Build up a background

I just thought I'd share with you what I demonstrated at my last class.  The theme for the class was all about building a background with stamping, no DSP required!
Here is the first card and I think it was the favourite of all the ladies who attended!  I used Morning Meadow stamp set which is just so lovely - it's a hostess set which you can buy when you qualify for hostess pounds.  It was really quite easy to build this background; firstly I made a window using one of the label framelits, I used this to mask the white layer which allowed me to use the script stampin' wheel with 'soft sky' ink. next I stamped those beautiful sprigs in 'pistachio pudding' - so now I have my stamped up background.  Next I stamped a pansy in 'strawberry slush' (I adore this shade of pink!), punched it out using the matching pansy punch and to give it a bit of sparkle I used a few dots of 2-way glue and sprinkled it with glitter - cute!  The finishing touch, of course, was to add a sentiment.
We also made a matching gift tag using the chalk talk framelits and that lovely denim ribbon - I've been looking at it in the catalogue for ages but only just got it!  Such a simple thing to make and easy to attach to a gift bag.

 The next card we made had a much more vintage look and for this one we used one of my very favourite stamp sets; Papaya Collage.  We started by using another stampin' wheel and this time it was the Very Vintage wheel on the jumbo handle which we inked with Smoky Slate and wheeled it across a layer of Old Olive.  We built up a collage of stamped images on a square of whisper white - first we stamped a square of smoky slate using just an acrylic block which we stamped off onto grid paper then on to the layer.  The bird was stamped in Elegant Eggplant, the butterflies stamped in Pool Party (off onto grid then on to the layer) and the scroll was stamped in Wisteria Wonder.  To finish off the vintage look we splattered the whole layer using an aqua painter and ink. What do you think of that gorgeous Delicate Details Lace Tape?  I totally love it!! It's so easy to use and it's re-positionable, so nice.  Did you spot the rhinestone used on a candy dot brad base? I'm loving this system.

For our final card it was a more modern crisp look and out came my Mosaic Madness stamp set once more - I can honestly say that I wasn't too keen on this set at first...I'm totally hooked on it now, it's so useful!  I also dipped into another set to build the background - Summer Silhouettes gave me that lovely quatrefancy block.  To build the background we inked up the stamp in Old Olive and stamped at the bottom of the whisper white layer, we then repeated without re-inking right up to the top... now this stamp isn't long enough to reach right across the layer so we just repeated the process off to the right, you can't see the join because of the Old Olive layer!
I hope you've enjoyed my background building class, just a way of demonstrating how to get a lot from your stamps!