Stamper of the Year attempts - so far

Now that Craft Stamper have announced the round one and round two winners of Stamper of the Year I can blog my failed attempts! This was for round 1 which was PaperArtsy. Good, I thought, I have PaperArtsy stamps.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this one before beginning, and I haven't done an altered frame before. I had a little hinged pine frame which I bought for altering and wish I could get some more. I decided to go with a Victorian school theme. I painted the frame all over with white gesso to start with, then painted the inside frame with black gesso for the blackboard effect. I stamped the children (is that Princess Di in the bottom row?) with Distress inks and added a little distress powder and embossed them. I stamped a center panel onto Stampbord. The teacher was stamped in the same way then masked as I stamped the ruler to appear in the background behind her, and again a Stampbord panel with a pink cheek. I added a Stambord "slate" inked black and with Cat scratched into it. All round the blackboard I added sums, and phrases like lines, or the teacher taking register and teaching or telling the children off, and some of this I scratched into the black gesso revealing the white (which worked on my test board but not on the finished frame - and I did a lot of testing), some was done using a chalk marker. I added a strip of corrugated card for teacher's desk, and made some Fimo apples and chalks. Finally the apples were glazed, can you see the bite out of one of the apples from a cheeky child?

I wanted to decorate the back of the frame too. All over the frame is stamped with HOTP flowers and sentiments from various sets. The hinges and photo tags were inked using a Krylon copper pen to age them (I unscrewed the tags to ink them, the hinges were a little messier as I inked them in place). I stamped the Gentlemen of industry onto In My Minds Eye papers, matching up the two sides so they both had corner designs, and then stamping more sentiments. Disapproving adults?  

Round the frame I added Dymo tape words, which read "We don't need no education, and children should be seen and not heard. This is the part I had most problems with as the tape will not stick down on the stamped gesso, if I had to send it in I would have had to find something that would stick the tape on! I was considering also punching out An apple for the teacher and sticking it round the inside edges of the teacher, but didn't get that far, and they wouldn't stick if I did!

What went wrong you might ask? Well I was working on this until nearly midnight on the closing date. I took these photos, apart from the first one - that wasn't such a good photo and the glue wasn't dry, the apples weren't glazed and I forgot the chalks. I didn't have time to take better photos, or do a proper write up of how I did this, I had to press send at 5 minutes to midnight and give a very brief explanation, and apology and say I would provide a full description and better photos if required!

Did it even get there by midnight and did they even look at it? I will never know.

Round 2, well I had good intentions, and I had some Chocolate Baroque stamps. Couldn't decide what to do then on holiday I spotted some little bird boxes and an idea was forming.....

Unfortunately with days to go to the deadline I had a violent allergic reaction to some eye drops used in an eye test and couldn't continue, I tried to carry on when I got to the actual deadline day (when I felt a little better) but had to give up when I reached midnight and nowhere near finished, and I have still not finished my project.

Round 3, I can't show you as it hasn't been announced, I had to buy stamps for this one, and I chose to buy just one stamp that didn't prove easy to work with (at least not for me and I tried every trick and tip (and type of ink) I could think of). I had an idea which I had to abandon after working on it for several days and I was pleased with what I ended up doing instead, however we did have several power cuts leaving me sat in the dark (imagine me sat in the back of my craft room in pitch black unable to see a thing or move for fear of tripping over one of the many things on the floor! Shaun has since given me a glow in the dark torch for that corner which is is magnetic and stuck to my shelf brackets in case it happens again), and that didn't help so it was past the deadline when I sent it in (might have been less than an hour and a half past without the power cuts), and therefore it will probably never be looked at!

Round 4, I had several of the required stamp sets. Tried to do an ambitious project for the first time, something that didn't work - my fault, needed to find the instructions in a past mag but after some explorations gave up due to lack of time). , so switched at the last minute, made a card, and made what I see as a terrible mistake (which I spent considerable time completing before realising what I had just done) with no time to change it (there is nothing in the rules to say I couldn't do what I did, but it would have been much better if I did it properly). It was well within the deadline this time so should be looked at and binned I imagine!

Round 5, deadline is looming, I have bought a set and a single stamp, and not yet started - ideas are buzzing round in my head! Why do I feel the urge to make art projects for the first time, and not just stick to the cards? Well it must be years of pent up creativity awakened by this challenge!