October Afternoon Thrift Shop stamp set review

Just arrived on my doorstep are these stamps from October Afternoon from the Thrift Shop collection.


Here is my first project using the set:


A very simple card playing around with some resist techniques. First I stamped and heat embossed the doily image in white, then applied distress inks (tattered rose, shabby shutters) using the foam applicator. Then I sprayed lightly with a DIY pearlised mist (tea dye re-inker with gold mica powder). Some inked edges, final stamping with the music bars and a Cosmo Cricket chipboard bird and one whimsical vintage card produced.

While am I at it, I might as well go on blogging record about how pleased am I with these stamps. Why?
1) The quality. They are made in the USA, beautiful thick, firm photopolymer stamps. They cling well and do not squish like cheaper clear stamps.
2) The mix of images and sentiments in the one set.
3) The size of the images make them versatile for scrapping (think repeated stamping as a background pattern or a single image as a focal embellishment) AND cardmarking (images as the focal point of a card, sentiments are great size for cards.)

Well done October Afternoon, I'll be keeping an eye out for more great stamp sets to collect from your company!

More punched flowers!

I've gone a bit crazy adding punched flowers to everything! This layout is for another Biggest Loser challenge at Scrapz.biz.

I used gel medium on the owl and branches to create a resist and painted over the rest of the paper with white paint, spreading it out thinly with a plastic credit card type scraper. After it mostly dried I wiped the paint off the gel medium areas with a nappy wipe. I planned out where I wanted my photo, added some more background paint using sand and blue colours and blended the paints over the photo. Added a strip of journaling on vellum and left the rest of it alone after toying with a title in the upper left corner.

It looks very different from the orginal paper- it was a bit of an experiment, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.