Rainbows!!

Rainbows are a sign of hope and a signal of all things happy. So sometimes, if I'm feeling blue, I paint a little rainbow or two. 

I got the STAMPlorations Art Marks 2 set in the mail this week and fell in insta-love with it. I looked at the scribbly little stamps and immediately was drawn to one that looked like a rainbow. 

I know they are just a bunch of innocuous little marks, but all I see are possibilities!

So I stamped this one, and masked it, then started a stack of rainbows. Please don't mind the messy stamp block - that's my real life. ;) 

I used my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors on these because I wanted a nice vibrant color. I looooooove how saturated these watercolors are!

After I finished my rainbows, I stamped an equally graphic retro sentiment (STAMPlorations Big Greetings).

I'm linking this up to STAMPlorations Anything Goes CAS challenge with the optional twist of Lemon Yellow. 

I also had this piece of rainbow watercolor paper I'd created earlier, and couldn't resist throwing together this scrappy, bright card with the xxxx stamps!

Paper Shelter has a Happy Colours challenge going on and I definitely think this applies!

Lotsa Layers Spring Card

Do you ever just sit at the craft table, find a pile o' scraps, wave a wand and magically have a card appear? 

... yeah... me either. 

But! By some force of wizardry, that's exactly what happened yesterday! 

As I've mentioned, I've been playing along with some of the challenges released by Paper Anthology's Creation Staycation. One of 'em caught my eye last night - Black, White and Tan. 

Why did it catch my eye? Because I had a big pile of black, white and tan scraps from my last cardmaking class sitting right in front of me. I always love mixing and matching patterns together - especially if they SHOULDN'T belong. But tell me something doesn't belong and I will prove you wrong! 

I grabbed a few scraps and put them on top of each other and literally designed this card in 30 minutes. That NEVER happens to me. Usually I spend 2 hours or more agonizing over a design our swip swapping paper and second guessing every decision. 

I stamped flowers from the Trendy Spring Blooms STAMPlorations set using a tan light tan color. (I know it's out of stock right now. Sad face.) Amazingly - that's the only stamping I did on this little number. I added a little bit of glitz and glitter using a Wink of Stella pen, and finished it but adding some ivory embellies to the center of my flowers. 

I'm so happy with how this one came out, and LOVE that I even got to use the binding scraps from watercolor paper! Reduce, reuse, recycle, rebuy every kind of paper you can find. ooops.... that last one is true, though. #guilty. 

Also linking this up to the Never-Ending Anything Goes Challenge at STAMPlorations. 

Thanks for popping by! It's been fun to be back in the bloggy world. 

Color Burst Butterflies

Not everything is bad about this crisis. Hear me out. 

All over the world, people are coming together in unique ways. Zoom rooms, Skype chats, FaceTime - people of all ages are getting in on a real technological revolution. And we're finding out just how many of those meetings could have been emails after all. 

I'm so pleased to say that tonight, the technological revolution allowed me to "meet" one of my bloggy idols, Lauren Bergold of ...all the GOOD blog names were taken. I've followed her for years and gushed over all her amazing cards. Her instagram account is my absolute favorite because she's just a one-woman explorer of all things colorful. 

As I said on my last blog post, I've been playing along with some of the challenges Paper Anthology has released on their Facebook page. And they also also do nightly Zoom calls! So this North Dakota girl had fun crafting away in isolation, while getting to chat with some amazing crafters from New Jersey. 

I decided to play along with the You're not the Emboss of me challenge. 

Since I was feeling especially Springy (even though it definitely snowed today *facepalm*), I pulled out these gorgeous butterflies from the STAMPlorations Trendy Butterflies 2 set along with some classy gold embossing powder. 

I used mixed media paper with the sole intention of breaking out the vivid loveliness of Ken Oliver Color Bursts. 

I dipped my paintbrush into the water and wet the paper before sprinkling on the powders. 

Then I used a damp paintbrush to spread the powders. In order to create a gradient with watercolors, I rinsed out the paintbrush and then pulled out the color along the edge. Repeat the rinsing, and continue to pull the color out by running a wet brush along the edge. 

