Stamping with Markers

There are many different forms of ink. This layout uses two that people may not have thought of to use for stamping, but I like the effect. The larger, darker green swirls on this page are Ranger's Distress Ink. (Peeled Paint). But the other two colors of swirls, the lighter green and the orange, are Le Plume markers, in the colors orange and light green.

When I bought my Le Plume markers, probably eight or nine years ago, it was back in the days when people were still doing decorative hand-drawn titles on their scrapbook pages. The Zig markers, which is another sizeable chunk of my collection of markers, probably were marketed with that purpose in mind. I also bought LePlume markers for this purpose, depending on which manufacturer had the best color and/or price.

But Le Plume markers were actually made for stamping. Their brush ends can cover a stamp as well as dabbing an ink pad can. And I'm glad, because while I am one of those die hards that still occasionally hand-cuts titles (and then definitely needs to marker up the edges!) I haven't hand written a title in awhile. So, I'm glad to put my Le Plume markers to the use they were intended!

Maybe I'm ready for a trip to the beach!

It is happening on July 16. It will be the first time in about 12 years that I really got down in the sand, although I've gone for walks above the shoreline in Coronado, Long Beach, Santa Monica (numerous times), San Diego and Catalina, and on short-hop cruises involving the latter two of those places since then. So these beach stamps get plenty of use, except for the lighthouse one that caused my husband Don to buy these stamps for me a few years ago. I made this one for World Stamping Week at Two Peas as well. Some things I did were create a water color background with water pencils (ask me more if you want), and add to the large micro-beaded starfish sticker I already had by glueing a starfish from my starfish stamp on top.

San Diego

One of the places I really like to go is San Diego. Don and I have probably been four or five times now. Our most recent trip was shortly after my cousin Jodi moved to Coronado. But that was only for a few hours. It's usually for a weekend. I hope we can do that again in the not too distant future.

Here is a card I just made with a left over photo of San Diego. Blue and purple is one of my favorite combos for beach photos. I used red here because of a color challenge on the World of Stamping Week challenges going on June 11-18 at Two Peas In A Bucket. When I did the layouts, I used blue, purple and orange on one, blue purple and grey on another.

Both the tree and the shell border are stamped in two colors. The key is to stamp the second color over the first as close as possible, but a little bit of shadow is OK. This is another challenge on WSW at Two Peas.

You can do this if you have clear stamps - or wood stamps with a stamp positioner. I used Marvy Uchida markers in blue and violet to ink my stamps. You could use ink just as well. If you have white ink, try it as the first color. There are some samples at Two Peas that do it this way.

This card actually meets five challenges in WSW. If you want to know more, check out www.twopeasinabucket.com

I feel like posting again

I see it has been more than a year. I was going to share the stampy projects on this, because I had an idea to sell stamps. But that didn't work out. I got discouraged. I even started another blog, more about real life. I can't remember the last time I posted on it either.

But you know, I still do some decent things with stamps. So, I'm going to share one with you. I stamped an entire background on this layout, with some outtake photos of my nephew's wedding. Enjoy.

The Two Peas Crop

Tonight, for the first time, I participated in the crop Two Peas in a Bucket.com hosts every few months, always on Friday nights I normally am at a meeting of my church's small group on Friday nights, but this is Good Friday, so small group did not meet. Making things even better, I got off work at 2 p.m. this afternoon and we had a large combination lunch/dinner after that.. Normally, I'm off work at 5 p.m. and then need to make dinner when I first get home. Doesn't leave much time for me to participate in a 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. crop!

In the past, I have looked at the challenges posted during the crop, then created my own layout incorporating as many as I can, at my leisure. Tonight, I did it before the crop was over (at this time, it still has about 20 minutes left.)

This is what I came up with. I am not sure I like it, but it was fun. I do like the stamped flower background.

The three challenges this time were to use a specific sketch (I've taken some liberties), stamp a background and do a layout inspired by something on Facebook or another social media. The journaling is one of my recent Facebook status updates.

