Don’t you just love those myStampBOX Itty Bittys?! I know I do! That’s why I decided to show you a few cards I created with this fun and versatile set of small square stamps!

Itty Bitty images are perfect for colouring with your favourite markers or (watercolour) pencils:

And some of the Itty Bittys, like the woodgrain, can be used to create a patchwork background like this one:

The ‘Thanks Friend’ sentiment is part of the myStampBOX Funky Flowers set.

But my favourite Itty Bitty just might be the one with the small dots…

The ‘Thinking of you’ word jumble is part of the myStampBOX Happy Word Jumble set.

So tell me… Which Itty Bitty is your favourite?

Wishing you a wonderful and creative weekend!

I started by die-cutting two different sizes of hearts out of a larger piece of copy paper. You could use post-it notes too, as long as your paper is not too thick. Be sure to keep the punched out hearts as well, we will use both.

I placed one of the templates onto the card and adhered it with temporary adhesive.

I used stamps from the Funky Flowers and from the Repeat after Me set onto my card. Here you see me using one of the zipper stamps from the Repeat after Me set to stamp inside the heart.

When the heart had dried, I covered it. And then placed the template for the smaller heart partly over that one.

After stamping, uncovering shows a red heart, which appears to be tucked under the large orange one. You continue the rest of the card the exact same way. Just keep in mind that the heart that you’re stamping first, is the one that will show completely. The second one will be partly behind it.

To cover an entire heart with a long and smaller stamp likes those from the Repeat after Me set, I simply stamp in the middle of the heart first and then build my way up and down the heart.

I finished up the card with a sentiment from Programmed Robots.

I hope you liked my little tutorial and will give this masking technique a try.

I used one of my favorite stamp sets, Neighborhoods, and my favorite stamp from this set. I guess this stamp makes me think about my own neighborhood, with the school building and the bus. I just love it! I’ve already made a Halloween card and Christmas card with it. Time for a New Year card. I thought about how my neighborhood looks when the clock strikes midnight on the 31st of December. And I remembered the fireworks! Immediately another favorite stamp set came to my mind, Funky Flowers. Some of the blooms look just like fireworks! OK, here’s how I proceeded.

1) First, I stamped the sentiment on my card base using Summer Alpha and Lots of Numbers sets.

2) Second, on a piece of black cardstock I stamped at the bottom the row of houses and white embossed it. Then on the top portion I stamped some blooms using white ink.

3) The third step consisted in stamping and embossing more blooms on top of white stamping. You know, just like fireworks , some fading and some just blooming.

4) And finally, I’ve assembled everything and my card was finished. Just in time to wish you a Happy, inspired and a very stampy Year!

She cut out the paper to the right size to cover up the cup (with a light curve) then stamped the grass on the paper by slightly “curving” the grass stamp. She stamped the grass twice with Memento Inks, each time using a different shade of green. Weiwei added the stalks, flowers, and dragonflies. To add interest, she used stickles to create bling. The paper was glued onto the cup and the cup was ready to hold office supplies!

I challenge you to make your own cover to re-use an old packaging!

Thanks for having me over to play at myStamp BOX! I had a great time working with the “Funky Flowers” set! Weiwei

Happy Stamping!

I am Weiwei, married with two young children. I grew up in Singapore and am still living here. I started scrapbooking when I gave birth to my older boy and wanted to make monthly scrapbook pages documenting his growing process. Looking back at those pages now still brings back fond memories. I would love to scrap more if I had time.

I am addicted to clear stamps. I have many clear stamp sets and a lot of them are still brand new. As time is a constraint now, my paper projects are usually simple and fast to complete.

When I have more time, I enjoy heat embossing and inking. I love to create at night at the dining table when the kids are asleep. It is quiet and I have the time and space to enjoy the process of creating something. Usually, I will be snacking during that time, cup noodles and nuts with a glass of nice cool bitter lemon.

Weiwei loves to reuse and re-purpose. She creates many projects with everyday packaging. The the tea light holder was made from a package of mixed nuts, Weiwei stamped the images using Staz On inks. Then added details and bling with stickles.