These are the colors I used for my creation and I think they're lovely. I was just going to use one, but the owner of Paper Anthology, Elizabeth, told me to use at least two colors, probably three. Boy, was she ever right. See? The magic of technology at work. 

I stamped the butterflies again on some vellum so I could do an overlay and add a little bit of dimension. 

Ta-daaaa! I finished this little lovely with a gold border and an embossed sentiment from Verve (now retired, sadly). 

I'm going to end this bliggity blog with a little PSA - support your local stamp and papercraft store right now because they absolutely need it in order to survive! Paper Anthology is a prime example. They are currently shut down now due to shelter in place mandates, and that has cut off all source of income. They've created some classes in a kit that they will mail right to you! 

Also linking this up to the current STAMPlorations Theme and Sketch Challenge, where I used their theme of Stamps and Flight. 

Sailing Away

Hello lovelies! 

Week four of social distancing. I'm doing far better than I was two weeks ago. No shower crying and TONS of house projects being done. 

I've loved seeing how all of my artist friends and cardmaking friends are chugging along in creative land and using this time to create beautiful things in the midst of chaos. 

And I love how all the crafting companies are coming together to build community. One such company is Paper Anthology. They're giving four challenge prompts per day and hosting nightly zoom calls! You can participate in some or all of their challenges. 

 

One of the challenges today especially caught my eye. Can you tell why? I dusted off my Distress Inks and even threw in a Distress Oxide and used the smooshing technique to create a watery background full of inky depth. 

After everything dried, I added in a little bit of Picket Fence Distress Spray Stain (don't mind the terribly messy bottle - inky fingers are a real thing). 

I stamped a ship from the STAMPlorations True North set in Blueprint Sketch. 

 One of the reasons I like Distress Inks so much is because you can use them in so many ways - like watercoloring! I just wet my brush and pulled in the blue stamped edges to add some shading. 

 Then I smooshed some Vintage Photo Distress Ink onto a craft mat and picked it up with my paintbrush to color in the woody part of the ship.

I made some waves using the STAMPlorations A Ton of Fun stamp set and then added sentiment to finish it all up.  

I'm hoping to join in one of the Zoom calls on Sunday so maybe I'll see some of your smiling faces there!

Quarantine Schmorantine

Hellooooooo my bloggy friends. Ope. Hold on one sec. 
..
....
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Ok I'm back. Sorry. I had to shake the rust off my blog. 

As you may have realized, I definitely have taken a hiatus from the bloggy world of cardmaking to focus on my mixed media canvas art business (you can see what I've been up to on my Instagram @damselofdistressed). 

But the thing is - the world is changing. And right now this Extrovert with a capital "E" is holed up practicing some social distancing and canceling all my plans and meetings. My two little nieces, who live in my house with me and their mama, just came back from a trip to Florida so they are quarantining for 14 days and I packed one rolly suitcase of crafty supplies and headed to stay at my boyfriend's apartment until they're cleared. 

So what's a girl to do with all her unexpected free time besides turn back to her first love of cardmaking and blogging. Can't wait to check in on some of you and see what you've been up to. 

For my card today, I decided to break out my STAMPloration stamps and do some watercoloring. I have limited supplies, so CAS is what's in in my world right now. Luckily STAMPlorations has an Anything Goes Clean and Simple card challenge every month with an optional theme of using light blue. 

I didn't choose the optional color twist, but I DID choose some fresh Springy colors that made me feel especially happy. The flowers are all one stamp from STAMPlorations - the In Bloom: Floral Bliss Trio - so no tedious masking required. I embossed them in gold. 

Once I had watercolored everything (which honestly took soooooooo much longer than I remember. God bless the watercolor cardmakers of the world.) I sprinkled it with a little white Distress Spray Stain and then embossed an uplifting sentiment from the Buttercups and Butterflies set. 

Honestly, it felt so good to make a pretty card and get lost in a design for a couple of hours. Thanks for stopping by!

How are you all surviving this current global nightmare? 

