It's Retro Week in Chaos

I used to teach stamping classes at our local stamp store, Stamp-A-Doodle. I started many years ago and I did a bunch of technique classes. Then I approached the owners about doing a once monthly class called Quick Cards. They liked the idea and we gave it a shot. It was a lot of fun and I ended up having several ladies who came every month. We would make four cards with whatever product and techniques I felt like using. I really enjoyed it, but we stopped doing them because I became so busy and because they sold the building.

I have a crazy busy week and we are going camping for a couple of days, so I decided that I'd do a week of "retro" cards. I don't have a lot of new creations to showcase, but I don't want to get an email from Heather wondering if I'm ever going to return to regular blogging, (giggle; she keeps me on track) and so I thought I'd post some of the cards I made for these classes.

I always loved this card. It's a resist technique which is one of my favorites! I used Versamark to stamp the background and then applied Distress Inks and wiped off the extra to reveal the resisted background. Then I stamped the pears in Chalk Ink which mostly covered the resist.

Published

I received a copy of the latest "Stampers Sampler" magazine last week. It's always exciting to get one of those in the mail since I don't subscribe because it means I have a card published.

I actually had two of them published along with some friends from my local stamp club: PMS (Pretty Mean Stampers). Each year, we do a challenge. We choose one stamp and create a bunch of cards using that one stamp and then I send them into "Stampers Sampler" for their Different Point of View Challenge. We've done this for the past several years and as a club, we've been published twice. We've also had several member's cards published too.

I had included 5 of my cards and when I went back to see which ones I had sent, I shook my head as they published the uglier cards of the ones I submitted. It always seems to be that way. They never publish the card I love; it's always the one I don't like. I used to only send in cards that I loved, but now I send anything in because I never know what they will like. I encourage anyone to submit; the free magazine is definitely worth it.

As I'm not allowed to post the cards, I will just post an old card that I really like. I made it for a class I taught a couple of years ago. The background was a simple resist technique and then I just used Distress Inks overtop. I stamped the pear in Chalk Ink and was surprised to find that the Versamark resisted the Chalk Ink too! (Background & Pears by A Stamp in the Hand; Words by Amuse).