Just Stamp It!...(LTC #131)

Just The Stamp Swap

Birds Of A Feather (LTC #131)

This was for a swap listed by Lava Girl. We have both been doing LTC's for about 6 years now. When we started a good majority of the cards were completely stamp based. Amazing carves set on a single piece of paper. We have seen an evolution in the styling and set up of LTC's. Now there are embellishments and tons of layers and hand painted cards with mixed media. Not to say that those things didn't exist 6 years ago, but there were very few people doing them. She wanted to challenge us to focus on our carve for this swap. No coloring, no embellishing, no layering (kind of broke that rule). From the beginning of my start in cards I have been all about color and layers so I joined to challenge myself and to see some amazing carves by other people. 

Making The Card:

I picked some hand made paper that I had been playing around with for a different swap. It was made with Ranger Alcohol Inks, stencils and Dylusions ink sprays. From there I simply stamped my image. I chose a peacock because I figured that if I stamped it on colorful paper I would be less tempted to color it. The image I carved was somewhat smaller then LTC sized so in the end I did put a backing paper on it. I stuck with just black hoping that sticking with a solid color would make me a tiny bit less of a rule breaker.

This really was a hard swap for me. I carved 3 different images before I was able to find one that I could just "stamp" and walk away. I'm not sure I could have done this swap with anything other than a peacock. I'm going to have to try this again in the future just to push my own boundaries.