Pam Carriker Stamps!

It is a lot of fun having friends who develop products, especially when they share. Naturally I was thrilled when Pam Carriker asked if I wanted to play with some of her new stamps. 

Well, duh!??!

I got to pick the stamps I wanted to use which was a pretty hard decision in and of itself because I like them all. Geez......

I decided to go with these two, which I picked because they fall into a category I call

"the great integrators" 

a phrase I use for stamps and stencils that add that little bit of 

sumpin' sumpin' to our pieces.

Thoughts of Courage stamp by Pam Carriker    (you can buy it HERE)

Sketched Background stamp by Pam Carriker    (you can buy it HERE)

 I like both of these stamps quite a bit and know I will be reaching for them again and again because they definitely add a little extra bit of interest to my art.

 So, here's what I made......first of all, I picked a substrate and I will admit to a wee bit of cheating on this part cause I have an enormous box of sample boards from classes and such. Things that are already started but need to be finished. I just grabbed one at random. 

In this case, it was a small Claybord that had been prepared with collage circles surrounded by carving. Plus Wood Icing texture created with a stencil and also with a palette knife.

I selected my materials - Porfolio Oil Pastels, Derwent Inktense Pencils, and two colors of paint, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna. Plus White of course. I randomly worked a bit of color into the carved and textured areas. 

The composition looked a bit spare to me, so I decided to add some collage elements, basically more things in a circle motif, using Wholey paper I got when I was at Random Arts. This stuff is really cool. I glued it down with Regular Gel Medium, underneath and on top of the collage elements. 

And then I started painting, mixing the 2 paints together to create nice neutral colors, lots of white. I smeared the white into the Portfolio (that's the green part) and rubbed it with my finger. 

With the Inktense pencil, I dipped it straight into my water and 'painted' directly onto the circles at the top, er, that is now the bottom as I flipped the piece, those brown parts.

And finally I used the stamps to add accents with paint and a Staz-On ink pad. Along the bottom, I used Sketched Background with white paint. Then I used Thoughts of Courage around the circle area, wiping away in certain areas so it looked like it was both behind and on top of the composition. 

See what I mean? Great Integrators!!!

Well done, Pam.

You can check out all of Pam's stamps HERE. 

And, in case you haven't been following along, here are the Blog Hop participants/dates.

Pam's Kickoff Post on Somerset Place

Thursday Sept 5^th: Seth Apter

Thursday Sept 12^th: Traci Bautista

Thursday Sept 19^th: Mary Beth Shaw (you are here now)

Thursday Sept 26^th:Dina Wakley

Thursday Oct 3^rd: Jen Cushman

Thursday Oct 10^th: Christen Olivarez