These pretty embellishments were made by stamping onto felt using Versa Craft ink. Weiwei added another layer of felt and used a brad to hold both of them together.

They can be used to personalise an ordinary bag or to brighten a dull pair of shoe (see below).

Simply use a glue gun to adhere the embellishments.

These are some great simple projects that don’t take a long time from start to finish!

We love the ideas for our “Funky Flowers” set, Weiwei!

Weiwei has created more projects and we will be showing them on this blog next week.

Until then!

Happy Stamping!

Sometimes you just need to create for the sake of creating. I have an art journal that I use for this purpose, but I haven’t cracked it open for quite some time now. I was really beginning to feel a need to play with inks, paints and Glimmer Mists, so I decided that it would be fun to try a few mixed media techniques on canvas.

Here’s a step by step-tutorial of how I created my canvas:

Start with an 8 x 8″ canvas. Mine had paint on it already, but as you can see, I covered it completely by painting the sides with pinkish Ecoline and by adhering random pieces of old dictionary pages to the front of the canvas with gel medium:

Once the gel medium is (almost) dry, grab a few vibrant colours of Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist (I used Pink Bubblegum, Cosmos, Pumpkin Pie and Mustard Seed) and spray the whole surface with it:

Set the canvas aside to dry. You can speed up the drying process with a heat gun, but I let the puddles of Mist dry overnight before I got on to the next step.

Use the myStamp BOX Border Lines set to create the word ‘LOVE’ on a piece of cardboard. Use the corner shape for the ‘L’, the heart for the ‘O’, manipulate the corner shape to form the ‘V’ and then take the same shape to create the ‘E’, by covering parts of with masking tape. Make all of the letters approximately the same hight as the heart:

Use a black pen to tidy up the parts where the letters were elongated:

Cut out the letters and colour them with Ranger Distress Ink Broken China. Emboss them with clear embossing powder:

Stamp another heart. Cover the open heart with Ranger Distress, like the other letters and spray the closed one with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist Dragonfly and Chalkboard Peacock. Coat it with Tattered Angels Glimmer Glam Chandelier. Adhere the two hearts together with foam squares:

Time to tackle the canvas again:

Stamp on the canvas. I used the following sets: myStamp BOX Graphic Borders, Colorful Companions, Itty Bittys and Abundant Blossoms.

Spruce up some chipboard buttons (these are from Graphic 45) with Glimmer Mist and Glimmer Glam and adhere them to the canvas with gel medium:

Grab a piece of heavy cardstock and stamp it with the word ‘YOU’ using the myStamp BOX Blueberry Alphabet. Colour the cardstock letters with Ranger Distress Ink Crushed Olive:

Adhere all the letters to the canvas with foam squares. Take the tiny flowers from the myStamp BOX Funky Flowers set and stamp a few of them here and there. Splatter a little bit of Glimmer Mist and as a final touch ink the corners of the canvas with teal ink:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you feel inspired to create a canvas of your own, please link it up in the comments below. We would love to see it!

But before we announce the winner of the draw I want to show some of the Origami Boxes that I did a mini class on during the Creativ Festival in Toronto this past weekend. In the next little while I will be showing how to fold the boxes and give some more examples of decorating them.

The boxes are made from copier paper and decorated entirely with stamps and ink only. It’s a great project for a small gift!

This box is stamped with the “Falling Leaves” stamp set in olive and brown Momenta inks from Tsukineko.

For this box I used the “Funky Flowers” stamp set and orange, lime green and pink Momenta inks from Tsukineko.

And now we are announcing our lucky winner, who will receive a “Funky Flowers” stamp set in the mail!

Congratulations to: MISTY! “Oh WOW! They are all amazing! I really don’t make too many cards but I have to say that I’m loving the alphas behind jolenes card and the flowers on Wendy’s are so funky cool!”

Misty, please send me your address by e-mail (contest@mystampbox.com) and I will put the stamp in the mail asap!

Thanks for playing, everyone!

Happy Stamping!

