One of the few remaining magazine devoted completely to rubber stamping is The Stamper’s Sampler. I recently posted a review of their latest Winter issue along with a card inspired by Tim Holtz, who is the featured artist. Click here to read my review over on Craft Gossip, including how to make my Tim inspired Valentine card, this is a great masculine style, perfect to give to the man in your life.
-Heather
I adore Jane Austen, the books, the movies, the BBC miniseries, all of it! I have a wonderful Jane inspired stamp set from Oxford Impressions that has Regency style images and quotes from Jane’s books and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite sets. It so much fun to color, especially the womens dresses. I recently made a set of 3 Artist Trading Cards (ATC’s) using them. I stamped the images with black Memento ink on cardstock and colored the images with Spectrum Noir markers (I can not stop using these markers!) and then stamped the quotes onto clear acetate and attached them over the images with brads onto coordinating colored cardstock. I also added a charm to each one that went along with the theme.
These are currently available in my Etsy shop. These have now sold.
Here’s a charm bracelet inspired by one of my all time favorite authors, Jane Austen. I stamped and shrunk a silhouette of a woman from shrink plastic, soldered two scrabble tiles and added dictionary words to each, along with a hand holding a heart charm and a ink pen nib. I’m really happy with how it turned out.
I found a lovely princess image in one of my vintage children’s books recently and thought she looked like Marie Antoinette so I made a mixed media charm necklace with it around that theme. I soldered the illustration in glass and added two other soldered game pieces, a domino I colored blue and stamped a crown on and a round wooden game piece that I added vintage “eat cake” text too, there is also a silver charm of a hand holding a heart.
This necklace is currently available in my Etsy shop, click here.
-Heather
I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last post. The year has hardly begun and already it’s been rough. I’ve had alot of health issues and almost two weeks ago I unexpectedly lost my Grandfather (which has been terribly hard for the whole family).
But I’ve been trying to keep busy, mostly by redoing my work space. I’m almost done, it looks so great and functions so much better than before, I feel so organized! I’ll post before and after pics soon.
In the meantime here’s a few collages I’ve made recently with the thought of Valentine’s Day and love. I took white chipboard and cut out a heart shape (aprox. 5 1/2″ square) and adhered some vintage music sheet and patterned papers that I’d whitewashed and “sponged” with painted bubble wrap. I then added German paper scrap birds, vintage text, ribbons, sewed on buttons, etc. I punched holes at the top and added eyelets and wrapped cream wire for hangers. I think they turned out really pretty, they have a very shabby chic look to them. I love the blue one so much I might even keep it for myself:) The other two are currently for sale in my Etsy Shop.
So, I love old buttons and have used some in soldered jewelry but was wanting to making something “more” with them. I remembered a piece I saw awhile ago from the great Rebbecca Sower and also some pieces I’ve seen on Etsy and I was inspired to make this piece. I had some extra burlap from another project and loads of vintage white buttons so I drew a heart onto the burlap and stitched on all the buttons filling in the heart. And since I love adding little cut out words to just about everything I added the word “love” to one of the buttons. I bought an embroidery hoop and stained it with some wood stain (I have some vintage hoops packed away some place from my cross stitch days and need to find them, they’d be great in a piece like this) and then I put the burlap in the hoop, trimmed it down and glued it to the back. I think it turned out really lovely.
Here’s some more soldered collage jewelry for Valentine’s Day.
I love old movies and I really LOVE Cary Grant, he’s one of my all time favorite actors so I thought he’d make a great pendant. I used scrapbook paper for the background it has hearts and word all over, added a wonderful pic of Cary and I also cut out the words “Heart Throb” from an old dictionary.
This next one features an image of a sweet couple that I punched out in a heart shape over old book paper and I stamped the words “Key to My Heart”. The edged are done with scalloped soldering and a tiny key dangles from the bottom.
Made a couple of collage art Valentine cards today.
The first one is an image of a vintage couple, I mounted them on scallop edged black paper to look more like the old photos that have that type of edge, added some vintage lace and a pink paper heart with the word “love” cut from an old book. The background is vintage music paper that’s been stitched onto cardstock on my sewing machine and then mounted onto a pink card. There is also an old looking key tied with pink rick rack ribbon. The inside of the cards says “You hold the key to my HEART”
The next one is another of my felt owls (I’ve done other cards and ATC’s with him) sitting on a stamped branch, he’s also on vintage music paper surrounded by falling pink stamped hearts that’s stitched onto cardstock and mounted on a pink card. The outside says “Whooo Loves You” and the inside says “I do!”.
All stamps used are by Close To My Heart
