Stampotique Designer's Challenge #37 Bookmark and #36 Altering a book page.

This fortnight's Stampotique Designer's Challenge is to make a bookmark.
Not easy if you like dimension, as you can't use it on bookmarks which is what generally puts me off making them.

Hands up who has got the Tim Holtz Filmstrip Frames Sizzix die?
Keep your hand up if you've found a good layout for using it on a card.
No, me neither.
I haven't even seen one out in my travels around blogsville.
The best I can think of is making two, filling them with pictures and putting them mostly vertically but crossing over one another and having some designer paper somewhere.
Or stamping some sort of scene or collage arrangement on a card base and laying an empty filmstrip over it or making snapshots from the scene to go in the filmstrip.
But none of these ideas has inspired me to actually want to make them.

Oooh but I don't need to care about sticking it on a card anymore because I can make bookmarks with it instead and so can you- yay - no more guilt about a white elephant purchase.

Stampotique characters from the top are; Sheer, Heart Throb, Three in a round, Mort has a Pin Curl, and Clover.

I didn't use the whole filmstrip because it is too long for paperbacks and I backed it onto textured red card and coloured with Derwent coloursoft pencils for a change.
I didn't put any ribbon or fibres on it because I don't like using bookmarks that have them, they might look nice and dangly but they are annoying to read with them.  I find it's always better to use my eyes.

I did the SDC#36 Alter a page too but forgot to blog it (I'm still not fit and well and I think my brain is somewhere south of Spain. My body has never been to South of Spain or even Spain for that matter.)

I can't remember where I read the quote that "Real men have duct tape in their trucks". I didn't know what Duct Tape was and had to google it.
(It's that wide grey, cloth backed tape that I know as Electrical Tape, you might know it as John.)
Anyhoo it gave me the idea for this picture in my watercolour book.
Click on it to make it bigger.

It reads: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
Heart throb is saying "Real men always have duct tape in their vans."
Girl with heart Purse is saying "What is duct tape?"
Ha!

Happy Creating!
Gini
xx

Stampotique Designers Challenges 34 Flower Power and 35 Red, yellow and orange and 35.

 The lovely Kaz has set the Stampotique Designers Challenge 35 as the colours red, orange and yellow.
So I've made this one especially for you Kaz :-)
Must have been distracted by shiny things. 

When I was playing Dress Up 2010 I met Halle who told me that my blog made her think of her neighbour's boys saying "must have been distracted by shiny things" when someone misses a play in a ballgame. So this is where the quote comes from, thank you Halle.

Click on to make it bigger and let it be a lesson for all of us shiny lovers.
Quite what the lesson might be escapes me because fish out of water or not, shiny is good.
Very very good.

It's an 10 x 10 inch picture. I used acrylics on 300gsm watercolour paper for the background desert, yes I know it's not lifelike but I'm using artistic license because I'm an Artiste *cough*.
The cactus is the same watercolour paper cut into a cactus shape, painted a dark green and when dry I added heaps and heaps of green and gold glitter glues mixed together and piled on top.
Sorry about the cactus being green Kaz, but it's a cactus and it has to be green otherwise it would be just a strange coat rack.
I've used the three Daniel Torrente's mermaids from Stampotique Originals.

The lovely  Gez set the previous SDC 34 as Flower Power.

So the question I was pondering - Can the power of flowers get the boys to the promised land?
Well, I would have to say that depends totally on the mood of the lady and has nothing to do with the flowers.
There are certain times of the month when even flowers sporting enormous diamonds aren't gone to get the boys to first base.
Nope, not a hope in hell.
But Weasel is ever hopeful and with a line like this how can he possibly fail?
Click on it to make it bigger (which is possibly a better line for Weasel to use).

 

It's a very red card isn't it? 

Now this phrase is new to me but you may have heard it before. My son was watching Fred on youtube.com and it was a line on one of the videos. I like Fred's Annoying Orange videos. But I think it's the marmite effect though, love it or hate it.

