Sherwood Art Week 2014 ATC Gallery

Another wonderful selection of  swaps this year at the Sherwood Art Week ATC swap.  Each year we seem to get such a great variety of styles, materials and techniques.

All ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) are 2.5 x 3.5 inches and can be made from any material.  They should be swapped and never sold.  For our swap, each artist made 10 cards and the swaps were sent out by post.

Along with the mixed media, print making, handmade paper, punch art, photographs, rubberstamping, papercutting and painting, this year we got yarnbombed!

 

Thank you everyone who took part again this year, we are looking forward to next year already!

Foam Stamps Tutorial

For a kids activity during Sherwood Art Week I made some stamps from funky foam and corks.  They were so easy to make (cheap too) and the kids (and some of the Mums and Dads) loved stamping - I knew they would! 

Lots of people asked me how I made them, so here's a quick tutorial.

What you need;
Corks
Funky Foam
Double Sided Adhesive Sheet (High Tack)
Permanent Marker Pen
Felt Pens
Scissors
Knife
Small circle punches (optional)

Punch a hole the size of the corks into a piece of paper to use as a template.  If you don't have a punch, you can draw around a cork and cut out with scissors or a knife.

Stick some double sided adhesive sheet to a piece of funky foam.

Draw on your letters and shapes onto the foam using the template.

Cut out the shapes.

Remove the backing from the adhesive sheet and stick to the top of the cork.  Trim with a craft knife if necessary.

Ink your stamps with ink pads or felt tip pens and print.

You can make letters too - just remember to draw them in reverse.

If you have one, a screw punch can be used to punch the holes in some of the letters.  I used all the 'holes' to make some dotty stamps.

 

 

For bigger stamps you can use mountboard instead of corks.  Your local picture framers may be happy for you to take some scraps off their hands. 

 

 

Wedding Invitations

A thoroughly enjoyable few months were spent early in the year, designing, preparing and making invitations with my friends for their wedding.

The bride had been pinning ideas to Pinterest, so I set up an account to keep track of this and come up with some ideas based on the pins.  With this fantastic virtual mood board to go over, we discussed some options; how easy things would be to make in large numbers, what colours to use, what images, which stamps I already had that would work etc., etc.



Stamps

The invitations were going to have some Chinese style elements - plum blossom branches and Chinese lanterns in orange and turquoise.  Stamps from my collection were suitable, a Claritystamp (plum blossom), a little flower from a Stampin' Up! set and Chinese lanterns from Artemio - a two part stamp, one part for the outline and one for the colour block.

The invitation for the day ceremony and afternoon tea would take the form of a card with a printed, decorated insert and a pocket containing an RSVP postcard and information on the venues. Both were decorated with stamped images, all tying in with each other, but not all the same.  The evening invitation was a single A5 printed and decorated sheet matted onto coloured card.

I stamped some mock ups of the invitation components, worked out the sizes of the cards and the space available for the decoration.

Drafts

The stamping was all done in black with accent colours being applied roughly, using Distress Ink and markers (Spiced Marmalade and Broken China).  The drafts got the thumbs up, and with some playing around with rounding off the corners and the addition of a decorated panel on the front of the main daytime invitation the final design was approved!

The biggest discussion came over the choice of card colour.  A large box of orange card was purchased as a back-up to the greeny-blue-turqoise-teal which was proving quite difficult to get hold of in just the right colour.  After lots of samples, 'tempting turquoise' from Stampin' Up! was selected, which had the bonus of matching ink pad colour. 

The Final Colour Choice

Building up the decoration on the daytime invitation insert was achieved by stamping the images in black waterbased dye ink.  The clear stamps are excellent for positioning as you see exactly where you are stamping.

Plum Blossom stamped on the right of the insert

Some larger flowers were added

The outline of the lantern was stamped 'hanging' from the blossom branch.

Then the colour of the lantern was applied using the second part of the stamp inked up with colour.

A couple of attemps at the pocket went in the bin, but once I was happy with one, I made a template for the rest, including a second one to help punch the half circle in the top of the pocket in directly in the centre.  The folds were made along scorelines made using the scoreboard.  Once scored and folded all the pockets went under some heavy books for a couple of days to flatten them out completely.

All the individual elements of the invitaitons that required printing, were cut and printed (thankfully) by the groom, then I decorated each one with the stamps and some colour (Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink and Stampin' Up! in Tempting Turquoise).  Here's how the decoration for each element looked;

RSVP Postcard

The line stringing the lanterns together was drawn in by hand using a fine line marker.  A postcard image was stamped on the reverse.

Reverse of RSVP

 

Information Card

 

Evening Invite

So, with the elements made, all we had to do was finish some colouring, round some corners, score some card and put it all together.  We had a little production line in mind.........

I really liked the look of the final daytime invitation with all the elements together, the pocket was a great idea.