fairytale – Stamped Smiles

Hello friends! It’s almost Halloween, can you believe?! Today is actually hubby & my 23rd wedding anniversary that we are out celebrating and hanging out having fun right now. So the theme of my page was designed to fit with this in mind today.

Hard to believe that the end of the month is here and also time for a monthly Art Journal page and collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper), so please check out her blog for more inspiration too! We’re trying to get creative by using up our never-ending stash piles! So here’s my Art Journal inspiration with the “SMASH OUR STASH” October prompt of “UNUSED MEDIA from stash” :

As I was thinking of this month’s prompt, I was checking through my media to see if there was something that I had NOT used at all yet, but for the most part, I have. So then my thoughts turned to what I haven’t used in quite a while. So after going through bottles and bottles of liquid watercolor…and throwing several away that were no good…I used some colors to create the background on my page using a 6″x9″ sheet of Bristol Smooth Watercolor paper with pre-punched holes. I added drops of the watercolor on my glass mat, sprayed with water and “smooshed” the paper to create the look I wanted and let dry. I wanted the smooth texture because I knew I was going to stamp over top.

Another media I haven’t used in a while is the Faber Castel Gelatos, which was used to create the moon. I took a circle scrap, traced around it and then scribbled on a white and shimmer white gelato with my finger and rubbed into the areas I wanted. I also pulled out several of the Lavina Stamps which were all used to create the scene over my watercolor background. I had these stamps for quite some time, but have never used any of these images. So I stamped stars at the top, the moon, the castle, the stage coach and the tall grasses. BEFORE all the stamping, I did use some gold paint to create splatters at the top.

After stamping the images, I took some torn scrap paper and sponged in the “ground” areas for my images.

For the quote, I printed out the “in fairytales” on my computer, added a die cut “Believe” sentiment cut from some gold glitter cardstock and attached it above the computer generated wording. I tore around this sentiment and sponged in some dark blue around it. I finished off the page with some gold Stickles around the edges and drops randomly over the star areas. I also took a glitter brush pen to add some sparkly highlights to the castle, ground areas and stage coach.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my AJ page today & been inspired in some way. Please check out Carol’s page for more inspiring fun! Thanks so much for dropping in!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Fairytales, Folklore and Fables (Mine is based on the Fairytale Cinderella)

Hello friends! Welcome to May! Yay! I’m so happy that my flowers are finally up and blooming! It always brings a smile to face when I see the coloful blooms!

~Today’s post is a pre-scheduled post as I am away at our annual “Painting Divas” Craft Retreat with some local friends. I am teaching a class today which is why I’ve been a bit MIA around social media and my blog as I’ve been preparing for it. I promise that I will share photos of our event later at the end of this week.~

Today is the 1st of the month which also means the start of a new monthly challenge over the 2 Crafty Critter Crazies challenge blog! All you have to remember is that you need to use a critter somewhere on your creation…that’s it! The sponsor we have for this month is Fabrika Fantasy:

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I have used this adorable digital image kindly provided to us from our sponsor called Flying Elf. I love how that dragon is looking up at her! 🙂

After coloring her in, I’ve taken a cloud stencil and sponged in some clouds behind her to give the appearance of being in the air! I’ve used the ink foam blending tool and distress inks for that. I then cut out the image panel with a cross-stitch rectangle die from Lawn Fawn and then used a cloud border die also from LF to cut out along the bottom that also adds to the “cloudy” feel of the design. I stamped a sentiment from a My Favorite Things stamp set.

I wanted to add a “magical” element to my design, so I found some really cool cosmos looking papers from my stash and added that as a layer underneath the image panel which I popped up a bit with foam tape. I then added a purple shimmer ribbon with a bow around the bottom portion and layerd it over a piece of gold mirror cardstock and then an addtional piece of black cardstock that was layered over a white A2 sized top folding card base. Lastly, I added some black pearls in the upper right of the image panel.

Here you can see a closer view of the coloring I did on the image. I’ve colored it in with my Copic markers. Then on her belt, the trim on her boot and the middle of the dragon bridle, I colored those in with a gold gel pen. Such a cute image!

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Here’s a better view where you can see the shine from the gold mirror cardstock. It helps to add a “magical” feel to the design I think.

Please do hop on over to the 2 Crafty Critter Crazies challenge blog and have a look at what the rest of the design team has come up with for inspiration! Get our your critter products/images and come enter our challenge this month! We can’t wait to see what you come with!

Thanks so much for dropping by! I appreciate you being here with me! Hope to catch up with you all at the end of this week to see what you’re up to!

I will be back tomorrow with another pre-scheduled post and something new!