I love romance and chickens.

Happy creating!

Gini

xx

Stampotique Designers Challenge #33 Use your scraps. Also #32, #30 and #29

The Stampotique Designers Challenge #33 is hard this time.
A lot of my scraps are basically rejects, things I made that are UGLY but I don't have the heart to throw them away completely so they sit there in my scrap drawer. It also contains very small scraps of designer paper and a few stamped images that never got used.
I managed to make a card and a tag out of this sad little drawer and used only a white card blank that was new.
This is the pitiful drawer.

Now the only saving grace in this drawer is all the spare Daniel Torrente heads I had left over from a tunnel card I made earlier this year.
I often alter these characters, give them different outfits or move their arms about, they really lend themselves well to this sort of mucking about. 
If you are squeamish you might not want to look at this card.

I had 2 Mort has a Pin Curl heads I had coloured in red.
I used Derwent Inktense Pencils, possibly the best pencils in the world, certainly the most fun to use and as I'm sure you are aware some pencils can be downright frumpy.
I mean just look at this one.

WTF?
A Frumpy Pencil trying to look hot?
NO WAY.

Aha, now we are talking, and as the late great Elvis would say
"A little less conversation a little more action please"
As I understand it, he was thinking about Derwent Inktense Pencils when he wrote that song.

Anyway where were we?
Oh yes.
I thought I would make Mort a twin brother.
Sort of Mortledee and Mortledoo.

Now all I did was turn Mort's head upside down, cut off his chin so his teeth became his hair and added a mouth drawn with a 0.1 Staedtler black pigment liner (which would be the Mercedes of the fineliners as it is a German pen).
That's all it took to create his twin.
But he kind of creeps me out so I didn't try too hard with the background for the card 'cos I can only look at him out the corner of Spanky's eye when she is giving a carrot a really hard stare.


May I just repeat myself here now.
If you are squeamish you might not want to look at this card.
OKAY be it on your own head then.

The background is Ranger paint dabbers, a real ugly colour called Willow (oh the joys of internet shopping) and Cloudy Blue. A couple of bits of scrap DP's and a bit of string.
I made a real effort with this photo and went outside in the sunshine and did a patio shoot.
"Photos from the patio", will it catch on do you think?

Onto the sorry sorry tale of this tag's ignominious beginning.
Do you remember the first year that Tim Holtz did his 12 tags of Christmas?
Well I thought I would join in.
I remember it took me ages to find the correct dimensions to cut out this tag "properly".
 3 hours later the base tag was made.
I then sat there and thought
"OK how are you going to wangle this one then foolgirl?"
Because I didn't actually have any Tim Holtz products.
Not a single one.
Nope, none.

Well the tag was snuggled down at the bottom of my scrap drawer.
Lost and lonely no more.
Recently I diecut a load of nestie tags and inked them with stormy sky distress ink that I didn't like at all, plus it didn't go with the project I was making.
I still think they are ugly so I dragged them roughly through chipped sapphire Distress Ink and they look better now.
I bent them into a deep curve, used white PVA to glue them on the tag. The heads are stuck on with foam pads. The hearts are left over Daniel's Hearts from the same tunnel card project. The boys from the top are Smile, Rocky, Heart Throb, Smile (again) and Rocky (again).
Now I used gold liquid pearls instead of gold brads in the holes on the Nestie double ended tags which looks OK I think and makes a cheaper option than brads.

Ready to do some of the SDC challenges I missed the deadlines for when I was ill?

SDC challenge #32 - Clean and Simple

Describes me really.

How AMATEUR is this then? I love it!
A priceless gem I think.
My nine year old likes it too, worms are bad (the new word for cool apparently).
Hey, that worm is all my own work I'll have you know.

SDC #30 - Recycle.

