Bling It On!

Hello stampers! My name is Paula Bigelow and some of you know me as laughingstamper on the stamping sites. I'll be sharing projects with you each Saturday for the rest of August as the SweetStamps guest designer! I'm thrilled to be here with you today and I challenge you to create something wonderful for Challenge 181-Bling. Come on and get your creative groove on!!!

Now, let me tell you a little bit about my project and my inspiration. I have loved antiques and items from the Victorian era my entire life. So much so that my husband and I saved our pennies for over twenty years in hopes of buying or building a Victorian home. That day finally arrived five and a half years ago when we moved into a historic Victorian from 1890. You can find more information about it on my blog, if you enjoy old houses. You can see before and after photos of the restoration.

About five years ago I found SweetStamps at a papercrafting show in Chicago. I was imediately drawn to the vintage stamps and the Parchment Crafting supplies. I loaded up my shopping basket and have been using SweetStamps products since that time! For this challenge, I took several Victorian stamps and gave them a bit of a modern twist with my color choices. My inspiration began by pulling out SweetStamps 566F -Elizabeth and 443G-Boots and Gloves duo. I also knew that I wanted to use this embossed frame and parchment paper for the main image. From there I had to choose the color combo and papers.

 I decided to go old school and use my neglected colored pencils with the Gamsol technique for coloring my images. I fussy cut the parchment paper with the main image and added a bit of glitter.  After all, the challenge is about bling and the sparkle of glitter goes hand in hand with bling! I attached this to the peach colored card stock with Aleen's Tack it Over and Over glue in a few strategic spots so that the glue didn't show through the parchment. You could use the sticky dots of glue instead. They are the same type of adhesive and stick very well. I added another layer of coral card stock and attached this main unit to the background paper.

 This paper is from a wedding stack and has lovely pearls all over it. I stamped the boots and gloves onto this and then colored them. I then chose a pretty white tone on tone wedding print to emboss the frame. You can see all of the pattern and detail in the above photo. I then added the bling and cloth flowers.  When I was finished, this was the result and I think it turned out well as an all occasion or birthday card! You can find a complete materials list for my project here if you need it.

Thanks so much for sharing a few moments with me and have fun with your challenge project!

Happy Crafting,

Paula