Inspired By Others

Like most stampers, I get my inspiration from lots of places; some of them weirder than others, like the striped shirt on the guy in front of me on the Metro a while back, but I'll save that for another time. For some reason, my recent mostly-normal inspirations all popped out of my fingertips yesterday and today, so everything in this post was, as the title so aptly states: inspired by others.

The sentiment on this card was a bumper sticker on the vehicle parked in front of me at last weekend's market, and it just cried to be made into a card:

The background papers were cut last month and tossed on the Scrap Heap during last weekend's Clean Sweep, and the shapes are from one of my new Nesties sets (and punched out of scraps, also from the Scrap Heap). The ribbon is from the 4,000+ yard spool of the stuff I have left from my Ribbon Outlet trip this past Spring. Sigh ... Also, I used my sponge brayer to kinda add some color to the stark white of the Wide Oval piece with the sentiment. I know it looks dirty, but that was not my intent. Or I could tell you it was my intent, and you'd think I was a genius. Or maybe not ...

This next one resulted from a phone call from BR #2 last night. She called to read a comic to me (she gives me lots of good material, as she spends most of the year driving around the county, and she reads a lot of bumper stickers), and, well, this card just had to be made:


This next one is from something I've wanted to try ever since I saw the video on someone's blog:

It is the colored layer of a printed napkin (you need to peel away and discard all the white layers.) Then you layer (from the bottom up) some scrap paper, your card stock, a piece of plastic wrap, the napkin (pattern side face-up), some more scrap paper. Then iron the whole thing. The plastic wrap melts and acts as the glue, and you simply peel the card stock off the scrap paper and, after it cools a little, trim the melty plastic and napkin to the card stock. It comes out looking and feeling like fabric. Oh, man, that made no sense at all... please hold ... {time out for a frantic search for the blog with the video ...} Okay, I found the video here. Please watch it if you want to try this technique; I cannot be responsible for any fires or melted counter tops.

Lastly, these next two cards were inspired by this photo in The Pioneer Woman's photography section. As soon as I saw it, I thought, "Hmmm ... I bet I can stamp that!", so I tried. (And if you read the whole post on PW's site, you'll learn how to take an in-focus photo of the moon with your point-and-shoot camera.)

For both of these cards I masked a 1 3/8" circle on a piece of Very Vanilla card stock, then I brayered Perfect Plum ink over the whole thing. (I definitely need to work on my brayering some more...) One of the cool things that happened is the "halo" around the moon. The brayer kinda skips over the edge of the masked circle and leaves an un-inked area so you do not get a totally clean (read: un-natural) line, which is very nice.

I used my new Basic Black Craft ink pad (had to open it, even) and clear EP to stamp the images. The top one is from Pocket Silhouettes and the bottom one is the grass from Inspired by Nature. Naturally (oh, how punny!) the card needed something, and resisting.the.need.to.add.ribbon, I simply drew in some birds. I opted for no sentiment, because I think it would mess up the whole look-and-feel.

That's all I have for today. I think I'll go clean something now. I actually went to the grocery store today and bought food - first time in about two months. I'm thinking ahead to Thanksgiving and a blessedly-long four-day weekend. And, since I detest crowds, I've already bought most of what I need and can avoid all that silliness in the next week or two. I plan to be a hermit. DO NOT feel sorry for me. I have had several invitations for dinner, but I prefer to bask in the solitude of my teeny tiny condo and have four un-interrupted days of stamping and cleaning and organizing. I hope I make a dent, but more on that as we get closer. Enjoy the rest of the weekend, and thanks for stopping by!