I have altered a lot of matchboxes and have the matches left over to prove it.
What do you mean, show you?
Looky here then

We probably use one small matchbox worth of matches every 5 years lighting birthday cake candles, so I have a LOT of left over matches.
Strangely no, I don't have any desire to transform them into an accurate scale model of the Cutty Sark or Westminster Abbey.

Instead I came up with some little birdhouse homes for the Three in a round Stampotique stamp that managed to use up about 10 matches.
Now my maths is a bit dodgy but I think about another 9999 bird houses to go to use all of them pesky matches up, unless you know any old men?
Steady.

I thought I would try a different style to my normal and use a muted palette of colours.
This first birdhouse uses a piece of recycled parcel paper, as it was runkled (creased) I ran it through my Xcut paper crimper which is adorable, sometimes it wears a bow; actually it IS a hot tool.
Then I used my finger (another hot tool) to apply some silver acrylic paint to the parcel paper along the top of the ridges.
The base is made of foam board.
I cut up some matches for the gable and used white PVA to glue everything including the beads around the stamp.
It was so plain I just couldn't leave it like that so added some tiny red beads and crystal glitter glue to the match sticks to try and perk it up.
It's still a bit dull to look at...

Then as an antidote I did another one in my normal style.

Now for this one I was planning on putting 3 match sticks together as the little step into the birdhole but got carried away with the other decorations and didn't leave enough room so had to put them on separately, doh.

 SDC#29 - Sketch

Now I have never liked the Pied Piper's general nastiness.
Stealing children for heaven's sake, and I wondered what other story he could  have had to make him nicer, and possibly just another misunderstood soul doing his best to survive.

What if the Pied Piper was a girl who was living in the shadows; living only a half life mostly drab and ghostlike, having neither emotions nor physical sensations   and only a wavering form.
Perhaps to be corporeal and complete she needed to be taught how to live.
Maybe she needed the animals in all their glorious, noisy, colourful variations,  being busy living life at full throttle in the present moment to really teach her how to live.
Maybe it was the animals she was calling with her flute playing and maybe just maybe they all lived happily ever after.

 Of course she could have just been the victim of a careless misspelling by a lackadaisical Scribe who was spending too much time thinking about cheese and she was really the Plaid Pipper which is a whole 'nother story.

Happy creating!
Gini
xx

Stampotique Designers Challenge 28:Newsprint/Old Book Pages

So, long time no see - I have unintentionally done something as yet unknown but horrible to my back on top of everything else... just call me limpalong or maybe just limpy but I am not laid up in bed anymore.
Gotta love pain meds.
So if I haven't visited you or replied to your comments here or your emails I apologise profusely. I am trying to catch up :-)

The lovely Jo Capper Sandon has set the challenge this fortnight to use newsprint or old book pages in our projects. (So many amazing Triptych cards were made for the last challenge did you see them all?)

These two are 12" by 12'' and use Tim Holtz paper pads; Lost and found; Crowded Attic and Retro Grunge.
The die cut Tim Holtz tree is a book page from Peter Pan. The bunting string is made of black bugle beads.
All stamps are Stampotique Originals.
I thought I'd do a little Easter love with the new Stampotique, Daniel Torrente stamp called Hare as the Easter Bunny.
Happy Easter to you all!
Click on any picture to make it bigger.

In case "up the duff" means nothing to you, it means pregnant.
The speakers are Muffin on the left and Clover on the right.
Did you notice the black sheep hare? He is sooo gothic, bless him.

I coloured him with a Sakura stardust gellyroll pen in black and then blended with water. The black is based on a purple dye which looks great.
Do you think he'll catch on as the new Easter Bunny? I do hope so.

Then I was on a roll, an egg roll, and made another.

Come on let's open the eggs and see what's inside!

Are you hoping for a Daniel Torrente Easter Egg now?
The boys from the left; Mort has a Pin Curl, Heart Throb and Smile are standing on a base of chocolate so you don't have to choose between the two, here in the land of Shiny you get everything your heart desires...even if everything blows chunks in real life.