Love,

I buy this magazine, even-though my French is not very good and I never actually make any of the projects that are featured… But there are truly wonderful ideas in there and one of my very favorite things to do is to take a few hints from the magazine before I create a lay out!

Let me show you:

These are just a few random things that caught my eye on the first few pages. I used them to inspire me for this lay out:

I used the myStampBOX Colour Me alphabet to mimic the fabric alphabet, some Funky Flowers, Abundant Blossoms and the buttons from the Border Lines set to recreate the flowers from the fabric pouches and a checkered Graphic Border just because I liked the green and white checkered fabric button.

And this green display:

Inspired me to create a card:

Here I used the leaves from the Abundant Blossoms and Funky Flowers sets to recreate the background in the picture. The branch is also from the Abundant Blossoms set and the little vase is actually an Itty Bitty.

Now are you up for the challenge? Today’s challenge is to grab your favorite magazine and look at it in a different way. Use it to find ideas for your next stamp project. Look for color combinations, patterns, even lay outs and see what you can come up with!

Link up your creations in the comments below. I can’t wait to see them!

Now the eye is taken right to those elements that have been stamped and given that “wow” factor that I was looking for.

Here is a closeup of the banner that I randomly stamped with a little flower from the Funky Flowers set.

I stamped the heart shaped chipboard piece with a butterfly from the Colorful Companions set. One of my new favourites.

My challenge to you is to use your stamps and some embossing powder on your next project and I hope that you will share it with us.

These are so easy to make on a sewing machine by simply sewing the fabrics together in a strip, strengthening by sandwiching iron on interfacing between the front and back and trimming down to size.  I then stamped my images with a black stazon ink pad and used fabric paints to highlight parts of the stamp. 

I decorated and attached buttons or loop hook fastenings and they’re ready to go.

Here’s a closer look at the details.

The stamps I used for this project are Colorful Companions, Rustic Outlines and Border Lines.  The button on “I wear my heart on my sleeve” has been stamped using a flower from the Funky Flowers set.

Today’s layout is brought to you by… cupcakes. Decorated cupcakes and cakes are all the rage in the Netherlands and of course I had to try to make some myself. This layout features my first attempt at butter cream and although it looks OK on the photos, I can tell you that it was not exactly a success…

The layout on the other hand was much more fun to create: I used the myStampBOX sets Funky Flowers, Repeat After Me and Colour Me in the process!

The Colour Me alphabet is actually one of my favorites. I love that you can make it suit any page. In this case I stamped the letters with brown ink onto white cardstock and then colored them in with a Sakura Glaze pen. The letters were then cut out and adhered to the layout with foam tape. This makes them stand out more on the busy patterned paper!

Have a wonderful day! Enjoy a home baked cupcake!

So, I’m a HUGE fan of mini books and with the stash of mSB stamps, seriously just amazingggg coolness, I decided to create up this mini, “Our Love Soars”.  I wanted to go outside the normal colors of pink for loveeeee and went with a play on different colors with red & blue.

Beware:  Photo heavy….since I’ll show you how I worked the different mSB stamps inside along with all the fun fun details & pages throughout this mini.  I usually work lots of stamps in my minis’.  I LOADED this mini up with a big dose of mSB eye candy!!!

A tidbit about this book….My boyfriend, Gianluca, & I have been together for a little over a year.  He’s Sicilian and lives still in Italy (Turin, Italy).  “Our Love Soars” across the distance of 2 continents, across that big ocean of the Atlantic, 2 different languages, many flights, many long hours on those flights, many miles (or kilometers)…yet it’s all worth it, he’s so worth it. “Our Love Soars” in bringing us together in many parallels.

One of my favoriteeeee mSB sets, Bold Blocks, used here in the phrase,“Who is that?”

Using the mSB, Color Me Sentiments, here in “hello hello”.

A couple of different mSB sets used on this page, Symbols (heart),

{yeahhh, I think I was singing the Black Eyed Peas when I made this )}

Yes, many many miles for love!

But the phrase “crazy stuff” from mSB Bold Blocks was just perfect because he’s like a child with a new toy when getting a new comic book! )

This is quite a common play on words between Gianluca & myself…it’s the norm ))

Soooo…hope you enjoyed my mini & inspiration!!

