Festive Friday Stained Mosaic

Come on, say it with me: WAHOOO! ITS FRIDAY!!!

Thank you for joining me once again for Festive Friday, Terri Sproul's lovely blog hop every 2nd and 4th Friday of the month, as we make Christmas Cards! If you're just joining please be sure to start at the beginning of the blog list and catch all the great projects posted! The list is below for your convenience.

Earth Day has just passed, and I hope you did something good for our planet to celebrate. If you haven't yet, or are looking for more you can do, I found a great technique for you!! Its called Stained Mosaic, and its done using up all those rubber bits you have left from around your stamps! Recycling!! Into a useful new tool for your stamping arsenal.

I know you'll be excited to try this - on your Christmas cards and everything else...

Stained Mosaic - Beautiful Season from  My Digital Studio (Digi-Stamp)


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If you'd like to see how I made this card, please continue on down the page. And please continue to add to your inspiration and visit all the lovely blogs participating in this Festive Friday blog hop!
Next on the path is CYNTHIA. Enjoy!!

Happy Crafting!
~angie






And so, if you are still with me :
I pulled out one of those leftover stamp surrounds, the rubber around my die-cut stamp set, and set to work snipping it into pieces. So excited to find another use for these pieces, I've quite a collection of them - I just KNEW there would be some cool thing one could do with them! I puzzled the pieces into a rectangle roughly the size of my image. Warning: this takes A WHILE. 

Use a block - wood or clear - that you DON'T WANT anymore


Also, I used my adhesive backed rubber and mounted it onto a clear block that was part of the kids stamping stuff (shhhh! I know, but its probably from the dollar bin or some such...) I will make another one because, though I do like how it came out, I would prefer to try again with smaller gaps between the pieces. I think I would get better detail in my image with less "grout" space. 

I selected my image in My Digital Studio and sized it to my desired dimensions (here, 3"x4"-ish), and then printed it out onto Whisper White cardstock on my printer at home. I colored it using my Soft Suede, Cherry Cobbler, and Garden Green ink pads with my Blender Pen. I used the bird on holly from Beautiful Season - available this catalog (AND next!) as a wood, clear, or digital stamp set.


Blender Pens - a whole set of markers in one pen

Once colored, I then inked up my homemade Mosaic Stamp with VersaMark and stamped it right over the top of my image. I quickly heat embossed it with Clear Embossing Powder. It was so pretty and shiny... Then I ruined it, per tutorial instructions by smearing my Basic Black ink pad over the top of it all:



Messy Magic

Fun, but sad - I was proud of my coloring!! I must say it was pretty fun though, definitely one of those messy and neat techniques. After buffing it out, I trimmed and mounted it on a layer of Garden Green, and completed my card.



I highly recommend you follow the complete step by step tutorial over at Splitcoast, this is an easy and beautiful way to create a mosaic effect.


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