Using the Elizabeth Stamp

Sunday and Monday I had my August Stamp Camps, and they went really well. I had three new customers on Sunday, and one liked it so much she came back on Monday! :)

Check out this month's Mis En Place (me getting ready to bag the kits):

If you look carefully at the piles of cut card stock, you'll understand when I say I should have charged by the pound this month. ;) But everyone had a good time (or seemed to) and I even made some time this afternoon to stamp before class. Really!

I bought the single Elizabeth stamp with my last order, and I've heard people mention it's tough to find a sentiment to fit inside the oval in the image. Never one to back away from a challenge like that (especially since I own the darn thing, and I need to make it work), I set out to see what kind* of a mess I could make.

Here is my first pass:

The flourish-y part is the Elizabeth image. That oval is empty. I stamped it with Versamark on Shimmery White card stock and embossed it with silver. NICE! With this first pass I "lined up" two words from the Fabulous Phrases set, stamped them with Versamark and embossed them with silver. Too crooked, even for me.

Second pass, I stamped the Elizabeth image and powdered it (I held off with the embossing), stamped one word, powdered it, stamped the second word, powdered it, THEN I embossed the whole thing. Better:

... but still not great. I suppose I could have used the SAMJ, but then I'd have to emboss each image as I went, and that sounded like work.

Next I went hunting. Hunting for rubbah. Hunting through my bazillion sentiment sets and wedding sets and word sets for a wedding-ish sentiment that would fit inside that oval. I had high hopes for Fancy Flexible Phrases, but the wedding sentiment was three words high and wouldn't fit. Too bad, too.

Finally, FINALLY, I looked through my trusty Teeny Tiny Wishes and voila! The wedding phrase fits! YAY! Check it out on the finished card:

I, again, stamped the Elizabeth stamp first, powdered it up with the silver, inked the sentiment, powdered it up with silver, then heat-embossed it all at the same time. I think we have a winner!

I layered it on Brushed Silver, then put it on a Shimmer White base, and I stopped. Too white. Ideally, I would break all that white with a contrasting color of ribbon, typically a color used in a specific wedding, but I knew I'd never get that right. (Remember: I sell these, so who knows what the colors should be, and no matter what I choose, it will be wrong.) THEN I remembered I have a package of Metallic Silver patterned papers from back when Shep was a pup. I have gold, too. Seriously, I've had these since the second day I started stamping. Okay, maybe the second week, but it was waaaaaaay back in time. I checked the inside cover of the pack, and it says 2001. Uh-huh.

I selected this pinkish paper and I loooove it! Between the Shimmer White card base, the shimmery pink paper, the brushed silver shimmery paper, and the silver embossing on the top Shimmer White piece, there is a whole lotta shimmer going on here! Maybe tomorrow, after I'm done cleaning up from the classes, I'll take a better pic of this in my high-tech photo studio. (HA! I crack myself up!)

This evening I pulled out the card to show The Ladies, and asked what they thought I could do to make it SU-Only, and still break up all that WHITE. Of course, since they are mostly smarter than me, one suggested I use the Vintage Wallpaper embossing folder on the card front. YES! I knew I loved these ladies! I'll try that tomorrow. The Big Shot and Vintage Wallpaper embossing folder are still out from the Stamp Camps, so this should be a cinch!

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for stopping by!

*Did you now that if you mis-spell "kind" as "kine", Blogger will not flag it as a typo? Nope. Apparently "kine" is in the Blogger dictionary, but "SU" and "bling" and "DOH" are not. When was the last time you used kine in a sentence? I mean, I've heard it in old folk songs, like from Ireland, where reference to kine (cattle) means someone had possessions ... money ... like he was a good catch, but seriously, think about it. Blogger? Are you listening? Lose "kine" and add "bling", and no one gets hurt.