brown and blue christmas

Not quite swedish collage but it is a square anyway!

inside:

Sweet shoppe... how sweet it is!

Here are a few cards I made using the new DoodleFactory Sweet Shoppe set.

What I have been working on lately

Here are a bunch of cards I have been working on lately.

I have wanted to do this first card for a while. Although I released these brick background stamps several months after the release of the DoodleFactory Urban set I had these made long before and they were the reason why I commissioned Irene to doodle the Urban set in the first place. I knew I wanted to do some graffiti style stamps and I wanted a spray paint dude. Little did I know at the time we would have two and one would be a skunk and the other a mole of all things! (as is what typically happens when Irene is involved!) Anyway so once I had the brick backgrounds made into rubber I came up with this idea for the broken wall. I call this card my Yapples cool aid card because whenever I look at it I picture that cool aid guy bursting thru the wall saying "OH YEAH!!!"

The next three cards were all done during some down time at the York, PA stamp convention.

I thought it would be cool to use a part of the solid bricks background to make a wall to a building. This is my favorite card of the group.

These owls were colored as part of my copic demonstration at the show. I figured I'd put them to work on this card. This card also uses the no effort mosaic tile technique (instructions on the website www.starvingartistamps.com ) on the solid bricks background stamp with the ornate tooled leather background and the branch stamp.

Ah, cupcakes. This card uses a new set called Simple Birthday. I thought having two different sizes of cupcakes could be quite useful. The big cupcake is big enough to stand on its own as a focal point and the little guys sure do look cute all stacked up! Polka dot background is one of our background stamps too. This card was a serious labor of love. I didnt think it would come together but in the end it all worked out and Im really happy with it. I think Yapples is one of the most versatile stamps in the DF collection, he can eat stuff, he can yell, he can jump up and down.

This card features both the Classic Halloween silhouette (sentiment and graveyard scene) along with the DoodleFactory graveyard shift set. I realized when I made the sentiments for the DF Halloween II sets we left out an important sentiment. It prompted my late release of the Halloween silhouette stamps. I knew they would look really cool as a background scenic element.

This card didnt come out how I thought it would but what I love about this card is the zombie and the tombstones. I stamped them in brilliance black but they came out a little light. I used a pigment pen to color in the zombie to make it darker, add the RIP and outline the stones. I really like how these came out, here is a closeup:

So it seems I STILL have not mastered the swedish collage style, but I really like the coloring on the cat. I need to go back and add a chipboard title I think it really needs it.

Yeah, this one is not my favorite. Its really missing something, I might need to go back and figure that out but for now it is what it is.

I love this card.

In person its alot nicer, stop by the stamp show and visit with us in Indiana and you will see what I mean!

A few new cards to share...

Here are a couple of new cards I had done a while ago using some of our new cowboy cat stamps!



And one using the Flying Wedgie witch stamps with the Witch's brew sentiment.

All cards use brilliance black ink, copic makers (for the backgrounds too), and PTI prescored cardstock.

My maiden post!

Welcome to my blog.

Here it is... my maiden post. Such pressure!

Even though I have not two but three other blogs they are all dedicated to the company. I realized I'd still like to be able to show off my personal projects, which sometimes feature companies outside of my own, so I figured I should set myself up a personal blog.

Since this is my first post on my brand spanking new blog I figured Id tell you why I named this blog Stamp-O-Matic. It all started about 11 years ago when I was a die hard scrapbooker. Did you ever notice that alot of us scrapbookers and stampers refer to ourselves as OCD? Well Im pretty familiar with the affliction. Its a running joke in my family, my compulsion to collect every color paper, sticker, embellishment, pen, ink pad and other gizmo associated with my hobbies and my sister surveying my every increasing collection nicknamed me Scrap-O-Matic. For the past 11 years that has even been one of my email addresses and I think its only natural to carry it over into my stamping, as stamping has taken over such a big chunk of my life.

As I said I started out as a scrapbooker...and to this day I still do not understand how not every stamper scrapbooks and how not every scrapbooker stamps. It makes no sense to me. They are logically intertwined. The beauty of scrapbooking is that you get to KEEP a large portion of the projects that you make. Where as with stamping, most of it is given away. In stamping the projects are generally start to finish in a couple of hours, instant gratification. In scrapbooking you are making something infinitely more significant to your family, friends and your own personal history, but you use so many of the same products with both hobbies. Stamping enables a scrapbooker to use a non consumable product (stamps) to create a uniformed look in your albums with the use of alphabet stamps, pattern stamps and well.. any stamps. You get alot of mileage out of your stamps when you scrapbook. Scrapbooking generates a ton of scraps that would most certainly be put to good use on a card.
Consider making a photo card one of these days and merging the hobbies! Humm... is that a new future challenge?

As I said before, I started out a scrapbooker. Scrapbooking lead me to rubber stamping and I became a demonstrator for one of the direct sales companies. At the same time I also had pet chinchillas. We had been breeding them and got very involved in breeding mutation colors for pets. At one time we had chinchilla couples in colors chinchillas Grey (the color most fur coats are), beige, white, black, chocolate, spotted, silver, and violet. I being a stamper naturally I wanted chinchilla rubber stamps. There were none. So I looked into making my own stamps, (http://www.chinstamps.chinchillas.org/) the company was born (http://www.starvingartistamps.com/) and so was a new nickname... StampOMatic.

Speaking of challenges I think I will break in my first post on my new blog with my first challenge card. The challenge is Swedish Collage Style. (more details about the challenge on the company blog http://www.starvingartistampsgallery.blogspot.com/) Here is my first attempt. I really thought this was going to be an easy challenge. Several of us have had the same reaction to our first challenge cards. Those Swedish girls make them look a whole lot easier than they are!

Originally this card didn't have spiders and webs. It had a chipboard "BOO" on the top right. But it seems a few of us had the "boo" inspiration and I figured Id trade in the boo for the spiders and then I added the stitching. I told myself I really need to stop overworking this card and thats where I stopped.



Here are a couple of close ups:


This is not going to be my final attempt at the Swedish Collage Style. Im considering this my "warm up" card.