Compendium of Curiosities 2 - Week One

I was delighted to hear that Linda at Studio L3 was going to start a new series of challenges based on Tim Holtz' recently published Compendium of Curiosities Vol 2; and happily, my copy of the new compendium, ordered back in February, has arrived in the post just in time for me to join in the first challenge. I loved doing all the challenges set by Linda from Vol 1, so hope to complete all those in number two. Simon Says Stamp is sponsoring this challenge with a US$25 shop, so am keeping my fingers crossed for a win some time soon !

This week's technique is how to make custom foam stamps, and comes from page 66 of the new Compendium. It's a technique I've used before when making some of Tim's Christmas tags. Here I've made a stamp of one of my favourites, dear old Umbrella Man. I'm not a great one for Union Jacks and monarchy, but as this year is a special year with the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of 60 years of the Queen's reign and gives us an extra public holiday, and is also the year of the London Olympics, I couldn't resist the Artistic Outpost and Crafty Individuals stamps, and a flurry of red, white and blue inks and pastels. I guess amid all the doom and gloom of these times of recession, a bit of celebration will do us all some good.

I used Chipped Sapphire and Barn Door distress inks on a mask for my background. Umbrella Man is stamped with my foam stamp and Versamark and coloured with red Pan Pastel. The rest of the stamping is in black and crimson Archival. The little gold crown is embossed in the wonderful Ranger super fine gold EP. The whole tag is covered in Paper Artsy's Satin Glaze to fix the pastel.