tilburg. This will be my 3rd time visiting the show and I am curious what I'll be finding there this year...

 

On Sunday there is a food and Lifestyle market in Haarlem, called the Seinfestijn. In April we went there as well and did this amazing hand lettering workshop at Papier Atelier.

An impression of one of the previous edition

Looks like fun right? It sure was :) 

Maybe We'll see you either in Tilburg or Haarlem this weekend? 

Either way, have a great one!

namaste

Printemps Lily - Lost Coast Designs Monthly Challenge

The sun is starting to give some warmth, the skies are clearer, the flowers are blooming and birds are sounding happier... could it be that spring is finally here? 

It is just in time for the monthly challenge at Lost Coasters Reviewers blog, as this month's theme is spring.  I made a card which I called 'Printemps Lily'.

Printemps is the French word for spring. 

The stamp I used here is Lily from the art nouveau / art deco section at Lost Coast Designs. This theme just really fits her, I think. I colored her in with pro-markers and matted the piece a while back (you can see that whole process here). Recently I was cleaning up a section of my craft room, I found this piece again and felt I should really make something with it. The result is the card you see here. Things I added are prima flowers with pearl drop accents, negative butterfly in green scrapbook paper, accented the sided of the matted piece with green pearl rub and added the sentiment stamp 

'The nature of this flower is to BLOOM' 

which is by the Octopode Factory. 

This sentiment fits right with the feel of Lily I was going for here.

Show is your springtime zest and join us with this Monthly Challenge at Lost Coasters Reviewers. Read the rules on how you can win a 10$ gift certificate to spend on Lost Coast Designs or Carmen's Veranda by participating in the challenge.

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste