I thought I would challenge you today to get your paints out of the closet…….or out of your rubbermaids…….or borrow some…..or just plain buy some to “slap some on” the next layout you create. You’re not scared already are you??!?  i LOVE using my paints on my creations — sometimes I have a plan……but most times I don’t {it’s the best way actually}.

So here are some ways that I use my paints — to help inspire you today.

My Sunkissed Angel:

The first addition of paint to this layout was the wash of white paint to the centre and around the machine stitched sun.  I brushed right over the edge of my photo, around the rays of the sun and down into the {right hand} corner of the layout.  Once dry, I could start adding my title and embellishments.

I love adding a little sparkle to a layout whenever I can, so…..I stamped my title with two different mSB letter stamps {Rustic Outlines} & {Colour Me} in three different colours of paint before adding a little tinge of lime green glitter to them.  I simply stamped with paint (I used a paint brush to add the paint to the stamps — I didn’t “dip” into paint) and then sprinkled the glitter on the letters while still wet.  I tapped the extra glitter off carefully into the garbage.

Here’s a closer photo of it:

I also added some flowers stamped in paint to the background of the layout.  I used the {a flower for you} stamp set.  I stamped both flower images right after the other, not re-applying more paint inbetween.  The second stamped image is more subdued — love the effect!!

The second way you can use paint on a layout is to create a whole background with paint.

THREE divers:

I started with a plain white piece of cardstock and stamped the “THREE 3″ images with black dye ink.  I used the combinations of mSB sets: {Tall Solids I & II} and {What’s your number?}.

I then used three different paint colours to create my background paper {plain cardstock just wasn’t cutting it for me}, painting right over the stamped title I had just done.  I really just “slapped it on”, not really thinking or planning where I wanted the paint in relation to everything else.  Once I had the background complete, I could add all the other layout elements.

I then was able to use the {Colour Me Not I & II} stamp sets to finish my title with red paint — “Divers”.  I love the look of mixing textures:  the flatness of the inked images with those done with thicker paint.

I even added a shell embellishment, salvaged from a broken necklace we picked up in Costa Rica on our family vacation.  Pop-dotted & blinged up; it’s the perfect addition to the layout.

I hope you have been inspired today to bring out your paints.  There are so many ways to use them and……………they are NOT scarey at all!!!!!!  Just slap it on and see where your creativity takes you.

smiles,

Remember to share your own myStampBOX creations with us!

Thinking of you by Tracey Taylor using Kiki Art paper and the a sentiment stamp from the set.

by Virginie Delbecq, using the Neighborhoods stamp set.

by Eva Pizzaro, using the “Tree for all Seasons” stamp set.

by Jolene Johnston using stamps from the “small greetings” and “Everyday Lines” stamp sets.

by Allison Cope using the “Symbols”, “small greetings”, “Mention it!” and “Review Time” stamp sets.

by Jing-Jing Nickel, using the “Snapshot” stamp set.

by Agata Pfister, using the “Floating Leaves” stamp set.

by Monique Liedtke, using the “Merry Mr. Snowman” stamp set.

by Ellen Sosnoski using the “Oval Office” stamp set

by Lynda Lindley, using the ” a flower for you” and ” Everyday Lines” stamp sets

Happy Stamping,

]]> http://mystampbox.com/2010/08/august-designer-showcase/feed/ 7 http://mystampbox.com/2010/08/its-back-to-school-time/ http://mystampbox.com/2010/08/its-back-to-school-time/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:01:02 +0000 Allison http://mystampbox.com/?p=5461 read more »]]> Our new design team has been selected and emails have gone out!  Yippee! Join us later this week as we announce our new design team.  Thanks again to everyone who applied.  It’s so hard to pick only a few people from so many wonderfully talented crafters!

For most of you, there’s only a week left of summer until school begins again.  So I thought I would share with you some fun scholarly projects with you today.

My only son, Spencer, is going into Kindergarten this year and we had a variety of school supplies to get to start him off at school this year.  So instead of sending him with boring old looking supplies, I thought I’d make a few special more personal items just for him.

So I grabbed some fun school related papers from GCD Studios called “Schooled” to use as my inspiration.

I first created the cover for one of my son’s notebooks.  This is originally what it started off looking like.  I know… just not inspirational or fun looking at all!

And this what it became…

I used the Rough Copy Alphabet stamp set to create a name plate for the front.  I stamped all the letters so they touched each other and then cut it out all as one word.  I added some pizazz to it with some fun colour coordinating mists and my Copic airbrush system.

Then I created this cute little faux chalkboard piece… so very simple to make.  I stamped my little view of the school yard on smooth black cardstock using my Neighborhoods stamp set using white ink to make it look like chalk.  Then I created a brown mat and adhered it over the stamped image to appear just like a mini chalk board.

I also used my file tab punch and added a stamped “subject” element too using the word from the Snapshots stamp set.

I layered all the elements including a fun embossed ruler piece using a Cuttlebug embossing folder, mini book mark and my faux notebook across the front of my book.

Next I created a fun little back pack.  I thought it might make a cute little mini card holder to give to his teacher as a gift.

I used the GCD Studios lined papers for the back pack and they worked perfectly with the myStamp BOX Mini Alpha – Small Box stamps so I stamped a variety of fun school related words all over the lined papers on the front and back of the little back pack.

And finally I thought I’d make a cute little book mark for his reading books at home.  So I took the fun school themed paper scraps I had and made a fun book mark.

To add some school elements, on the front, I stamped the numbers using my Review Time stamp set.  I also used the star from the set and stamped a row of those in blue ink.  I had some small scraps of lined paper left and using my Mini Alphas – Small Box stamps to stamp a variety of school related words on the back to match his mini back pack.

So in the end, I have a fun notebook, a cute little back pack and a fun book mark for him for school next week.  I thought even if he wasn’t allowed to use that actual notebook, that I would keep it at home to either practice his printing at home or use it as a communication book between myself and his teacher.  One way or another, I have 3 fun school projects I just adored making.

Why don’t you look at your young kids school supplies and see what your stamps can do to jazz them up and make them more personal.  And get your kids to help… that will make them even more special!

Happy stampin’!

I used the Hot Air Balloon paper line and paired it with the stamped cloud you see here.  I fussy cut the hot air ballon and raised it with Helmar Zap Dots.  They come in two colours and various sizes so you always have exactly what you need for your projects.  The sentiment is from the Itty Bittys set and couldnt’ be more perfect for the paper.

I used Helmar’s Premium Craft Glue to attach the floss details.  I haven’t found anything that works better than this product for attaching trims.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks for more work using our sponsor products.

Thanks for visiting.

Tracey

This week, i challenge you to create bookmarks. You are free to choose the size and form, but you have to use stamps of course!

I made 4 bookmarks, one for each season. This one is for summer:

I used the “Road Trip” stamp set. I stamped the luggage in black on a piece of paper i had already coloured with distress ink vintage photo.

That one is for autumn, i decided to go with red and yellow leaves. I used the “Abundant Blossoms” stamp set.

For winter i used the “Au creux des siens” stamp set and the “Bits and Pieces” stamp set. I put liquid pearl in white opal to mimic the snow and give a little bit of dimension.

For the spring bookmark, i used the “funky flowers” stamp set. I embossed the butterfly in yellow; for the grass i used distress ink in shabby shutters and for the sky i used the broken china distress ink.

I didn’t do it but if you want you can laminate the bookmarks to make them last longer.

