Teatime Reflections – Layout by Asia King

To bring our fantastic sojourn at Tea Time to a close, we have a terrific tutorial from BlogStar Asia King. She’s here to dwell on her obsession with tea time and it’s accessories, plus she’s got a gorgeous project for you to make!

Hello Stampendous friends! Asia here and today I am inviting you for tea . When I first saw these awesome teapot stamps I squealed with joy, because I immediately knew what I would create with them. I have this thing you see, I just love vintage teapots and tea cups. I have a small collection at home which I am really proud of . So I made a scrapbook page to ‘celebrate’ my little teatime obsession…

As I also happen to have a set of beautiful teatime themed serviettes, I was able to include some napkin art in my layout. Can life get any better than this? lol .

Let’s begin.

Step 1:

- prepare your pattern papers, napkins and photos you’d like to scrap

- arrange your papers in layers and distress the edges

Step 2:

- adhere the papers to the base cardstock with re-positional adhesive. I find it difficult to work on a page when the elements don’t stay in place. With re-positional glue dots I can always rearrange the items if necessary

- cut out elements from your napkins and adhere to the page with Beacon’s Fast Finish medium

Step 3:

- for the banneer choose paper with a subtle background

- stamp cling Royal Teapot and cling Queen Teapot with brown ink

- colour the images

- cut out the teapot flags for the banner

- finish off with ribbons and pearls

Step 4:

- add a sprinkle of Shabby White Embossing Enamel and Vintage Lilac Embossing Powder over the main background paper

- heat from underneath to melt (if the layers are too thick, this is when re-positional glue stuff comes handy!)

Step 5:

- emboss a selection of chipboard shapes with Shabby White, Vintage Lilac and Aged Wine Embossing Enamel

Step 6:

- heat emboss ornate corner embellishments with Shabby White enamel

- make sure to wait until they cool down – it will take a bit longer that you might expect…

Step 7:

- to create a ‘secret’ journaling card you will need: old postcard, Tim Holtz Tag & Bookplates die, Rusty Hinge distress ink and blending tool, Coffee Archival ink, cling King Teapot and Luggage Labels

- die cut the tag from an old postcard

- ink the reverse side with Rusty Hinge ink

- spritz the background with coffee (I know, I know…but coffee works better than tea for this!). The ink will react with water and create a mottled effect

- stamp the King Teapot with Rusty Hinge

- stamp a chosen label from the Luggage Labels set with Coffee Archival

- add a sentiment. I found this sentiment long time ago and I’ve always loved it. Not sure who the author is, sorry. If you don’t have a favourite quote, make sure to check out our collection of the Digital Downloads - lots of WordArt inspiration there!

Step 9:

- stamp the cling Kettle On onto a patterned journaling card with Coffee Archival

- add bling to your photo and the rest of the page. I used Beacon’s Gem Tac to fix the gems in place

Step 10:

- adhere all the elements. Mount the photo onto 3d foam pads allowing sufficient room underneath for the secret journaling tag

- add final embellishments and flowers. For a shabby chic look alter the blooms by swiping Boss Gloss over the flowers and heat embossing them with Frantage enamels

To finish I also added a Ruffled Bloom. The flower centre was embellished with Champagne and Lavender glass glitter and little pearls.

That’s all for now! Thank you for popping in today and I hope you’ve enjoyed this little Tea Party . If you’d like to see more of the close up pictures, please visit my blog .

Big crafty hugs

Asia

New Elements and Project Life by Asia King

BlogStar Asia King is back again to introduce this week’s focus – the new Elements stamps in our April Catalog. These 5 images focus on a collage of several elements on a particular theme, the ones she’s chosen to use are the Typing Elements and Phone Elements. These are big stamps, meant to be the focus of most of a card.

W093 Typing Elements

W094 Phone Elements

Since Asia is in the UK, it takes a little longer to get our goodies over to her. So she’s also bringing the Elements into our Project Life event we did a couple weeks ago.  Suzanne Czosek also did a Project Life page that didn’t get included in the original event, so we’d love you to go look at it as well.