Then I thought of this one, so I made a card.
The old ones are often the best.
(I keep telling myself this.)

 

This is Stampotique's Hunk and Hare. 

Additional stamps are Punk Plaid background by Artistic Stamper and the lettering is a set of individual letter stamps by Studio G, 'cos I love to do it wonky.

A very Happy Creative Easter to you all!

Gini

xx

Stampotique Triptych Card challenge. Spanky does The Birth of Venus.

The Stampotique Challenge for the next fortnight is to make a Triptych card using Stampotique only stamps.
There is a random draw to win $30 to spend in the Stampotique store, which you need to win because have you seen the new stamps released this month? Jo Capper Sanderson has some new stamps including two wonderful owls and Daniel Torrente has done 3 mermaids and other fabulous animals. There goes my crafting budget for this month. Life is always sunny in the Land of Shiny.
But this is my last project for Stampotique as guest designer, aaaw.

So what did Spanky make huh?

She had a ball with this one and whizzed back in time to 1484 and is the Official Queen of Ginger this fine spring morning.

Click on any image to make it bigger.

Mirror, Mirror on the tree,
Who's as pretty as can be?

 

Kolossal 6070

Tree 6112

Puss Puss 6105

 

 

Stitch 6052

Large Lace Background 5177

Now just in case you don't immediately recognise (as if!) Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, here is the centre of the painting.

Now everything that could possibly go wrong whilst making this; did go wrong and a few more previously undiscovered errors to boot.

It's just as well that the "Spanky does.." are my favourite makes.

The triptych template I used is this free one from Mirkwood Designs.

 They also have a paypal button for donations to support their endeavours.

The background paper is by Basic Grey from the Urban Prairie range.

If I had to choose a Basic Grey range I had to marry it would be this one.

I used Versamark and Cosmic Shimmer embossing powder in Copper Bronze Lustre for the Large Lace background stamp.  Isn't it gorgeous like this?

The one and only Stitch has embroidery floss hair glued onto card using Golden Gel medium. Anything is possible using gel medium as a glue. 

If I had to choose a glue I had to marry it would be this one.

I had to go a bit lower with her hair than is esthetically pleasing but I needed to cover up her claws and then rearrange her arms.

The colouring is with Derwent coloursoft pencils. You really can't go wrong with any Derwent pencils.

If I had to choose a pencil I had to marry it would be a Derwent one.

Now the tiny gold stars are new (to me) and I didn't do a test glue with them, so I ran a line of Glossy accents around the edge and wow did a lot more of them stick than I had planned.

The beads at the bottom are Suze Weinberg's Beadazzles in Electric slide (also new to me) and oh my, don't they go everywhere, they just followed the little stars...absolutely everywhere.

The mirror is made out of mirror card with silver stickles around it.

Whichever Daniel Torrente lady character stamp I am working with becomes my favourite stamp.

If I had to choose a stamp company I had to marry it would be Stampotique :-)

Happy creating everyone!

Gini

xx

Stampotique Challenge, Animals, Birds and Insects

The Stampotique Challenge for the next two weeks can be found here.
A fabulous challenge with oodles and oodles of possibilities and you can use any stamps in your project.

Last week we saw the chick shapes in their paying job as circus performers. They are energetic joyful characters and this week we get to see them playing musical chairs.
I have tried to show just how good these chicks look no matter what style of creating you like; whether grungy and shiny (gotta have a bit of Shiny) or paper piecing with pretty designer papers.
Click on any image to make it bigger.

The  4 chick shapes (4 sided cube) 9111 and 3 chairs 9179 in this one are stamped with Versafine black and heat embossed with fine detail clear powder.
If you heat emboss your stamped image it makes it really easy to colour in with Cosmic Shimmer Watercolours or Twinkling H2O's because the embossing resists the watercolour paint so it easily stays inside the image. 