Hope you liked this challenge!

hello everyone.  hope you are all having a wonderful summer and enjoying your days spent outside. 

recently our family spent a fantastic Sunday afternoon at my parents (about an hour away from our house).  They just put up an gigantic new play-structure at the park where I used to play when i was a kid (and actually split my head open while playing way-back-when).  Instead of doing a million layouts of the photos i took, i decided to create a little, homemade fabric mini album to showcase the memories of the afternoon.

here’s a photo of the album cover:

i used the Wishing you Sunshine stamp set on the fabric cover of the album to create the fun, whimsical cloud pattern.  The 3D butterfly on the tree is stamped using the Colourful Companions stamp set and embossing powder. 

and here’s the pages inside:

The back cover flowers were stamped with the Border Lines stamp set with a little addition of buttons for the centres. 

hope your day is filled with inspiration from your favourite summer memories of your childhood…….and those you are making today.

enjoy,

She used a small paper maché box as the base. She first painted the box in deep yellow, then with black over it, letting the yellow paint shine through. April stamped a flower from the Abundant Blossoms stamp set and cut it out carefully. A brad was added in the centre, then the flower was attached to the box. To decorate, April added a lace ribbon and small tag.

A perfect little box for a small present!

Supplies used:
-Square paper mache box from Michaels
-Michael’s paint in Timber & Deep Yellow
-Colorbox chalk ink in Mustard
-American Traditions brad
-Avery tag

Phantastic creations, April! We have tremendously enjoyed having you over. Lots of great inspiration for all. Hope to see you again soon, good luck with your publishing aspirations.

Happy Stamping,

Bettina

We were in the yard playing and I called her over, and she knew what I wanted from her: to pose and smile   She came so reluctantly but after she came, she started to imitate me.  It’s beyond cute how she did the snapping with her little fingers. She even made little holes with her tiny fingers and peaked out from behind   I kept on snapping because it’s these unposed moments that are most endearing to me and my scrapbook pages.

I hope you will find this particular set of stamp as indispensible as I do!! 

Jing-Jing Nickel

Today I’m going to teach you how to make a cute little banner to include on your next layout or card.

Start with stamping your pennant pieces on a variety of fun patterned papers.  For my banner, I used the open scalloped pennant stamp from the new stamp set, Pennants.

Trim all the excess paper around the edges like the top piece on the left side.

Now take each piece and flip it to the back side and apply some adhesive to it at the top of each piece.  In this case, I used some Zapdots by Helmar, one of our partner companies here at myStampBOX.

Next, take a piece of string or jute in this case and apply it to the surface of the adhesive and wrap it around the string to hold it and make it appear more 3 dimensional on your project.  You may need to the trim any excess paper that shows in the front.

And lastly, apply some fun 3D adhesive to the back of each piece of your banner to pop it off of your project.  I used some fabulous black foam adhesive circles from Helmar.

And now adhere it to your project.  Here is my end result…

Make a Wish

To make my page complete, I used some more fabulous stamps sets from myStampBOX:

“make” – I used the Rough Copy Alphabet.

“a” – I used the Mini Alphabet – Small Box stamp set.

“WISH” – I used the Royal Flush alphabet set.

“birthday candles” - I used the Happy Birthday – Small Box stamp set.

“banner pieces” - I used the new set stamp set, “Pennants“… soon to be released!

So make sure you keep your eyes on the myStampBOX store for this fabulous new release and try making a fun banner to add to your next project!

Happy stampin’!

]]> http://mystampbox.com/2010/08/beautiful-banners/feed/ 15 http://mystampbox.com/2010/08/color-challenge-pink-grey-and-black/ http://mystampbox.com/2010/08/color-challenge-pink-grey-and-black/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:30:27 +0000 Maryfrances http://mystampbox.com/?p=5347 read more »]]> Hi Everyone!

Here is a little challenge for you all.  Now, anyone with a little girl can take this one of super quick.  Create a layout using the image below as a color inspiration.  Check out my take on the challenge and then link us to yours in your post.  Have fun and Enjoy!!

Here is my layout using the following myStamp Box stamps,  HO HO HO.

