Ingenious Inkling

NBUS Football Birthday

The newest Challenge at Shopping Our Stash is NBUS (Never Before Used Stuff) from your stash that is at least one year old.

 

 

Ardyth is also leading us on a #shopyourcraftstashsummer2024 to give those unused items we have some love, so I'm joining there too.  I am envious of Ardyth who knows exactly how many items she needs to use.  I'm afraid to even think about counting how many unused items I have.

Darnell also has a monthly NBUS Challenge, so I'm linking-up there as well.

I decided to shop my Darkroom Door Stash of unused stamps for today's card.  Since Rachel died, it has made me sad to think about using these stamps, but I decided she would want to see her lovely designs out in the world, so that's what I did.

This Darkroom Door Football stamp is from at least as far back as March 2021 and the backing had never been removed.  I inked it with black ink and stamped it twice on white cardstock (the second one was to cut out the football after I finished my ink blending).

 

 

I used a combination of multiple blue distress inks on the sky and greens for the grass to add color, and colored pencil to add the red to the shoe (or boot as it is called).  I cut the football from the second stamped image and used a stylus to give the ball some dimension before attaching it with foam tape in the center and adhesive on the edges to keep the roundness of the ball when it was attached.

I used A Colorful Life Designs Cloud Edger and white pigment ink in the sky to add a bit of cloud dimension.  I also added some black sequins to finish the design together with an NBUS sentiment from a Simon Hurley set from the Crop & Create event in 2022.

We hope you'll Shop Your Stash for some NBUS, so you can join us in giving those neglected products some love.

End of #ColorConspiracy2024

I'm always a bit sad when a month long challenge ends.  May was so fun with Birgit's #ColorConspiracy2024. Creating daily clearly fills my soul, so I should challenge myself to do it anyway.

Creating with colors was certainly a challenge for me, but that's what pushes you.  Here are a few more of my prints from the month.

This is a color challenge I might have chosen myself (many from the month were certainly not).

 

 

And here's what I did with it using a Stars Stencil from Little Birdie Crafts.

 

 

I also loved this color combination.

 

 

But I'm not sure the combination of the Curvy Rays Stencil from A Colorful Life Design and the String quite worked ... It sort of feels like a circus.

 

 

Since there is black in the color combination, I tried to do an image transfer.

 

 

It sort of failed, but thankfully it failed in the right spots, so it looks like Gillian Anderson's eyes are peeking through.

 

 

I think this color combination was my favorite of the month.

 

 

At first I thought this print was a fail with the white sort of sticking to the plate and not getting full rainbow coverage ... but after I sat with it a bit, I realized I loved the imperfection.  I used a cheesecloth fabric to get the texture.

 

 

This color combination was pretty challenging.

 

 

 

This time the Curvy Rays Stencil come through (and it feels really circus-y to me).

 

And the one of the final days was a black, white & choose your own color challenge.  Birgit mentioned the challenge of getting a good contrast print with Neon paint (because it's less opaque), so I had to give it a try.  I intended to do an image transfer with the black paint, but it failed.  I used the print anyway, and I love how it turned out.

 

 

Thanks for joining the Gelliarts printing with me.

The Real Heroes

This card started with the Just Us Girls Challenge to use an Inked or Sprayed Background.  

 

 

I searched through my background drawers and found this piece of Black cardstock that was sprayed with white ink spray using what I think was the Rough Edge Circlezz Stencil from A Colorful Life Designs.  I think I sprayed with the stencil in place and then flipped it over on the cardstock to get a positive imprint from the sprayed ink on the stencil.

 

 

I used this week's Freshly Made Sketch by punching three 1 1/4" squares from the trimmed off edge of the sprayed paper and cutting two rectangles from my brand new Funky Fossil Don't Make Me Laugh stamp in black ink on white cardstock.  I'm linking-up at the Simon Says Stamp Something New Challenge.

 

 

I'm also joining the Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes Stencil Challenge.  The sentiment is a Tim Holtz Big Talk Snarky Sticker attached with foam tape.

 

 

I finished with a scattering of black pearls.

Howl at the Moon

The current Stay Crafty with Hero Challenge #staycraftywithHero is to watch a Card a Day with Hero Arts video at Creativebug and make a card inspired by it.  I chose Day 16 - Color Layering because I knew I had several Hero Arts Color Layering sets in my stash that had yet to see ink.

 

I bought this Hero Arts Color Layering Howling Wolf Stamp Set and Die because my sister loves wolves.  I used several of the tips from the video including using a die template in my MISTI to position my stamps and dies for the various layers.  For my Wolf I used Sand, Watering Can & Onyx Black for my layers.

 

I tried several color combinations for my moon, but finally settled on another tip Libby gave, which is just to use only the detail layer of the stamp (on a lighert grey cardstock).   After stamping, I used a brush to add some golden ink to the edges for a little moonlight glow.  The sentiment is from the same set.

I used my new Cloud Edger Stencil with Watering Can Ink to create both the ground and the sky (love it) and then attached the wolf and moon with foam tape.