{Spotlight Project} Guest Designer Kim Creates a Post-Holiday Thank You Card Using the Old School Paper Tole Technique!

Hello again, STAMPlorations friends! Wasn't yesterday's spotlight project brought to us by guest designer Becca Cruger awesome? 

We're back today with one of two spotlight projects by another talented cardmaker: Kim Makortoff of Art Keeps Me Sane. (She'll be back with her second spotlight project on December 29.) It's a pleasure to have Kim sharing her talents with us today. Please stop by her blog afterwards to give her some love!

Hi there! My name is Kim Makortoff and I live in New Brunswick, Canada with my husband and son. I'm a SAHM at the moment and spending time in my craft room is my way of getting away from it all :-) That's how the name of my blog, Art Keeps Me Sane, came about. Arts and crafts have always been my go-to method of relaxing. If left to my own devices, I'd probably go into my craft room and never come out! I lived and breathed art for four wonderful years getting my Fine Arts degree where I specialized in painting.About 15 years ago, I was sucked into the card-making world and have never looked backed. I've been lucky and honored to win some great challenges and be published in a paper crafting magazine. I'm so honored and happy to have been invited by STAMPlorations to be a guest for their spotlight segment. Thank you, STAMPlorations!  :-)

And here's Kim's spotlight project. Enjoy and be inspired!

Hey everyone! I'm sure excited to be here as a guest designer at STAMPlorations for my very own Spotlight Project. I was very honoured when Shery asked me. The task was to create a Christmas/Holiday thank you card. So, with this in mind, I have a tutorial that shows you how to incorporate old school paper tole in your cards. If you're not familiar with that term, paper tole is the art of making three dimensional pictures from flat prints. Stamps lend themselves well to this old-fashioned technique.

STEP 1

To make my card, I started by stamping my poinsettia image four times in black Memento ink.

STEP 2

Next, I coloured in my poinsettias with my Spectrum Noir markers (PP1, PP3, PP5). You can see the progression as I went from light to dark and then blended them.

STEP 3

I fussy cut my poinsettias, choosing the parts of the flower I wanted to keep and layer. You can also see I coloured the middle of the flower in grey.

STEP 4

I then adhered my flower pieces together using some foam dots.

Looks pretty neat, doesn't it?

STEP 5

The next step is to create my oval piece. Once it is cut out, I splattered it with some watered down green ink, silver acrylic paint, and pink paint (which I mixed by combining red and white). The best tool I have found for splattering is an old toothbrush. It works great!

STEP 6

Using my poinsettia as a guide, I stamped my sentiment. I had to perform a little bit of surgery on the stamp to get it positioned right.

STEP 7

Next, I embossed a panel of grey cardstock with my swirl folder and created my card base from white cardstock.

STEP 8

Lastly, I assembled all my pieces where I wanted them. I think it turned out rather lovely don't you think?

Well, I hope this inspires you to try a little paper tole with your stamps. Just because a technique is old doesn't mean it can't still be wonderful. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have an amazing day! :-)

Stamps Kim used in today's project:

   

Prize alert! Leave a comment for an entry to our Spotlight Projects random drawing for December. We'll pick a commenter to win $10 worth of a new product we're introducing next month. (Hint: it's flat, light, and you can do all sorts of fun things with it!) We'll announce the winner on January 1!