Hi, servus and ciao à tutti!
Claudia here again! Today I want to share with you an Artist Trading Block I've made using
Aall & Create stamps and stencils and Distress and Distress Oxide Inks mainly.
I have used
Aall & Create stencils #9 and #10 and
stamp sets #26 and #10 alongside
Distress Inks "black soot" and "rusty hinge" and
Distress Oxide Inks "mowed lawn", "ripe persimmon", "fossilised amber" and "stormy sky".
Distress Spray Stain "fired brick" was used to create the hearts I've added to the black soft wire and
black archival stamping ink was used to stamp the Aall & Create images.
But let me take you through the process step by step (as always click on the images for a larger view):
I used the Artist Trading Block as a template to draw the squares on some heavy printer paper and then cut five squares of the same size.
Next I placed my squares the way they were going to connect on the ATB once glued in place and stamped the images across several squares in one go as shown in the picture:
I also used smaller pattern stamps and stamped across connecting edges and corners:
Once the stamping was done my result looked like this:
(of course I had to move some of the squares to different spots - depending on where I wanted to visually connect different cube sides across edges).
Time for some stencil fun with Distress Oxide inks!
I made sure I connected several squares with stencilled patterns as well!
Afterwards I inked the squares with "rusty hinge" Distress ink using my blending tool.
The inked squares got some spritzes of water here and there.
Finally I inked the squares' edges with black soot Distress Ink....
...before I glued these to their according sides on the ATB.
I wound some soft black wire around the cube and also added some word stickers and idea-ology letter tiles (yes, I still have some in my stash ;) - but I found that the design was still missing a little special something...
...so I decided to add two hand cut hearts (cut from left over scraps of grey board from packaging materials) that I inked with "ripe persimmon" Distress Oxide Ink. To that I added some spritzes of "fired brick" Distress Spray Stain and blended the edges with black soot again.
The hearts got tucked in the wire wraps. As a final extra I added a small wooden cube that I had inked with ripe persimmon and black soot and drawn a small heart on.
Done!
Some close ups:
and once more the finished ATB:
I hope you like my Artist Trading Block and have fun decorating your own!
All the stamps and inks used for this project are available in the Marte online store. Templates to build your own ATBs can be found in the internet (mine is a sturdier one from MDF but you can also
make ones from sturdy cardstock - which was the original idea as this way they can be folded flat if you do not glue all the edges together and sent in the mail to someone else for trading).
Thanks so much for stopping by today! Hope to see you soon!
Claudia
xxx