Hello Stampendous Friends! It’s time for another inspiration with Asia King . Today I am playing with Becky Higgins’ Project Life. My super talented DT Sisters have recently provided lots of inspirational eye candy for you with their Project Life pages – in case you missed it, be sure to check it out here. Project Life is all about celebrating your every day stuff so I decided to scrap about the thing that ‘happens’ to me every day….(except the weekends! lol) – my job. One of the things I love about crafting is that it’s a way of recharging my batteries after a challenging day. Crafting helps me to ‘leave’ my work behind. So you might say that scrapping about my work would defeat the object lol .

That’s why in my page I wanted to focus on the ‘little’ things I enjoy about my work place, like beautiful aubretias trailing down the wall nearby, sipping coffee from my ‘Best Wife in the World’ mug (given to me by my hubby, just to clarify!) or shopping in the new Polish deli shop at lunch time. But most importantly – all the lovely people I work with whose optimism and sense of humour really brighten my days .

Let’s start with the supply list:

Stamps: Cling Typing Elements, Cling Phone Elements, Cling Blossom Spray, Perfectly Clear Smashing Notes, Perfectly Clear Big Top Type, Perfectly Clear Vintage Lowercase, Perfectly Clear Vintage Uppercase.

Essentials: Aged Wine Embossing Enamel, Aged Ivory Embossing Enamel, Stamp N Bond powder, Sunflower Micro Glitter, White Detail Embossing Powder.

Other: Project Life page protector – Design A, coffee spritzed papers, alcohol ink markers, clear embossing ink, Sepia or Coffee Archival ink, Black Memento ink, ColorBox chalk inks, selection of photos.

1. Spritz some coffee over white card and allow to dry.

2. Cut two panels from the coffee card to the size of your journaling pockets.

3. Stamp the Typing Elements and the Phone Elements onto your journaling cards with brown ink.

4. Stamp Blossom Spray along the edges and in corners with black Memento ink.

5. Stamp the word ‘office’  in Google colours onto scrap coffee papers with a selection of alpha stamps and using ColorBox inks. Add to your photo some additional journaling and a ‘Google maps’ pin.

6. Colour the flowers with the alcohol ink markers.

7. Stamp an accent letter from the Vintage Uppercase set with clear embossing ink and sprinkle the image with Stamp N Bond powder. Warm the heat gun for a few seconds then heat the powder just until it melts.

8. Quickly sprinkle the image with the Sunflower Micro Glitter. Press the glitter with your fingers to aid bonding.

9. Fix the letter to your card with small staples.

10. Sprinkle your cards sparingly with Aged Wine and Aged Ivory embossing enamels. Heat the powders from underneath.

11. Stamp various expressions from the Smashing Notes set directly onto your photos using clear embossing ink. Heat emboss with White Detail embossing powder.

As you can see, these Elements stamps are just perfect for everyday life scrapbooking, especially documenting your office/working endeavours. Their vintage look adds a really quirky contrast against their modern ‘equivalents’ .

Thank you for popping in here today and I hope you enjoyed reading about this project. As always, I’d love to know what  you think!

Happy crafting!

Big hugs

Asia

How Does Your Garden Grow?

We’re Celebrating Flowers this Week!

Our April Catalog is just bursting with new blossoms of so many varieties for your Mother’s Day, Birthday, Get Well, Sympathy, and All Occasion stamping! Get ready to scrapbook your Spring Garden, or just enjoy a bouquet of gorgeous blooms. Our Design Team LOVES to stamp and color flowers, so you’ll see lots of terrific samples on their blogs this week! You can get yourself a whole garden full with our FREE Shipping offer! Add some of our new Digital Downloads, too! There’s a terrific set of sentiments perfect for all our new floral stamps – Flowery Phrases Digital Download

Among our new flowers are three brand new Jumbo Cling Flowers. We’re very excited to be able to continue to offer these with the FREE templates so that you can mask off the flower or it’s surroundings for all sorts of terrific effects. Here our own National Sales Manager  (and Decorative Painting guru) Tammie Wilson has created a fantastic wooden frame featuring the new Jumbo Bird of Paradise!

