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a little tutorial...

I thought I'd try my hand at a tutorial today. Not a video one, as I hate the sound of my own voice (will have to overcome that one next year) but a few pictures of a work in progress. Before that, decluttering. The first three items were not pictured. More knickers, and an exercise bike. The exercise bike was a simple case of forgetfulness. My friend gave it to me years ago but there isn't any room for it here anymore, so I stuck it outside with a sign saying free, and overnight it disappeared.



Multi medium matte. Tub is empty, so it's gone in the bin.

A Disney tin. This had peppermint bark in when I bought it in 2011. It's been in my window ever since and, like the pot that had the tree in, it's been bleached by the sun. Bin.

The Book Thief. The reason I'm giving this away to charity is because I have two copies! This is what happens when you have too much clutter.
More craft magazines. Bin.

On to the tutorial. I bought some Tim Holtz stamps the other day (one of my favourite websites is having an advent calendar sale and they were in day one) so I decided to use some. First of all, I chose which ones I wanted to use.


After you've selected your stamps, you need to visualise the scene. This way you can figure out which of the stamps are going to be behind others. The ones in the background need to be stamped twice.

These are the ones I need (all but one). Stamp them onto card.

Cut them out. The good thing is, at least with what I had in mind, that I don't need the frilly bits on the birds, which made it easier to cut.

Work out where the hats need to be on your scene, and stamp them onto the card.

Put the cut out (called masked) hat onto the stamped scene hat, then stamp your bird onto the scene. You can see where the birds tuft is stamped onto the mask.

Here you can see how the masking works to make it look like the bird is wearing the hat.

This is an example of a mistake. You have to be careful when placing the bird stamp, or the hat appears floating.

Once I'd got to that stage again, the next is to stamp the santa hat. Again, you need to put the necessary masks over the scene so you don't stamp onto it.

Next, put the santa stamp on as well, as the last step is to stamp the middle bird.

There's the finished scene. The best thing about these stamps is that there are loads of different accessories so you can pretty much have a bird for every occasion.

Accessories include these presents. I stamped three and cut them out separately, before assembling my tag. I coloured the stamped parts with promarkers, attempted a mottled blue background with distress stains and Lindy's sprays, added white remnant rub ons, and cut out a saying (well, more a singing) I also distress inked round the stamped parts, to age them a little.

There you have it, a stamping/masking tutorial. I know you've probably all done it before but if you haven't hopefully you will try now. Also, these stamps are awesome!
Ems

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