CRAFT STAMPER - "Take it, Make it Challenge" - May 2014

I am a huge fan of Craft Stamper Magazine and often play along in the Take it, Make it challenge but have never actually entered the challenge. Weird I know!!
So this month, I decided to actually add my entry to their blog.

This guidelines for this months challenge included: all entries must feature stamping done with a hand carved potato and feature some real stamping. When I first read this months challenge theme I did a double take. My 3 year old daughter came home from nursery the same day and told me she had been painting with potatoes!! She told me how much fun it was and she had loads of enthusiasm telling me how it all worked! That evening I was carving the potatoes out for myself.

We have all done potato stamping at some time in our life, and I loved the fact this challenge took us right back to the basics. 

For my potatoes, I went with a bee theme. I bought the beautiful metal bee embellishments a while ago, which are pretty big and always think what I will use them for. Because of this embellishment, I wanted it to be the main feature and create a couple of simple potato stamps to work with.


Here is what I created...

I carved my potatoes, one with a honeycomb shape and one with circles which I thought looked like a bees body when stamped. 

(After I carved them I left the potatoes for a couple of days which in potato printing land, sometimes, isn't a good thing as the potatoes go dry and 'go off'. But, on this occasion I wanted this to happen so the potatoes dried up slightly and created cracks and splits, again to assist with a more vintage feel when printed.) 

I played around a lot with the potatoes trying out different compositions and pattern layouts along with different colours. (You can see the tester pieces under the main card). I decided to use distress inks rather than paints to create subtle images. 

For my final background I stamped the potatoes using Squeezed Lemonade and Dried Marigold Distress Inks then stamped over the top with the Honeycomb Background stamp from IndigoBlu using Frayed Burlap Distress Ink. 

I added a strip of Kraft Card which I stamped the honeycomb background on to and heat embossed it using gold embossing powder. I also rubbed ink around the edges and dipped it in the gold embossing powder to create a border. I added a strip of muslin cloth which I dyed with Distress Ink. I added some bits of hessian under the strip and a larger piece at the bottom for the metal bee embellishment to sit on. 

I stamped the 'bee happy' sentiment on to Kraft card and created the border as before, added the muslin and hessian and added a metal square embellishment in the corner. I also added a strip of gold beaded ribbon to the bottom corner of the card.

To finish, I stamped the honeycomb stamp round the edges of a larger piece of Kraft Card, heat embossed it with the gold powder and added the card front to the background. 

All in all, I loved this challenge, going back to basics and playing around making different patterns from something so simple yet effective.

Thanks for popping by and I hope I have inspired you to raid the spuds!!!