In this one I've used pretty summer garden designer papers and paper pieced the stamped images. As you know if you're a regular here, I'm a bit of a duffer with flat card layouts (I need a lot more practice, about 2256 more cards worth I think) but you get the general idea and I'm sure you'll be able to put them in a much better layout yourself if you fancy having a go at musical chairs.

I did wonder what these two completely different styles would like if they were combined together; probably quite horrid, but I thought I'd try it out in an ATC and surprisingly this style turned out to be my favourite of the lot.

So my advice would be:
No matter how mad an idea seems to be; give it a try as an ATC.

Next week I'll show you where the chicks live.

Happy creating!
Gini
xx

Stampotique Mayan Circus

I'm so pleased to be given the opportunity to design some projects for Stampotique Stamps this month as their guest designer for March - woohoo!

If you've yet to visit their challenge blog Stampotique Designers Challenge, you're missing a treat as their quality wooden stamp range is very diverse and I love all the marvelous inspiration and ideas that come from their very talented design team.

For my first project I've created a Mayan Circus.
Now who knows whether or not the ancient Mayan's ever had circus events and truly, we in the land of Shiny don't actually care because you're very unlikely to find any historical accuracy here.

But this was great fun to dream up.
It's 12 inches square and you can click on any picture to make it bigger.

  It's all made of cardboard and white card.

One of Stampotique's stamp designers is Amy Wilson Wellenstein and she has drawn some Mayan Images and the one that caught my eye was the
7124 Mayan Background #2 
that has so much versatility not only as a background stamp but for each element of the design on it's own. It even has 4 crown's of 3 different sizes, Uri Gellar's bent forks (all the better for scooping out your heart my dear) and all sorts of fashion design accessories that Spanky coveted immediately and some interesting potential building blocks that I had my beady eye on.

 Now Spanky went to town on dressing all the Torrente characters up in their finest Mayan fancy dress gear.
If you are lucky enough to get to attend a Mayan Circus you really must dress up to the nine's Mayan Style.
In the following close up's of the audience, anything yellow/gold is part of the Mayan background stamp. I stamped the background stamp multiple times onto white card and cut out all the individual elements of the design and Spanky stuck them onto the people artistically - ahem.
I used Versafine black ink for all the stamping.
White PVA craft glue for all the glueing and Derwent pencils from their Inktense range, watercolour range and Coloursoft range.

Working from Left to Right. First we have my favourite Torrente character

6057 Heart Throb Bless him - he thought he would manage just fine on his own without Spanky's help styling his costume... although there is something to be said for the appeal of a man with a tattoo on his forehead and forks through his ears. Quite what that appeal might be, I'm not sure but for every old sock there is an old shoe.

6022 Sheer Gotta admire a gal who isn't afraid of her own cleavage. (Spanky has a ginger cleavage - nuff said.)

6047 Glimmering Hope When you dress with style who needs legs?

6048 Moth Fab The more I work with these characters the more I realise that clashing colours work really well in their outfits.

6104 Eric How about those Dennis Healy eyebrows and deeley boppers?


6011 Girl with Lunchbox The poor girl doesn't have a name! How did this happen??? She looks like a Davina to me...

6051 Prom Queen

6059 Bowtie Now I think the Mayan's missed out on a real fashion statement by not utilizing the accessory power of The Sporran. Perfect for your small change, lipstick or as the indomitable posing pouch.

6080 Topknot  Is this a dagger which I see before me?  Topknot is a Sporran wearing Mayan Norman Bates tonight. We all go a little mad sometimes.

6052 Stitch Now Stitch was the last character I coloured and I choose colours that I thought couldn't possibly look nice together but it turned out to be my favourite colour scheme by far. Edward scissor hands? Pah! He's been usurped by Stitch the Knife Slayer.

6102 Dweeze Looking mighty fine in his kipper tie.

6104 Eric again, you can't keep a good man down.

6045 Newt with lunchbox

6071 Perl This is the first time I've given Perl brown hair and it just doesn't look right, she's a blonde through and through, but I thought blonde hair would detract from the gold forks or even (heaven for fend) clash with them.

