Inspired By... Nathalie Kalbach and Birgit Koopsen stamps

It's again the 10th of the month and time for the "Inspired by" creation! But what is Inspired by? Every month awesome Marsha and I choose a subject to be inspired by. It can be a movie (link), an item (link), a designer (link), a painting (link) or a piece of music (link). Then we make something inspired by that theme or a piece of art and share it with you and each other on the 10th of the month.

This time the inspiration source is long to write to the title but so versatile and easy to use and once again really let us do absolutely anything! Let me tell you the whole story. During the summer both Marsha and me took this amazing class with Nathalie Kalbach and Birgit Koopsen. It was called "Double Mono" - one class, two teachers and twice the fun! 

What the two teachers had in common on top of being really inspiring, fun and professionals, was that they both have designed some stamps! Nathalie has her line with Stampendous (link) and Birgit with Carabelle Studio (link). Both of those were used during the class so Marsha and me thought to use those stamps as our inspiration source and jumping off point. We decided that the craft should present stamps by both of the ladies, but nothing more was agreed.

Before reading more about my project, here's the link to Marsha's blog to see what she came up with!

I started first thinking about the stamps. To me Nathalie's stamps are more background, layering ones than Birgit's. They both have the vocal point and background ones but the general feel to me is different in them. Where as Nathalie's stamps invite to play with paints, the Birgit's are more detailed and thus require a medium that repeats those details. So I needed to create something that has room for stamp play in the back but also place for a vocal point or two.

The second idea or inspiration was the workshop itself. The class was about gelli printing and we used some great acrylic paints during it so I decided to mimic the gelli printed surface and use acrylic paints. Instead of doing an actual gelli print I just brayered the paints to the cardstock and then used Nat's stamps to add more texture and color to the background.

Then I used one of Birgit's stamps with Archival ink and added another layer to the backgrounds. I'm not totally sure at what point I decided to go with ATCs, but it might to do with the fact that we were playing with art journals in the workshop weekend and I didn't want to end up having something too like the things we did there. Or it also might be that I don't art journal that much and am still trying to find my voice in it.  But anyway after the acrylic paint and a few stamped layers I decided to cut the card stock into ATC sized bits.

Then what the cards needed were those vocal points. So I took a few stamps by Birgit, stamped those on to another sheet of card stock and colored the pieces using rainbow colors. Then I adhered those to my bases and finished the cards with white and black doodles.

Now you are thinking that "wait a minute, these look familiar!" Indeed they might! We have this ATC exchange ring in the Facebook and I created these for that bunch of people. While sneaking a picture of these into the group notifying that they were on their way I got asked how I made these and thus I decided to use the same idea in an Artists Live class. So if you want to see how these were made, with a few differences, please visit this post (link) with the Artists Live videos.

That's all folks for today! Thank you for stopping by today! And now off to see Marsha's project (link)!

Materials: Stampendous, Carabelle Studio, Ranger, Prima Marketing, Sharpie, Design Memory Craft