Emerald Gondola Card

Birthdays for the month of May have the birthstone Emerald, a colour which always makes me think of the sea around the coast of Brittany where we spend a lot of time. Gingersnap Creations Blogspot's Reasons to Stamp colour for May is Emerald. I love my new Darkroom Door Gondola stamp and needed to make some cards so I thought that this was a good reason to use the colour Emerald, as, whilst I am sure the canals of Venice are really a sludgy brown, I prefer to think of them romantically as a sparkling Green!

To colour this scene I brayered Baby Powder Kaleidacolor going upwards, then went across widthways just over the canal, using Caribbean Sea, so that I had pastel buildings and a greeny water.

Kraft Challenge - Gingersnap Creations Blog

Over on Gingersnap Creations Blog they have a number of challenges for May and I thought I would try to participate in a few - I got very behind generally last month as due to my poor IT skills it took me ages to upload my tutorials, so I am hoping to get a bit more done this month.

The colour theme for the month is Kraft, which I guess we call Manila? I had this slide mailer which intead of being the normal dull grey chipboard, was a lovely buff colour. It felt strange though, not to add paper, paint, and colour, so I restrained myself!

Here goes:-

I love the Venezia set from Oxford Impressions, so I started off by stamping the whole mailer inside and out with the Italian script in Sepia. I then stamped the map and the St Mark's Basilica on glossy card, again with Sepia, and tore around them. I crumpled and folded the map up a bit and tore it into pieces, and then adhered these to the front of the mailer, to disguise the words, 'This is a slide mailer' which were printed across it! I decorated the rest of the mailer with different images from the set in black, including the mask on the back cover. I prepared two image-transferred Crafty Individuals' Venice images and adhered them to the reverse of the microscope slide glass. I pushed them together to stamp the word Venezia across them, then finally adhered them into position in the mailer. These images met my need for some colour!

Venetian Gondola Card

I am having a catch-up on making cards at the moment, for birthdays and other occasions, which is a good excuse to use this new Venetian Gondolas stamp from Dark Room Door which Nancy kindly ordered into the shop for me. I love it! I stamped a few onto glossy postcards and coloured them in various ways to see what worked, and had done some with a very murky green canal. I had in my mind MP and Florence's photos of their recent trip, with the pastel houses, and I wanted this to be my focus, so Colin said, why not just colour the houses. So that is what I have done on this version. I then brayered a little pastel colour onto white shrink plastic and stamped the mask from the Oxford Impressions' Venezia set (well, I have held back from this favourite set for a while now!). Then I shrank it and used it as the embellishment, with a simple backdrop of one of the Crafty Individuals' patterned card blanks. Tried to be a bit restrained.

Coaster Swap

My friend, Ann, asked a little while ago if I fancied doing a swap with her. For the first one we did, I made a carousel, with horses dancing around gold poles, which I called Fairground Attraction. She made me a beautiful Diorama, which was what got me started on making them myself. This time she suggested coasters, and when I said I had been collecting them in pubs she said, 'oh, I could have sent you some blank ones if I'd known'. So she has now kindly done that so I will be able to ink them up and be more creative than with the beery ones. She made me a coaster book Post It holder, which is hanging above my craft desk to use for masking. She's now confirmed she's received my coaster wall hanging so it's ok to upload it now. I kept it quite plain, partly because of trying to become more minimalist, but mainly because I loved the Crafty Individuals Travels in Italy papers so much that I didn't want to cover them up too much. I used some Venetian glass beads I have been hanging onto for the right project. (one photo is the front, and the other is the plainer back view).

Venice Stampbord Block

This is an 8 x 8 Stampbord Block from the Artistic Stamper, and has been stamped with the Oxford Impressions Venezia set. The word 'Venezia' has been stamped on a Stampbord domino and then Crackle Glazed. I stamped the Santa Maria della Salute (I hope that is right, I have never been to Venice, although I would love to!) in a darker ink and did some scratching back of the detail, as I wanted this to be my focal image.