I also used some KiKi Art paper and Helmar Scrapdot adhezive and tape runner.  Both of these fabulous companies are product sponsors for myStamp Box….how fun!

Here is a close up of the dimension I got from the scrapdots and also the fun grey lines paper that worked so well with my color inspiration.  I cut the word stamps apart from the stamp set and created a jumble of Christmas words and then stamped my background…they work AWESOME!

Enjoy the challenge everyone…I look forward to checking out what you come up with.  Have a super day!

This gift tag was made using Abundant Blossoms stamp set. The supplies were:
-Paper Studio pattern paper
-Kaiser Crafts ‘thanks’ rub-on
-Colorbox Chalk Ink in Hot Orange, Violet, Aqua & Magenta
-Wrights fused pearl strand
-Prima flower
-Stampin’ Up! dimensionals
-Ribbon from Michaels

This 4×4 card was the first project that I created with the Abundant Blossoms stamp set.

The supplies I used were:
-Stampin’ Up! Whisper White  card stock
-Creative Imaginations pattern paper
-Colorbox Chalk Ink in Creamy Brown, Aqua & Violet
-Stampin’ Up! dimensionals
-Making Memories Noteworthy tina alpha stickers

Next week, April will show you her last project, a small jewelry box!

Happy Stamping,

Bettina

But today is the day. If you haven’t submitted an application by midnight (EST) you will not be taken into consideration for our creative Design Team.

Check this blog on August 30 to see the list of names for our next team!

If you have missed our call you can view the full information here.

Thanks for showing us your great interest and how much you care about myStampBOX!

Hope you all have had a wonderful summer so far.  My summer have been warm and sunny and happy here in Norway. Seems like we really try to soak up all the sun and the warm days before autumn-rain and winter starts.

Today I want to share one of my favourite techniques with you.   Stamped words to make a background.

This time my stamped words serves as both background AND title.

I’ve used my most fave alphabets and word-stamps by my Stamp BOX for this layout.

“Royal Flush”, “lots of dots sentiments” and “rustic outlines” made the perfect summery feel to my background stamping.

I’ve used a little bit of turqouse glimmermist on the background and stamped my words using “vintage photo” distress ink. (Ranger )

Hope this little project inspires you.

Happy stamping – and happy summer.

You’ll need:
- your favourite myStampBOX stamps
- VersaMark Ink
- embossing powder
- heat gun
- transparency 

First stamp your image onto the transparency with the VersaMark ink

Then sprinkle your embossing powder on the stamped image and shake off the excess.

Now, using your heat gun, emboss the image. Watch your transparency closely though. The transparency can start to warp or even burn if you’re too close or heat the image for too long.

Then you can cut out your embossed transparency images and decorate them a little further like I did. I added stickles to the butterfly bodies and then added them to my card with pop dots.

Patterned Paper: Echo Park
Stamps:Colorful Companions & Lines of Life by myStampBOX
Ink: Stampin’ Up!
Heat Gun: Stampin’ Up!
Embossing Powder: American Crafts & PK Glitz
Adhesive:Helmar

My challenge for you today is to use your scraps to scrap a LO and with the “scraps of the scraps” do a card!!!

Here’s my page:

I started working with a base cardstock (the only thing that wasn’t a scrap) and used all my coordinating scrap papers to embellish my page. To give a little accent I used my Colorful Companions set and stamp a few butterflies, I give them dimension with some rolled up glue dots underneath the wings and added some glitter.

and here’s the card:

For my card I used the scraps from the scraps (The blue white dotted paper is a scrap, I cut it from the center of the LO… and the “hole” is covered by my kraft cardstock…. super savy!). I added a butterfly from my Colorful Companions set and used my Road Trip set over white cardstock to give a wavy pattern and a little texture.

I hope you give this a try! and if you do don’t forget to share the link in the comments!

bye!

Today it’s Tuesday and that means “Project Day” here at myStampBOX!! 