Now, I (Marsha) also had a song to inspire me. You know: the kind of song that you hear on the radio and then stays with you all day or (in this case) all week? When I was thinking of our theme ‘Baby, Be Mine’, I had the Bob Marley song ‘Is this Love’ stuck in my head. I had to take it as a sign and started to create my project around it!

I created my funky fabric flowers using the myStamp BOX Funky Flowers set to stamp on denim with StazOn inks. I then cut the stamped flowers and leaves out and machine stitched them onto hand-cut pieces of felt. I used cardstock and another piece of felt to create the grass. The flower stems are stamped directly onto the photo mat.

I took the glass from the shadow box frame (Ribba from IKEA) and stamped part of the lyrics on the outside of the glass with myStamp BOX Mini Alpha using StazOn inks. I used the same inks to stamp the swirl from the Funky Flowers set onto the inside of the glass.

The photo I placed in the frame is one of my favorites that I took during a (table top) photography class. It features two figurines that have been in my possession since childhood!

So… we hope you enjoyed our projects & inspiration!
Grab up some mSB stamps & create it up!!

Supply List for Wendy’s mini:

mSB Stamps –
Bold Blocks
Color Me Sentiments
Symbols
Friday Night Stencil
Programmed Robots
Repeat After Me
Seal It
Road Trip
Sigh Gush Gasp

Other -
Cardstock – Recollections (Ocean Blue), Paper – My Mind’s Eye (Stella Rose), October Afternoon (Rocket Age), Fancy Pants Designs (It’s the Little Things), Cosmo Cricket (Odds&Ends), American Crafts (Amy Tangerine), 4×6 Chipboard Covers – Creative Imaginations (Bare Elements), Glue & Seal (Ranger) – Matte, Inks – Ranger (Broken China, Fired Brick), Binder Rings –  7 Gypsies, Color Wash Mist – Ranger (Adirondack – Red Pepper), Smooch Spritz – Clearsnap (Vanilla Shimmer, Ginger Ale), Color Mist – Studio Calico (Mister Huey – Calico White, Bonny Blue), Glimmer Mist – Tattered Angels (Olive Vine, Pattina), Glitter Heart Metal Stickers – Making Memories, Wood Heart – Studio Calico, Brads – Making Memories, Tapes – Tim Holtz, K&Co (Smash), American Crafts (Amy Tangerine), Rub-ons – 7 Gypsies, October Afternoon, Kaisercraft, Puffy Fabric Hearts – Making Memories, Heart Trinket Pins – Maya Road, Letter Stickers – Recollections, October Afternoon (Rocket Age), American Crafts (Thickers), Foam Glitter Star Stickers – Darice, Word Stickers – The Girls Paperie (Authentique), Label Stickers – Jenni Bowlin, Pearls & Bling – Basic Grey, Kaisercraft, Dimensional Stickers – American Crafts (Amy Tangerine).

I decided to fill a couple of pages in my Summer 2011 art journal.  For the first page about our National Day celebrations,  I’ve used music score paper as my background but painted it first with gesso to dull the printing. I’ve used flowers from the Funky Flowers stamp set as fireworks, giving them a sprinkling of glitter to make them shine. I’ve also used the Mini Pennants for the bunting and the border stamp from the Border Lines set to frame the page.

For my second page I’ve transfered the music score paper onto watercolour paper using gel medium to make a subtle background. I cut out some rough circles to use as masks and sprayed inks over the page using dye inks. I’ve used the Friday Night Stencil alphabet for my title, emphasising it with the brackets from the oversized set.  I wanted to stamp the film strip from the Snapshot set at the bottom of the page and ended up dropping it. I could have covered it up by stamping it a second time onto paper, cutting it out and sticking it over the top but I actually liked the messy look it gave me, so I left it there. I finished off the page using the Graphic Borders stamp printed onto book page as a frame.

Here are a couple of gorgeous pages from Birgit and some explaination on how she did them.