6059 Bowtie again. Oh my, oh my what a splendid costume. I just hope your not behind him because you'll never see a thing with that huge headdress in front of you.

6025 Gooseneck. Not quite playing spoons on a wash board but very close.

6115 Weasel Aha, Weasel looks like he has nefarious plans for poor old Two Barrettes.

6024 Two Barrettes Who proves that Yes, bobby pins work well with crowns but they provide absolutely no protection from knife wielding Weasels.


6021 Girl with heart purse Another girl with no name! Poor Tink.

So onto the floor acts.

First we have 6026 Heart Boy the lion tamer holding one of the  9179 three chairs (designed by Janet Klein) controlling a very fierce 6105 Puss Puss.
He's holding a whip made out of embroidery floss and I used a section of his arm for the handle.

Then we have the amazing Chick riding cat jumping fences. The chick is one of the 4 chicks on the cube 9111 Chick shapes riding  6096 Kitty and the fence is made up of the elements of the Mayan background stamp. More embroidery floss for the reins and another element from the Mayan background to form the chick's wing (so she can hold the reins).

Followed by the wondrous chick riding cat balancing act. We have another chick from the cube 9111 Chick shapes riding another 6096 Kitty balancing on further elements from the Mayan background stamp.

And finally we have the balancing quails from the 9211 Quails cube

with 6105 Puss Puss balanced precariously on the top.

A brief look at how I made it. 'Cos you're ready for a cup of tea now aren't you?

I cut a very strong box like this. Remember you can click on any photo to make it bigger.

You can cut your supports for your freestanding characters one of two ways.
The one on the left (Heartboy) is a single layer of card with the support cut and divided up the centre and the sides folded back opposite each other.
The one on the right is made of a double layer of cardboard, glue only the stamped section together and fold back the supports opposite each other.

To decorate the floor I stamped the Mayan Background stamp in it's entirety using Antique Linen Distress ink.

My Top Tip:- Now Distress Inks are great but if your paper or card is at all porous or loosely woven then the ink will bleed and fuzz when stamped. To avoid excess bleeding, ink your stamp using a brayer to apply the ink. (If you ink the stamp directly with the distress pad you will get unwanted bleeding.)


I cut incisions in the floor where I want the images to stand. Feed the image support through the incision to the back and open up the folds. See the chair and cat in the photo.

 



Happy creating!
Gini
xx

Spanky does Welcome and Float On Stampotique!

The Stampotique Designer Challenge is to make a welcome card for the new Stampotique Designers.

So we're wishing all the new Stampotique designers a warm welcome.
You can find them here.

If you are unfamiliar with Spanky, she is a time traveling stylist, she is bold, daring, windswept and dangerous and she knows everything about Romance, she lives here in The Land of Shiny with me, I'm her sidekick and gofer.
Well, I'm just her pale shadow really.

Firstly I must apologise to Alberto who is the only male stampotique designer, unfortunately we are catering for the majority in this post and that is the Wimen.
Fortunately for you, this is The Land of Shiny and regardless of what job title you may hold now or in the future, we shall never expect you to pour the coffee or distribute the biscuits...unless it is actually your turn :-)

Now then.
Come in and welcome.
Come in and share a little LOVE with the Torrente Boys.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes they like to pretend they are The Floaters.
Oh yes they do.

Aquarius and my name is Heart Throb,
I love a woman who can hold her own,
a woman who can grab hold of my ears and hold on tight.
Take my hand, come with me baby, to Love Land.

Libra and my name is Hunk,
Now I like a woman who carries herself like Miss Universe,
a woman who can balance a crown on her enormous head,
a woman who will take me to Love Land.

Leo and my name is Weasel,
I love all the women of the world,
I paint a new name on my sign every night,
because I love everybody and everything,
and you know what, ladies, if you feel this is you,
Then this is what you do -
Take my hand,
come with me baby, to Love Land.
Float, float on.

