Hi everyone! Maggi here to announce a new partnership and a week of fantastic blog swapping with Viva Las Vegas Stamps! VLVS, “America’s Rubber Stamp Paradise since 1991″, specializes in the sweet and cute along with the fantastically gauche and boy, do we love their stuff!

All this week our design team will be showing off some projects using VLVS stamps and the VLVS team will be going Gauche on their blog!  Not only that but both teams are having a giveaway! VLVS is offering a pound of rubber to one lucky winner, see their blog for details! We’ll be giving away a mini ACME kit to one lucky person here at GA.  To be entered for the mini ACME kit, leave a comment on this week’s posts. You’ll be entered once for every comment you leave throughout the week. Deadline to enter both giveaways is Friday the 13th. Our winner will be announced here on the blog on Saturday, July 14th.

But wait, there’s more! VLVS is offering 10% off your order this week, just use the code: GA10 AND we’re also offering 10% off your order in our store with code VLVS10. So get to shopping people cause these coupons are only good through the 13th!

Up first are some backgrounds from Lori!

Lori: Well, I’ve been suffering from some missing mojo for a little while now. One thing I do to try to get my creative juices flowing is focus on just making some backgrounds—getting some color down so when I do feel inspired, I’ve already got a pretty background ready.

On a gessoed page, I first used a palette knife to smear some paint down. Then, using punchinella, I took a makeup sponge to rub yellow ink through the holes and used Sunset mist with the sponge over the yellow.

Background Two:

I used the teal lace as a mask and sprayed Glimmer Mist Tarnished Silver through it and over that, I sprayed Glimmer Mist Haunted Shadow through punchinella. On the right side,I used the Cracked Background stamp with Stream Archival Ink and then sprayed sunshine Mr. Huey mist and spread it with a paintbrush. To distinguish the two sides, I again used the VLVS steampunk numbers stamp and also the scissors washi tape from the Quilting Bee set.

Marilyn made this “Regal” card:

Marilyn: I found the charred wood background to be an interesting stamp that I loved but I wasn’t sure in what direction I wanted to go with it. So, I decided to experiment. I used VersaMark ink and stamped the image onto mechanical board then embossed with emerald embossing powder. Now, that had lots of possibilities!

I rummaged through my images and found two that I liked. I fussy-cut the woman out of one and the furniture from the other. I used foam squares to give them dimension, putting two layers on the woman to bump her out more. Then, using white fiber I found in my Black Out Mixed Media Color kit and square adhesive gems from the Banana Hammock Yellow Mixed Media Color kit, I gave it some embellishment. A stickpin from the yellow kit with a flat-backed rhinestone attached gave it added interest and finished off the project.

We’re off to a great start this week, thanks Lori and Marilyn!  Don’t forget to leave a comment on this post for your chance to win a mini ACME kit and be sure to visit the VLVS blog for more drool worthy projects and a chance at a pound of rubber!

Now go glue something awesome onto some awesome something!

Maggi

Filed under: Art Journal, design team