For “the sky is the limit” I used Colorful Companions, Bottlecaps, Repeat
after me and Backgrounds. For the background I used Gesso and TA Glimmer
Chalkboard. I stamped with Stazon and colored in the little dots of the
bottelcap stamp with Letraset markers and then I put little punched out
paper circles on top. The stars where made using sequin waste.

For “Heaven” I used Colorful Companions, Abundant blossoms, Bottlecaps,
Backgrounds and He loves me. The background was made with acrylic paint. I
also used acrylic paint to stamp the butterflies and the flowers. I used
Stazon to stamp the bottlecap stamp and the little swirl from the He loves
me set. Again I colored in the little dots of the bottlecap stamp with
Letraset markers. The little circles and the words “heaven” where cut from
bookpaper. The angel wing is a rubon from Hambly.
The little white dots on both pages where made with the back of my brush
dipped in acrylic paint.

Hope you enjoyed them.

Ally and I have created some back-to-school themed projects to share with you today!

I have a dirty little secret to share – and I’m sure many of you can relate … I HATE packing lunches!  Most of the time, my kids bring home half of what I sent with them!  So I had an idea…

We sat down and made a list of their favourite foods (Mom-approved, of course!) from four basic food groups:  Grains, Protein, Dairy and Fruits/Vegetables.  Once we had about 8-10 items in each category (or more or less, if your children are more/less fussy than mine), I sat down and created this:

It’s a menu planner!  So, how does it work, you ask?

Well, when you were younger, did you ever have one of those books where each page was cut into three or four sections and you could mix and match the girl’s clothes and shoes?  Same idea!  The album, made from 6×6 pieces of chipboard, was decorated using patterned paper, cardstock and of course, myStamp BOX stamps, Funky Circles and Lots of Dots Alphas.  I then printed all of the foods from our list onto cardstock and trimmed them to 1.5″ x 6″.  A small strip of patterned paper, a stamp of colour and a quick punch with my Crop-o-dile, and voila!

Each child plans their lunch by mixing and matching the cards, ensuring a well-balanced lunch that they will eat, because they are in control of the situation!  I will also add some milk or water, and a small treat or extra snack to round out the lunch!

To add a little sunshine to their day, I created a little envelope from kraft paper and attached it to the inside cover:

Inside, I tucked teeny note cards that I created, using the Seal It and Itty Bittys stamp sets.

I will slip one into each of their lunches every day, to remind them how much I love them!

And here’s Ally…

Hello!  In order to get ready for a new grade, I thought I’d better complete a layout about my son’s first and last day of Kindergarten from last year so that’s what I did.  The journaling boxes from the “Your Story” stamp set worked perfectly to journal the details of each of my photos.

Stamp Sets Used:  Letterboxes, Mini Alpha, Fleurishing Punctuation, Your Story, Neighborhoods, & Mini Pennants

Thanks for visiting – and Happy Back-To-School!

and

I’ve been reading a lot this summer while sitting by the pool. I know…life is rough.

I thought it would be fun to make myself a bookmark so I’m going to share how I made it.

I remember watching in my childhood a TV show called Beyond 2000. My English was sort of in its beginnings back then so I was puzzled by the word “beyond”. Plus year 2000 seemed so far away!

Today I believe I understand better the meaning of this word and scrapbooking-wise it means for me going for a bigger project. We’re all running after time trying to get the most of it but let’s be honest: sometimes it’s not possible so we go for those small projects that offer us a short creative escape. The result is that some memories get lost in the process. So today I’m challenging you to add up those short periods of time and create something bigger: a layout if usually you make cards, or a mini album if you make layouts etc.

Personally, I do make cards and layouts quite often but I do envy my friends who create mini albums all the time! So here’s one that I offered to my in-laws with pictures of their grandchildren.

It’s an accordion style album with a fabric covered front and back. Here it’s open.

And here it is page by page. Sorry for the fingers that are holding it down! I’ve chosen the best pics of my in-laws grand-children and adorned each page with myStamp Box stamps. Snapshot and Seal it! on this one:

Repeat after me and Snapshot again:

As you can see I tried to keep the same colors as on the cover for the unity of the album.