So, which projects am I going to show you?? 

I’m going to start with a layout as that’s what I love to do most! Here’s my layout called “Home is where YOU are”:

For this layout of my youngest I used one of the butterfly stamps from the “Colorful Companions” set for my background. I stamped it various times with Versamark ink so the butterflies wouldn’t be too obvious and therefore just perfect for a background.

Furthermore I used a few flowers from the “Abundant Blossoms” set and the filmstrip from the “Snapshot” set for a little journaling.

Then on to my next project, a photo frame:

As it was so terribly hot here in The Netherlands (and I really had had enough of the sun!) I decided on one of my winter photos taken in Disneyland Paris.

For this frame I used three different stamps from the “Road Trip” set (the tag, part of the title and the circle bottom left).

I had so much fun creating these projects and sure hope you’ve enjoyed them too!

Thanks and have a lovely, scrappy day!!

My name is April Hall, and I live in gorgeous Peoria, Arizona. I have been married to my husband for 6 years, although we have been sweethearts since high school.  We have 5 kitties and 1 dog, and they make us the happiest parents!  I have been doing some sort of crafting pretty much all my life….although just recently over the last 5 or 6 years have I really put my heart and soul into it.  I like to dabble in it all, but my favorites are card making, mixed media, painting, sewing and book/journal making.  Some of my favorite products to use are stamps, ink, paint, found object and paper.  One thing that always seems to find itself on my projects is stamps.  When I create something, I don’t always follow the same “process”.  Sometimes I start with the paper, other times I see a color combination or I’ll just sit down and grab the first scrap next to me and go to town.  My style never really stays constant…one card could be very symmetrical and clean and the next one could be shabby and vintage.  It really just depends on the mood that I am in or what I see around me.

At this time I have not been published.  I have a stack of stuff that I have been meaning to submit for publication, but just haven’t found time to do it!  My favorite time to craft is when I get off work for about an hour or so, and at least one full weekend day. If I don’t get some sort of crating done each day I go stir crazy. The space that I create in is actually our guest bedroom. I have transformed it into my studio, and that’s where I find the most peace at the end of the day. One fun fact that many don’t know about me is that I love being on the beach. If I could live on the beach, most specifically Huntington Beach in California, I would!

Here is how to make this adorable clip board:

Paint the whole clipboard in aqua, let dry.

Stamp flowers all over in pink, purple and green.

Use a brush with black paint to write a sentiment, names, expressions, etc.

Add a few specks of black to fill up empty space.

It is such a fast and fun project, because the paint dries very very quickly.

This altered clipboard was probably my favorite project to do because I had never altered a clipboard before! Even though this project used the fewest supplies, it was so fun to just use nothing but paint!

The supplies used were:
- Abundant Blossoms stamp set from myStampBOX
-clipboard from Hobby Lobby
-Michael’s Paint in Deep Aqua, Hot Pink, Lime, Purple and Black
-Ranger Stickles in Stardust

I even used paint to stamp the flowers on the clipboard.  The trick to using paint on polymer stamps is to use a little bit… if it is globbed on the stamp it will glob on your project.  The image still came out very crisp! I will definitely be using this technique again.

Check out more projects by me coming in the next few days! Hope you like this projec,

April

I used an embossed resist technique with a twist to create those papers. I heat embossed some stamps on a watercolor paper, then applied tons of Distress inks (in two shades on each strip) to cover entirely the paper. Then, I spritzed the whole thing with water mixed with Perfect Pearls powder. And hit with my heat gun. The result? Beautifully shiny with some nice shadows!

For  some more interest, I added some bling to those embossed images. I love the result! Wanna know the story behind the layout? Well, it’s about what my daughter was like at the age of 15 months. Fortunately, I noted my thoughts and when it came to making this layout, it was just there for me…

So next time you’re about to buy tons of patterned paper, turn rather to the stamp shelf. Because you can do it yourself!