Jumbo Bird of Paradise Frame by Tammie Wilson

Jumbo Calla Lily Pail by Janelle Stollfuss

Jumbo Cling Rubber Peruvian Lily Scrapbook Page by Suzanne Czosek

BlogStar Tobi Crawford has created a fantastic tutorial today demonstrating a great use of the free template in each Jumbo Cling Rubber Flower set.  Check it out here:

Tobi Crawford

Then take a gander at these other great floral projects using new flowers from our April Catalog Release (be sure to leave some sweet comments on their blogs!)

Arty Carty 1

Arty Carty 2

Jennifer Dove

Kristine Reynolds

A bit of Housekeeping -

Did we mention FREE shipping? Enjoy FREE shipping on our website at www.stampendous.com on retail orders over $50 shipping to U.S. addresses until July 31! We can’t wait to see what you make with our products!! (be sure to share on our Facebook Page, Flickr Group, or email us at submissions@stampendous.com)

Winners – we’re still waiting for some winners of the Project Life event to contact us with mailing info. Hint: if you don’t want your prize, we know Barb Macaskill wants it!  Email your mailing info to submissions@stampendous.com so we can get your prizes on their way!

Remember tonight is the deadline to link to your Micro Glitter projects for our April Challenge. May’s Challenge is Fabulous Florals and starts Friday!

Fabulous Florals Galore!

Our new April Catalog is chock full of gorgeous flowers for you to use for any occasion! Birthday? – Flowers are great! Get Well? – Of course you’ll send flowers. Mom? – Yup! Flowers are her fave! Anniversary? – Of course! Flowers just say it all for every occasion! And our Design Team did an amazing job on the flowers in this catalog, too! (Plus, yeah, there’s FREE shipping on orders over $50 on our website! Get a whole garden full while you can!)

Jumbo Peruvian Lily by Cyndi Bundy

Spring Bouquet by Jennifer Dove

Fuschia by Kristine Reynolds

Snapdragons by Suzanne Czosek

The potential for gorgeous flowers is just unlimited! Our botanical fruit images are fantastic for any occasion as well. Check out the things our terrific Design Team have posted so far this week!

Jennifer Dove

Rhea Weigand

Kristine Reynolds

Cyndi Bundy

April Flowers bring….

Our April catalog is just chock full of gorgeous florals for spring, and our Design Team just loves to color flowers! But then we’ve always said, get yourself some good flowers and some great greetings, and you can make cards for any occasion.

First up today, then incomparable Suzanne Czosek made this fantastic card for our April Catalog using our Vase Bouquet, Seed Background, and Soaring Sentiments :

Bouquet Vase by Suzanne Czosek

This Vase with its spring bouquet proved to be one of the favorite items to color!  Here it is by Jennifer Dove:

Vase Bouquet by Jennifer Dove

and Kristine Reynolds made a fantastic project with it as well!

Vase Bouquet by Kristine Reynolds

You can see there are a lot of ways to go with this terrific stamp. Several of our Design Team will be  posting terrific florals all week this week. Fabulous Florals is also our May Challenge, so grab your flowers and wow us with your creations. Remember, if your flower images are Stampendous your entry will count twice. You can begin submitting your challenge projects on Friday.

Meanwhile, check out the additional, terrific flower creations on these team members’ blogs and leave them some love!

Suzanne Czosek

Jennifer Dove

Jamie Martin

Flower Power Layout – by Asia King

No need to adjust your computer monitors – yes, I am sharing a scrapbook page again . Hello, Asia here and today I’d like to share two tips with you. First, how to use Fran-tage ‘blinkies’ to embellish your layouts and second, printing your photos on a transparency for a cool 3D effect.

For my layout I stamped several images from the cling Jumbo Spring Bouquet, Violets and Single Butterfly sets. Some were heat embossed with the Gold Detail Embossing Powder and Aged Rose Embossing Enamel. After colouring the images with Inktense pencils I fussy cut them along the flowers from my K&Co patterned papers.

I wanted my photo to have a 3D look, as if ‘blending’ me and my sweet niece amongst all the flowers. To achieve that I printed the photo onto a printable acetate. Printing on transparencies has endless possibilities – just remember to print on the correct, rough side . I then matted my photo with a patterned paper before adhering it to the page on raised foam pads.