I used Funky Flowers and Mention it sets for the last page.

As for the detail on the cover, I stamped the frame from Snapshot set on a piece of cardstock, added a sentiment from Itty Bittys set and glued to fabric using a product from our partner company, Helmar Adhesives, Liquid Glue Dots.

So my today’s challenge for you is this: go beyond the size of your usual projects and make something bigger. Maybe it will cost you some effort but it will be a very rewarding experience! Happy stamping!

So… what was I to do with all these tiny photos? I really wanted to keep things simple and I love photo collages, so I decided to create collages for all the different things we saw and did. I think I ended up with about 30 collages. I printed the collages at home and adhered them to pieces of 6×6 inch cardstock. This was going to be one fat mini book!

For the covers I took two pieces of thin chipboard that I covered with scrapbook fabric and then machine stitched along the edges. I used StazOn to stamp the title with myStampBOX sets Rough Copy Alphabet and Mini Alpha.

Because I didn’t want to add any more bulk to the pages I decided to embellish them with something really thin:

I randomly stamped myStampBOX Funky Flowers onto old dictionary pages, doodled imperfect circles on top of the images and then colored the circles with markers. These imperfect circles were then cut out and glued to the mini book pages.

Now all I had to do was stamp some captions, outline some of them with black pen, add my memorabilia and call it done!

Well… almost done, because I have some additional notes that I took while on vacation. Haven’t decided what to do with those yet. I may type them out and include them later .

Have a great day! Keep things simple!

Start with these simple supplies: 

Here are the steps:

1. Cut a piece of cardstock to fit the inside of your frame.  I cut mine to 5×7 inches.  Choose 3 different butterfly stamps from the Colourful Companions stamp set and stamp the images on the BACKSIDE of the cardstock (make sure it’s the back of your cardstock).  It doesn’t matter what colour of ink you use because it’s on the backside — just make sure you can’t see the butterflies through the cardstock.  Here are mine:

2.  Take your paper piercer & foam pad and punch tiny holes around each butterfly image, following the lines of your stamped images.

(You don’t need to punch any holes in the centre of the stamped image, but you can if you want more detail).  Don’t forget the tiny antennae.

3. This is what it will look like when you flip the cardstock over to the FRONTSIDE now:

4. Stamp a sentiment between the butterfly images to create your message.  I used the Lines of Life stamp set and used black dye ink.  Next, I stamped directly on my wooden frame, creating a whimsical effect using the swirl image from the Funky Flowers stamp set.  I stamped with two different ink colours this time. 

Here’s the final artwork………….easy enough for any 7 year-old cutie to create with her mom & her awesome stamps from myStampBOX.

Hope you enjoyed.

What great participation! Thanks to all of you for stopping by and visiting all blogs. Three of you are the lucky winners of our “Funky Flowers” stamp set. Please e-mail your addresses to bettina@mystampbox.com and I will mail them as soon as Canada Post is rolling again…

The winners of our Mystery BOX hop are:

Rosie N: Lovely!! Appropriate for anything!

Barb (Bdengler): This is so perfect for ATC’s! Love the gold embossing and wonderful closure!

Shannon V.: Love what you did with the box….sweet and simple!

Congratulations ladies! I hope you will enjoy decorating you own boxes and more with these stamps! Thanks for playing everyone!

Happy Stamping!

Love,

Here I’d like to show you a few of my journal pages featuring My Stamp Box stamps with just a bit of paint, ink, black and white fine liner pens and all done on watercolour paper.

Here I’ve used the Border lines stamps, Pennants and Wishing you sunshine to create the art doll on the page along with a little hand drawn face.  The title Dance was stamped with the Colour Me set.

Here I’ve used the Border Lines border stamp which I absolutely love and the leaves from the Funky Flowers set. The background which you can only just see has been stamped with white acrylic paint and My Stamp Box stamps. I hand painted my birdie.

For this page I’ve used the Friday Night Stencil on my background which I love to do, used Oversized as accents on the page  and Repeat After Me to create the stitching and a border at the bottom using stamps from the Timelines set.