OMG, almost thee weeks since I last posted to this blog! A lot has happened since then.

For one, we've come to the decision that we're not ready to open Scrapbook Junction the online scrapbooking store. We'd have to sell about $150 a month worth of stuff just to break even, and we can't afford the possibility of that not happening. So, maybe someday. Just not yet.

That's forced me to reconsider the purpose of this blog. I have, up until now, posted my stamping projects on this blog and left off those that did not involve stamping. That's because one thing I'd planned to sell on Scrapbook Junction was acrylic stamps. I hoped to get people excited about the cool things you can do with them, and then say "here's where you can buy them." Now, I have to suggest another great website, Two Peas. And it does not have the same stamps I would have had.

I'm going to go ahead and keep doing that for now. Maybe I'll add my non-stamping projects. Maybe I'll go ahead and order from my would-be supplier the idea books I had hoped to sell and start lifting LOs from them, so I can post them.

They are "classics." I mean, some of them are ally old. I was looking forward to showing you some new ways to update the ideas presented. That is, when my budget allowed me to buy more. Even though they've been around, I only have one. Clean and Simple by Cathy Zielske. Love it, but haven't used it much lately.

Another disappointing and unexpected event of late was the death of Bob, my stepchildren's stepfather. He died on March 14 at his home in Ohio. We got along well with him and my husband's first wife, Lynn, as they divorced long ago and moved on. Both Don and I, and our children's other parents, had been married about 10 years. We had seen Bob & Lynn exactly three times prior to his death.

To help the kids (and Lynn) we decided to fly back to Ohio for the funeral. They're grown kids, but still, this death was hard on them. They needed help from Dad, who just last year felt the pain of losing his own Dad.

This trip put quite a kabash on my scrapbooking until today. Death of a close friend is a mojo killer, and Don we needed all the money we had at the time to pay for the trip.

Now mojo is back, and funds for new supplies are back in limited quantity. Here is one of the two pages I did today. It's from our daughter Holly's wedding. The couple with Don is his sister and brother-in-law. I used stash on this one. I only bought new cardstock so far, and I'll move onto some layouts with it tomorrow.

Yes, I'm sharing the one on which I stamped the title! This is in Walnut Stain, my second color of that beautiful Tim Holtz distress ink. My other one is Peeled Paint (not Shabby Shutters, despite what I said earlier. I used the Peeled Paint to "grunge up" my other layout.

Flourishes and flowers

One of my favorite embellishments, lately, has been the flower-decked flourish. Here's how I make them.

First, stamp a flourish. You might even want to do this directly onto your card or layout - if your're brave enough!

You then can cut out the flourish - or not! - and add just a few flowers.

Or you can leave the flourish as it is, and fill in the white space with a lot of flowers, so that just a little bit of flourish shows through, as at right.

Below, left is a layout where I cut the flourish from a separate sheet of cardstock, and adhered it to the layout.

And below is another layout, where I stamped the flourish very lightly onto the layout, then filled the curve in with flowers.

You can use any kinds of flowers you like (well, except maybe real!) and add more embellishments too. On my Salt Lake City layout, I've used silk flowers. These are the ones that are sold on the plastic stems. You just pull them off the stems, and they're flat enough to use on a scrapbook page, or you can layer them as I did on the flowers that aren't on the flourish. I attached these flowers with little silver brads.

On my Father of the Bride layout, I have flowers made by three different scrapbook manufacturers. The fuschia flowers I use as centers on mny of the medium-sized flowers, as well as the other small flowers, are Primas I've had for years. The larger pink flowers are the Recollections line at Michael's. The green and white flowers are by Hero Arts. The collection I bought also comes with brown and green flowers. Those, along with touches of yellow and pink, were the perfect colors for this wedding. I bought them specifically for scrapbooking this wedding, but I've already done almost 20 other wedding pages, so my package hasnearly run out. I've added "leaves" to the white flowers by using a ribbon from the wedding (actually from a present my sweet stepdaughter gave me at the rehearsal).