Ye Ha!

This is my submission for the GC103 Scene Stamping Challenge at Gingersnap Creations. The theme for May is the Wild West which certainly got me thinking as my stash is a little lacking in cactuses and wagons!

Knowing this theme was coming up, I tasked my kids to find me some material on the Wild West in the old book shops in Cornwall!  After some rather unsuccessful time, we enlised the help of the bookshop owner and he found me an old magazine called Wagon Road North which had loads of great black and white photos - perfect!

I started my piece by creating a simple two colour background with acrylics.  I stamped some small circles in the same colour as the sky.  I used acrylics to stamp the buildings which are from the "Dwelling" clear stamp collection by Claudine Hellmuth.  These stamps come in two parts - a background foam stamp (which I used) and an overlay clear stamp to add detail.

I cut some of the signs from the old photos to turn my buildings into shops and stamped the title above using Prima No.6 stamps by Christina Renee. 

The horse and wagon was cut from an old photograph in the magazine and coloured lightly with pastels.  I created a shadow underneath the wagon with acrylics and pastels and adhered it with 3D tape.  Somethings else was needed and the embossed silver stars were the final touch - Voila!! (or should I say Ye Ha!) LOL

Travel Bookmarks

Oh dear ... they still looked slightly wonky in the photo!!  Spent ages trying to line them up, but they wouldn't behave!! Never mind ...

I have made these bookmarks for the AE7 Travel The World Art Exchange at Gingersnap Creations Yahoo Group.  If you fancy this swap, why not join the group and have a go ...  this swap is really good fun.

I decided to collage different images from 4 different places around the world.  I printed the images onto transparencies, paper and parchment and layered them in a combination.  Each one has a different method of travel and focuses on a different pat of the world.

I used Claudine Hellmuth matte medium to fix the elements and was rather worried when my parchment started to wrinkle up VERY badly.  However, I kept smoothing it out and as it dried it did flatten (phew!).  I then applied a coat of Gloss Decoupage medium followed by Crackle Glaze.  

Off to the mailbox they go; can't wait to see what drops through my letterbox soon ...