Mixed Media Graduation Card

It's graduation season, and this year it seems like LOTS of my friends are graduating with their college degrees. Tomorrow I have >count them< THREE back-to-back grad parties. Which, of course means I need cards!

So I decided to take this month's Theme and Sketch challenge over at STAMPlorations and make some fancy dancy grad cards. 

If you're wondering how to play along in the STAMPlorations challenge, just use either the sketch OR the theme OR use both. You can make a card using any brand of stamps (although it's extra nice when you use STAMPlorations). 

For my design, I spritzed the back with a green Distress Spray Stain, flicked it with black Spray Stain to give it a little messier of a feel, and then stamped over that with some stamps from the Mixed Media Grunge set. 

The focal images aren't cupcakes (as you probably could tell by now). They're graduation caps from the Snarky Cap & Gown set. I'm always looking for good graduation sets and this one is awesome! It's designed by yours truly and if you order it you can get 20% off by using code STAMPGIRLBECCA at checkout. 

Last but not least, I die cut a big congrats twice and stacked them for a little bit of dimension. 

Thanks for popping by! I hope you'll come play along with us! 

Blackout Poetry 101

I've been teaching a workshops in my hometown of Grand Forks, North Dakota for a few years now and I've got one coming up at the Grand Forks Public Library. In honor of National Poetry Month, I'm teaching a mixed media blackout poetry class! 

Not familiar with blackout poetry? Essentially, you create a "poem" by blacking out words on a book page, leaving behind a specific selection of words. 

Here are some examples of my blackout poetry, which I also pair with artwork: 

RISE

LIMITLESS AND STRONG

WILD FOLK

So how do you go about finding a blackout poem? It can be a little more challenging than you'd believe. I'm going to break it down into simple steps. 

STEP 1: FIND A BOOK

I did say simple, right? 

When I first began creating blackout poetry artwork, I thought I'd go through every single page in the Odyssey and create a poem per page - sort of an epic tribute to a, well... epic poem. :) 

But it quickly became apparent that. not every page holds a poem (or at least not a poem that appeals to me, personally). 

Which brings me to 

STEP 2: FIND AN INTERESTING PHRASE ON A PAGE AND CIRCLE IT LIGHTLY IN PENCIL

I found the phrase "than a woman who imagines" and circled it lightly (more on that later) in pencil. Most of my artwork involves strong, female-centric themes, so I was specifically drawn to that phrase. 

STEP 3: START BUILDING YOUR POEM

Once you have your phrase, start building your poem by looking for other things that might complete the phrase or sentence. It's important as you're looking that you skim over the words and don't read full sentences of the book, or you'll start to get really sidetracked, really fast (at least if you're me). 

As I was building this poem, I thought, for a woman who imagines WHAT? and built "than a woman who imagines herself and all womankind" 

and all womankind WHAT?

Later on the page I found the word "wondrous". 

STEP 4: KEEP ADDING WORDS
AND ERASE WHERE NECESSARY

So. I had the latter part of my poem built "Than a woman who imagines herself and all womankind wondrous" but I had nothing to start my poem. I thought maybe I could build something along the lines of "There is nothing stronger than a woman who imagines herself and all womankind wondrous".

When you're working with a book page, however,
not all the words you're hoping for are going to
magically appear on the page. 

So I came across the words "the voice of" but that didn't pair with "than a woman who". To pair it correctly I need to erase the "than" from my phrase. Now I had something that worked "the voice of a woman who". 

As I searched for verbs that could begin my phrase, I found three and lightly circled them. "raising" "fighting" and "raised". 

Then, I looked for my bridge and found "with" which told me that I knew I needed to go with "fighting" because it was the only word that made sense. 

STEP 5: ERASE ALL UNNECESSARY WORDS AND HEAVILY BOX IN YOUR FINAL POEM

 My final poem reads "Fighting with the voice of a woman who imagines herself and all womankind wondrous". 

Pretty marvelous huh? 

Poems can be short or long. They can span the whole page or just part of it - the creativity is yours. 

For those here who are taking my class and finding this intimidating - have no fear! I will have a selection of poems for you to choose from, if you don't want to create your own. :) 

Happy creating!