Stamp A-Faire* 2014 Time Traveler - Afternoon Challenges

The 1920s......The afternoon challenges were fun and inspiring and frustrating and made me stretch!  The first afternoon challenge was the 1920's and I LOVED learning to use the dies as templates to embellish with rhinestones and glitter.  I will absolutely definitely do this in the future.  It's a fun technique that can be sophisticated and whimsical and even applicable to holiday cards and scrapbook pages

The 1940's ....  I LOVED this challenge also.  The colors and stamps and flowers were just perfect.  I had never used a stamp/stamps for backgrounds before and learned a lot doing this one.  I need to work on my stem wrapping for the small bouquets but they are so versabile and would be useful for so many occasions!

The 1960's....I have to be honest and let you know that I struggled with this one.  I did manage to do this card which I feel fits with the theme:

And lastly...the 1980's.  I just enjoyed this theme so much!!  It reminded me so much of my daughter and I know she will love this when I give it to her for her next birthday.  She loved the rainbows and unicorns which were so popular during this era.  I also wanted to do the folding technique but probably won't get to it before the deadline for the challenges.

Stamp A*faire 2014 - Time Traveler - Morning Challenges

Well, it's that time of year again, and Stamp A Faire starts tomorrow.  I am at my sisters, awaiting two other friends and we are making a weekend of it.  Can't wait for all the challenges to begin.  I will be posting what I do and hope you'll join along !!

Morning Challenges:

7:am  Morning Timer Challenge
Well, this challenge was to take a color scheme and a sketch and complete your card in 20 minutes.  I failed.  Took me 34.  Had problems with my tape runner, couldn't decide on the sentiment, redid one flower.  But I finished!!  The sentiment is from the Regency Era stamp set, the flowers are from the filled with Joy Stamp Set, the papers are two Paper Trey papers.  My fussy cutting is not that great but after staying up until almost 3am, laughing and giggling and looking at cards and stamp sets, my eyes just weren't focusing well this morning!  And here are the results:

Ancient Rome Challenge--this challenge was to do a card using a mosaic pattern or one using embossing paste to simulate an old texture.  I am planning on doing both but the first one I did was using the mosaic die that came in the SAF kit.  I used the Paper Trey Ink stamp set entitled "Natural Beauties" because I love the way the two step die looks.  I hope to be posting the embossing paste card...right now am waiting for the paste to dry so that I can stamp and watercolor the image on it.

This is the second challenge in this series--to use an embossing paste in your design to give it an aged look.  I have never done anything like this before but used a pearelscent embossing paste, then stamped in momento black ink (should have used stazon) and then used a waterbrush pen and some ink spots (small ink pads).  It kind of blurred and faded but gave it an aged look which I really liked.  This card ended up being something I was not used to doing and stretched my limits so I enjoyed doing it.  I will use this technique in the future.  

Renaissance Challenge - I was so scared to try this challenge because I was afraid of melting my clear stamp that came with the set for this challenge.  I ended up loving the effect.  I hope the 2nd picture shows how well this showed up.  I used purple and gold because those are royal colors.  The gold cardstock was from American Crafts paper pack that is a few years old and already had the striped/embossed effect.   Using it on this challenge worked so very well as it really looked antique and fitting for this challenge.

I used the gold wax for this picture but it is definitely a technique I need to work on.  The background paper was one of the small sheets of paper included with the kit

The Regency era challenge was for the approximate time of Jane Austen...an author, wit and talent that I absolutely adore.  I combined both stamp sets for this challenge.

Camp Out challenge

It has been such a crazy busy summer...I haven't been able to craft much but hoping to get my room reorganized and straightened up so that I can start up again!

The Fantabulous Cricut blog  http://fantabulouscricut.blogspot.com/2014/08/challenge-224-camp-out.html is having a camp out challenge and this will be my entry.  It was cut using the Cricut Explore (what a fantastic machine!!) and the Smores box from the Camp Smores SVG kit from SVGcuts.com (http://svgcuts.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=16&products_id=315).  It perfectly fits the graham crackers that are packaged in squares (the Honey Maid Fresh Stack Grahams that are square and not rectangle like most graham crackers).  They are packaged with 8 squares per package and 6 packages per box.  Each individual package is enough for 4 smores.  I used the mini-Hershey bars layered on top of the graham crackers and put the four marshmallows in a Wilton Party Bag that I stapled closed to try to keep the marshmallows fresh.  I inked the edges of all the cuts to give it some dimension.  I could have even used the bigger marshmallows but didn't have any in the house.  This is such a cute box and easy to put together.