Inspiration Station April

Those of you who know me, know that I work at a wonderful stamp store, local to the Olympia Washington area (actually in Lacey), named Art ‘n Soul.  We are introducing something new at Art ‘n Soul beginning this month.  We love that our customers come to us for inspiration, and we are going to turn that up a notch, and challenge ourselves to do more.  Every month, the staff at Art ‘n Soul will pick a favorite item, and we will each make a card or cards using that item.  Local customers will be able to come in and view samples made by the staff that will show each of our unique perspectives.  

Inspiration Station projects will be on display at the shop around the middle of each month.  I will post my projects here on my blog, and if you are local, please come in to see these cards, and to see what everyone on the staff has made.  For those not able to come in to look at all of the cards, there will be posts nearly every day on the Bella Carta at Art ‘n Soul blog here, showing all of the beautiful projects created by the fabulous Art ‘n Soul staff members.  

For our first Inspiration Station, it was a no-brainer to use Magenta products.  Art 'n Soul has been the Magenta Retailer of the Year for 5 years in a row; which means that our small store has sold more Magenta products than any other store in the country.  For FIVE YEARS!  We love Magenta stamps and products because they are absolutely some of the highest quality products that we have ever seen or used.  For April, we chose Magenta TM27, Floral Background Trio Templates.  This is a trio of beautiful floral motif stencils.  We also chose the Magenta stamp 07.730.H "I am in love with this day!" to go with our projects.

Magenta TM27 Floral Background Trio

Magenta 07.730.H

The very first thing I wanted to do with these stencils is to use them with stencil paste on Inchie Art Squares.  I made two samples with these, and I love how they turned out.

For both of these cards, I used 1.5" Inchie Arts Black Art Squares.  I'm sort of in love with black Art Squares, and find myself reaching for them often for my projects.  I used temporary adhesive to adhere three of them onto a scrap piece of card stock.  I placed them right next to each other, and used some cutting boards on either side of the squares that were the same thickness as the art board.  This gave me a wider level surface for pasting.

For this first card, I used black glossy embossing paste by Dreamweaver Stencils.  Once the paste had dried,  I put the stencil back over the squares, and dabbed glue over all the pasted areas using a sponge dauber and the Essential Glue Pad.  I then used stencil brushes to apply Dreamweaver F/X powders onto all of the glued areas.  Since these powders have mica in them, there is a beautiful metallic sheen to the design.

I adhered the squares, with a slight space between each one, onto a strip of patterned purple paper that I found in my stash.  This was all mounted onto a white base card.  I then stamped the sentiment with Versamark ink, and embossed it with Ranger Black Sparkle embossing powder.

The second card was done pretty much the same way, except instead of glossy paste and F/X powders, I simply used gold stencil paste.  This gives the squares a beautiful gold metallic shine in real life.  The squares were mounted onto a piece of gold paper from my stash, then onto a white base card.  The sentiment stamp was embossed in Ranger Black Sparkle embossing powder.

Magenta materials used:

TM27 Floral Background Trio

07.730.H  "I am in love with this day!"

Other Materials:

Inchie Arts black Art Squares 1.5 "

Dreamweaver pastes: Black Glossy and Gold

Essential Glue Pad

Dreamweaver F/X powders: Purple Satin, Kiwi, Goldfinch

Versamark Ink

Vellum paper

Ranger Black Sparkle embossing powder

I love these cards, and could have stopped there, but I really wanted to try the stencil stamping technique with these Magenta Stencils.  They turned out to be absolutely perfect for stencil stamping.  You can view a tutorial on my blog using this technique here.

I pretty much used the same process for each of these cards, and I made a bunch of these backgrounds in a short time.  I used Tim Holtz watercolor paper, and inked them up heavily with different colors of Distress Ink.  In each case, I sprayed the stencil with a mixture of water and Perfect Pearls powder (1/4 tsp of Perfect Pearls Pearl in 2 oz of water makes a great mixture, and I have not had a clogged sprayer yet).

After spraying the stencil, I laid it carefully onto the inked watercolor paper, and pressed it down.  After a few seconds, I lifted the stencil up, and each time I had a beautiful image that only got better as the surface dried.  I left each one to dry on its own, since it didn't take that long.  It was hard to capture the sparkle and shimmer in these with a photograph, but I tried taking a photo at an angle with lots of light on them.  This is a pile that I didn't use for the Inspiration Station samples, and they are just waiting to be turned into other cards.  One is missing because it already became a birthday card for a friend.

I absolutely love the shine that the Perfect Pearls powder gives to these, and I love the images that show up from the stencils.  You never get the same thing twice.  I cut each one down, using the largest die in the Memory Box 30009 Stitched Rectangles die.  

For the Inspiration Station cards, I stamped the sentiment onto vellum using Versamark Ink, and then embossed each one with Ranger Sparkle Black embossing powder.  The vellum strip was wrapped around the panel, and adhered to the back.  

To mount each panel, I cut out a piece of white fun foam with the next size down of the stitched rectangle dies.  I adhered the fun foam to the back of the panel, and stuck it to a piece of colored card stock, using scor tape to ensure it would stay stuck down.  The entire piece was mounted onto a white base card.

For every one of these samples, the Magenta materials were the same.  Also the same were:

Perfect Pearls Pearl

Versamark Ink

Ranger Black Sparkle embossing powder

Memory Box 30009 Stitched Rectangles

Tim Holtz Watercolor paper

vellum

White Fun Foam

One of the things I love about the choice of these templates from Magenta is that we got 3 stencils to play with!  This is one of them.

I also used a Hasty Lace template on this one to frame the sentiment.  Since I was stamping on vellum, I couldn't help myself.  Other than the materials listed above that were used on each card, I will list other materials that were unique to each card.

Hasty Lace template HQ3

Distress Inks used:

Cracked Pistachio

Abandoned Coral

Mermaid Lagoon

Distress Inks used:

Mowed Lawn

Peeled Paint

Rusty Hinge

Peacock Feathers

Stardream Flame paper

Distress Inks used:

Picked Raspberry

Mustard Seed

Peacock Feathers

So Silk Beauty Pink paper

I hope you enjoyed all of these, and that you will come by the shop to see them in person and/or check out the Bella Carta at Art 'n Soul blog each day to view these and all of the other creations!