On my layout you can see a few different ways of using Fran-tage products for scrapbooking. The Fran-tage beauties do not have to be limited to the encrusted jewel technique. On my page I incorporated them in the following ways:

1. Using Leaf Green Colour Fragments and double sided sticky tape I created a border around one of the paper panels.

2. Next I swiped Boss Gloss sparingly over the green colour fragments and heat embossed it with Aged Rose Embossing Enamel.

3. I sprinkled layers of Champagne Crushed Glass Glitter and Rose Colour Fragments over Beacon’s 3in1 Adhesive  to create a frame for the photo and decorative corners.

Thank you for visiting today and I look forward to seeing you next week!

Big hugs

Asia

Project Life – Even more fun with Stampendous!!

Becky Higgins’ Project Life has taken the craft and scrapbooking world by storm. Lots of folks have embraced the commitment to simply scrapbook one single page or a two page layout of ordinary life per week. A way to celebrate all that is normal and right with your world, or even the special occasions or big events that happen with some normal life in between.  Here’s the Project Life Philosophy -

The Project Life system includes divided page protectors, books for them, and little, pre-printed cards you slip into pockets next to your photos. It’s designed to be easy and quick for folks who think they don’t have the time for more “creative” scrapbooking.

But what if you have lots of stamps, glitter, glue, and creativity? What if you love embossing, Fran•táging, and breaking out all those goodies you’ve collected? Yep, you can use the Project Life approach, too! You can embrace the trend, AND use your stash!!

We asked Becky Higgins to send us some Project Life Page Protectors, and we challenged our Design Team to see if they could document real, everyday life using Stampendous stamps and other products in the little compartments of the Project Life system! It was out of their comfort zone a bit, but we think you’ll be amazed as always at what they’ve created!  Pop over today to Janelle Stollfus’ blog and then come back tomorrow for some more inspiration. Be sure to leave comments and we’ll have LOTS of Project Life Page protectors to send to some lucky winners along with some cool Stampendous products for documenting your everydays and special days!

Janelle Stollfus

Mixed Media – NEW Stamps – Tobi Crawford

OK!! Here is something you are going to LOVE – along with a sneak peek at one of our NEWEST Jumbo Flowers, a mixed media canvas treat from the talented BlogStar Tobi Crawford !

Hello Stampendous! fans! It’s Tobi Crawford here with a mixed media project using some new stamps available at your favourite retailer very soon!!

1. I covered the 8.5×11 canvas with vintage dictionary paper and added some yellow orange paint on top. The blue paint splatters were done with a metallic paint by Lumiere (and the splatters are actually a stencil. Random but not!). Once the paint dried I stamped the images (Jumbo Calla Lilly) with Black Archival Ink.

2.   Paint in the image with watered-down acrylic paints. FYI, I watered down the paints so I could still see the stamped lines.

3.   Once the paint has dried, draw over the stamped lines with a black pen.

4.   Cover the images with the masks. (Templates are included FREE with the newest Jumbo Cling stamps!)

5.   Using a sponge dauber, go around the outside of the mask. This will add a shadow to the images.

Done! Doesn’t that look great with the shading??

My mind is reeling with ideas with the other jumbo stamps and I’ve got some fresh canvases ready and waiting! Thanks for joining me today!

[Just a quick Stampendous Note: You could also use the outside of the template and paint your flowers first. then stamp your flowers over the dry paint, and then mask them with the inside template before applying the background. This would save you having to trace the lines]

Quick and Easy Glitter Tip by Rhea Weigand

Hello, BlogStar Rhea here to bring you another quick and easy tip for Stampendous!  Use your 3D Glue Dots or regular Glue Dots to make glittery flower centers and embellishments.  This inspiration came from my “Bestie” Jennifer Dove who taught this card and oh so simple technique in a class.

This fun, classic flower image is Fresh Bloom, a Stampendous favorite.  You can find it at JoAnn’s and Hobby Lobby.  The sentiment is Beautiful Life.

