I love the classy look of black and white photos but I also wanted a touch of fun so I created a card using black, white and one color – love how the bright blue from Tim Holtz’s Broken China Distress Ink pops against the black and white card stock!  Since I was only using black and white card stock I layered the card stock several times.  I used the circle stamp from myStamp Box’s Funky Flowers set and ‘it’s your b-day’ sentiment from myStamp Box’s Mention It set.  I hope this inspirers you to create a project using black, white & one color.

Thanks for stoppin’ by!

~Carolyn

So here it is, my one sheet mini or is it a rather over sized card?!!

The first thing I did was use a sheet of bright green scrapbook paper and painted turquise, yellow and white acrylic paint onto it with a brayer.  When that was dry I stamped randomly with stamps from the Graphic Borders and Repeat After Me sets.

I folded my paper in half, turned it 90° and folded in half and in half again so I ended up with 8 rectangle shaped pages.

Cut the centre 2 folds where the 4 middle pages meet.

Fold the paper back in half as shown.  As you press down the creases you’ll end up with a star shape.  Simply fold these up into book pages.

I stitched a very simple 3 hole binding and decorated it with stamps.

I added a little bit of machine stitching and some washi tape.

The image stamps I used are Garden Sketches, Striped Stems, Funky Flowers, Lovely Houses, Rustic Outlines and Border Lines.

I hope it inspired you to make one of your own.

Sometimes it seems like we are scrambling for a quick birthday or thank you card so I decided to make a set of note cards for my son to have quick access to, though he liked them so much he said he was going to keep them – how cute!

The images are colored with Prisma color pencils and gamsol with accents of Smooch and Smooch Glitz!

These cards were created using myStamp Box – Warm Tweets, Mention it and funky flowers.

Thanks for stoppin’ by!

~ Carolyn

I thought I’d turn it into some sort of fabric story book which I could wind up around the reel.  I cut my strip of calico and got out the stamps which would help me tell my story.   I just started stamping from one end and the story ended up playing itself out through the stamps.  I added some colour with Faber Castell Big Brush pens and stamped onto some pieces of coloured fabric.  I cut small pieces of fabric and ironed them onto heat and bond, stamped then cut out the images.  I could then iron these onto the fabric with the heat and bond.  I used a black journal pen to write the story and added a few beads and french knots.  I then cut a second piece of calico and backed it onto the main piece and ran it all through the sewing machine.  I wanted a raw, almost journalistic look so I used black thread and left all my edges raw.  I stitched onto each end some fabric to tie around the cotton reel.

Here are the stamps I used to tell my story:

I hope you enjoyed my fabric story book.  Maybe your stamps could tell your story. For a full list of all the stamps I used see the top of this post.

I hope the weather at your place is much better than the weather here in Belgium. It has been raining cats and dogs the whole day. I don’t mind if it rains when I’m at home to create but I had to work, grrr. Oh well, now I’m at home and I’m ready to start playing with some scrapping goodies. When I’m creating, I don’t like to be disturbed because I hate it when I need to finish something the next day. I made a door hanger to let my hubby know that I’m creating, hahaha.

I used the Friday Night Stencil

, Funky Flowers and Striped Stems

Have fun creating

Happy Thursday! Linda here and today I would like to share with you a simple technique to create beautiful color combination with soft transition and embossing. Stampers usually call this technique as “Resist Technique”. So, let’s get started;

Use your favorite stamp image and apply onto cardstock on random position. Emboss using powder and heat set. Wait for a couple of seconds and start coloring the cardstock using distress ink in circular motion. It will be helpful to have craft mat as your work base.

To create soft transition on multiple colors, try to first color using the lightest color first and gradually go to the darkest one. Wait for a minute until ink dry and using wet towel, wipe the embossed images to reveal the original color as shown on the picture.

Here is picture on the final product. I added some baby blue pearls throughout the card. I hope you enjoy this quick tutorial! Happy Stamping!

Other materials:

Pearls: Queen & Co

Ink: Ranger

Cardstock: American Crafts

Here is what everyone made of it:

by Isolde Pyncket

by Agata Pfister, a simple and elegant card

by Janet Zeppa paired with green

by Els Brigé, just in blue

by Jill Hildebrand

purple exploration by Jaine Drake

by Linda Abadie using the new Warm Tweet set and Back to the basics

by Jolene Johnston, beautiful pairing of the colours

layout and detail by Jill Hildebrand

this beautiful little chest is by Marsha Valk, the colours just pop!

… and inside! The Itty Bittys fit perfectly on the cubes.

We hope you liked our challenge!

Stay tuned for our design team call coming up later this week!

Until then, happy stamping!

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.