I should never go into craft stores. I have enough in my stash and I always end up leaving inspired by things I find in craft stores.
My last trip involved purchasing Papercraft Essential magazine. I was tremendously inspired by a series of cards they shared from the Lavinia Stamps company. The cards were magical!
I was inspired by the stamp designs and the cards were truly stunning. The background use Distress Oxide inks and they really helped create that magical feel. I fell in love with the stamps and made a purchase. The company is based in the UK and the stamps came faster than I expected. They tucked a couple of small extra stamps in with my order, which always makes me a huge fan of a company! Who doesn’t love finding freebies?! Thank you Lavinia Stamps!
The artist of the stamps is Tracey Lavinia Dutton and I can’t believe how truly beautiful these are. I did CASE the cards from Papercraft Essentials magazine. I used the mermaid instead of one of the fairies and I created my own color combination for the background.
These cards do not do the stamps justice. I could not seem to get a thing cut straight today, but at least I got a chance to play with these and I will be making more with the rest of the stamps that I purchased. I’m embracing the imperfections once again!
I tried different papers for the backgrounds. This set is my experiment to determine which paper I liked best and which color combination I want to use in what will be my final set of cards. The card in the back left corner used watercolor paper and the one in front used Bristol paper. The last one is regular card stock. I like the Bristol paper the best. The watercolor card front took 4 stampings for the mermaid and it still isn’t as crisp as the other images.
Besides the mermaid image which is the Alana stamp, I’ve used a bubble stamp which is very subtle on these cards. I used the Lagoon ink from Altenew for that one and the Teal Cove for the script stamp that is the Fairy Make a Wish stamp.
I combined several distress oxide inks including Twisted Citron, Salty Ocean, Broken China, Mermaid Lagoon, and Wilted Violet. I love how all 3 backgrounds turned out completely different from the others.
I squished one color of Distress Oxide on my craft mat at a time, spritzed it with water and dabbed my card front around in it until I was happy with the color. I dried the card front with my heat tool and repeated the process for each color that I used.
I let the background dry completely before doing my stamping. I love the effect created by using the Distress Oxides in this way and then stamping that gorgeous script on top of it in a coordinating dye ink color. The bubbles are stamped in a coordinating color as well. It is so subtle, but I love the technique. Like I said, this was CASEd from Papercraft Essentials magazine. I felt so inspired by the 4 cards that they shared and the stamp images. It was simple to recreate and I love how it just feels like a magical world.
I’ve had fairy stamps on my wish list for a while and I am so happy with these Lavinia Stamps. The artwork is stunning and the details are just beautiful. They have so many coordinating magical creatures, plants, trees, houses…you name it.
I controlled myself, but I still have a few stamps left from my order to play with!
I’ve been playing with alcohol ink backgrounds and I think that would be beautiful with these stamps as well. Watercoloring would be amazing also.
One more fun new product and new techniques that I’ve added to my creative bag of tricks since I’ve started exploring what else is out there beyond what I’ve been doing for the last 5 years! I’m so happy that I challenge myself to explore other products and try new techniques and materials for my crafting repertoire.
I will be playing definitely be playing with these stamps some more and I can’t wait to share the results with you!
Thank you for stopping by! Have a crafty day!