Most folks buy and use the 3D Glue Dots in a roll.  I prefer to use them as Zots Singles from ThermoWeb.  For this flower center I used Teal Micro Glitter.

Pour out a little glitter and dab your glue dot.  I worked it around to really cover it.

For the smaller detailed dots I used the mini glue dots.

And there you have it!  Not only can you use them for flower centers but try using them for any type of embellishments.  Maybe instead of buttons.  Maybe do the mini’s on a ribbon to make it a sparkly polka-dot.  You can even take thin double sided tape and make a glitter strip instead of ribbon.

Thanks so much for visiting today!  Hugs – Rhea

Four seasons of Stampendous by Asia King – part 2

Hello Stampendous Friends, your favourite Foreign Correspondent Asia King here. Are you ready for part 2 of my Four Seasons concerto? If you missed part 1 with the close up pictures of my project, you can check it out here.

Well then, let’s begin. All my pages were made in the same way, I just used different stamps and embossing powders. For the purpose of this tutorial I will show you the steps for one of the pages – and it only seems right to feature my Spring page here .

Step 1 – here’s what you need:

- Fresh Bloom and Ruffled Bloom cling rubber stamps

- White and Black detail embossing powders – these can be found in the Detail Embossing Kit

- DCWV 8″x8″ Luxury Paper Stack – or any other pearlised papers

- clear embossing ink, water brush, Inktense pencils (Crimson & Cherry)/water colour pencils, Tim Holtz Vintage Cabinet Card die, heat gun

Step 2:

- die cut a Vintage Cabinet Card panel from the pearlised patterned paper, choosing the colour theme accordingly to the season

- using clear embossing ink stamp 3 flowers onto the die cut panel and 3 flowers onto scrap pieces of the same colour theme paper

- heat emboss with white and black detail powders

Step 3:

- using a waterbrush pick up some pigment directly from the pencil and colour in the black embossed flowers

Pearlised paper works great when colouring with Inktense pencils – the colour with ‘travel’ and blend beautifully without losing the ‘shine’ from the pearlised paper. It dries quite quickly but it will stay wet for long enough to blend it more if needed. And if you go over the line – no worries. Just use your waterbrush to lift off the excess colour.

Step 4:

- repeat the process to build layers of colour as desired.

Step 5:

- fussy cut the flowers

- add a blob of Beacon’s 3 in 1 craft glue in the centres of the flowers

- embellish the centres with pearls, Champagne Glass Glitter and Pearlised Mica Fragments (these can be found in the Pink Encrusted Jewel kit)

Step 6:

- swipe the edges of the card panel with clear embossing ink

- heat emboss with Aged Rose Embossing Enamel

- add accents with Pearlised Mica and Rose Fragments - you can use 3 in 1 glue as adhesive

Step 7:

- I like to seal my encrusted jewels with a drop of Beacon’s Fast Finish – it dries clear and it smells lovely, too!

Step 8:

- die cut 4 Cabinet Card panels from black cardstock and 4 panels from chipboard (or cereal box)

- glue black panels and chipboard ones using and old glue brush and Claudine Hellmuth’s Multimedium Matte. Make sure to immediately put your brush in water to avoid hardening – unless you don’t mind it becoming an embellishment .

Step 9:

- cut a length of white strong ribbon. Use mists, ink sprays and distress stains to colour the ribbon. Add water with a mini mister so the colours blend in easily.

Step 10:

- layer your base chipboard panels about an inch apart. Decide which way your book should fold, depending on any dimensional elements

- using Matte Multimedium adhere the coloured ribbon across the chipboard panels about 1/3 down from the top.

- adhere your Fran-taged pearlised panels to the chipboard panels using Multimedium. Use large paper clips to hold the panels over the ribbon until the glue sets

- add some calendar rub-ons (Prima) in the bottom right corners of the panels. You can easily add rub-ons over the enamelled areas

- layer your embellishments and sentiment panels over your seasons pages. Complete your project with additional trinkets as desired.

I hope you enjoyed the second part of my Seasonal Concerto and I can’t wait to see your seasonal beauties! If you have any questions – let me know in the comment below .

Big hugs

Asia