Spanky says welcome and float on...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvAmTkJmT5c

Come on you know you want to watch the video, I still can't believe that song was taken seriously or that it was even written and performed, I can imagine it was written whilst they were very very drunk but it didn't get laughed at and thrown in the bin the next day did it, we are soooo doomed.
Private Frazer was right.

I am practicing that shaking finger step in the mirror.
I think Himself might like it.

Happy creating!
Gini
xx

Challenges for Stampotique, Masks, Scenes and Mona Lisa

I hope you'll forgive me for combining my 4 pieces together in one post, as they are interlinked and were created together with all three challenges in mind.

Stampotique Challenge - Use the stamping technique masks.

Order of the Opus Gluei - Make a scene.

Sunday Postcard Art - Alter the Mona Lisa.

Firstly the Stampotique Challenge.
You know how sometimes you mishear something and go off at a tangent and then somebody corrects your misunderstanding and you go off again and still get it wrapped around your ears wrong???

Well this happens to me ... a lot, so I thought I'd make some joke art out of it, because really when you get it so wrong over and over the only way to deal with it is to make a joke out of it.
Where would be without humour?
While I was ruminating on this idea, Kolossal was bouncing up and down in my stamp draw, shouting "Pick me, oh PICK ME!"
So how could I refuse...

Click on any picture to make it bigger.

So Kolossal rushed back to the drawing board and tried again...

Now then,  the first picture was my first try at masking a scene and I made a right hash of it by getting in a muddle order wise and picking some see through stamps, which um, don't benefit from being masked.  In fact masking them makes them look wrong. Hey ho.
So I tried again and got it right with the second picture.
I turned hanging hearts upside down and I think they make a nice lumpy, humpy,  bumpy meadow with little mushrooms and toadstools growing in it or maybe quirky flowers.
The lovely lady is made up of Prom Queen's body with Clover's head.
Clover is a head only stamp.
I made her by masking out Prom Queen's head with a post it note stuck on the stamp itself.
Inked up the stamp.
Peeled away the post it note and stamped just the body.
Now all Stampotique stamps stamp beautifully but they are on wood blocks which makes positioning them awkward.
I expect if I spent about 100 years puzzling, I could have worked out how to plan Clover's head placement using a stamp positioner, and incidentally I do have one.
But I am an old bird and don't have 100 years left, and also I like to try and live as dangerously and windsweptedly as I can without the cover of Spanky.
So I positioned my nose on my work table so I could look underneath my stamp and at the paper all at the same time (as it were) as I stamped Clover.
It worked!
I then felt I had had quite enough excitement for one day.
Phew.
These scenes are also for the Opus Gluei Challenge
If you have never visited this challenge site, please do so, you'll love them, they are funny, lovely ladies and they set really good challenges.
(Is the cheque in the post yet Rosemary?)

Onto the Sunday Postcard Art challenge to alter Mona.

Have you noticed that tempting open space in Hunk's head where his brain box would be?
It's a wonderful open space complete with tumble weeds blowing around, just like my brain box.
So I thought I would do some more masking and put Mona in Hunk's brain.

 I thought anything other than white space around him would detract from the goings on in his head. So I put only a boarder around the postcard. Mona is stamped in the deliciously lovely and shiny multi colour Brilliance inkpad called Twilight. I used the Brilliance colour combination called Peacock in the next version and it gets even shinier if you heat emboss it with clear powder.

To give a bit more definition to hunk's shape as his outline is quite pale, I cut him out and mounted him on foam pads so he'll cast himself a shadow.
This is the shiny shot.

I painted Iridescent blue twinkling H2O's on navy blue card. The mount makes the postcard 6" by 4".

Happy creating!
Gini
xx

P.S. I still have some wish bookmarks left if you want one, just ask in the comments of that Happy New Year post and it is yours :-)