Powered By The Light

My entry into the Craft Stamper Challenge... the link to Craft Stamper is just over on the left.

I have only entered two challenges before, both for the talented Hels Sheridan’s Sunday Stamper. Those challenges are based on a name being randomly drawn, not on the design you have entered but the Craft Stamper challenge is all about the design. This will be the first time I have entered a challenge like this and it was really hard not to ‘over think’ the whole project! I don’t expect to win and I am entering as more of a challenge to myself really. I’ve done it to see if I could finish a piece of work to an absolute deadline without totally obsessing about it and giving up half way through because in my head it just wasn’t going to be good enough - so I just went for it.

The remit was altered bottles/vials and of course stamping.

So this project evolved from the thought “I am powered by the light” – as we all are. We cannot live without it, be it natural or artificial.

I started with a white canvas which I turned over so it became a frame and painted the inside edge with a mix of blue, green and yellow acrylic paint.

I then created some light bulb patterned paper digitally and lined the inside of the canvas and the frame edges.

I used some bubble wrap to stamp patterns over the light bulb paper and then used the free bottle stamp from the May issue of Craft Stamper to stamp around the edge and the inside. I also stamped this image several times on card, embossed with white and crystal embossing powders and cut them out.

I mixed some acrylic paint with texture paste and spread this into two of the corners – I don’t have a spatula, spready thing so I use an old plastic membership card, it does the job just as well! Lace was added top and bottom then I added gilding wax to the ridges of the texture paste. 

I resized and printed out an image of a light bulb and stamped a decorative face onto it and embossed this with black embossing powder. (I found this stamp in a charity shop so I don’t know where it is from) I white gessoed the background and edges to tone it down a bit.

I printed the light bulb pattern onto tissue paper and applied this to the inside of two of the little box lids and also to the outside of three of the vials. I stamped the bottles onto tissue paper and applied these to the inside of the two more of the box lids. I fixed the tiny vial into the round box lid with some patterned tissue behind it.

 I stamped the pattern around the edge of the light bulb and randomly over the canvas using the hair part of the face stamp. 

I then arranged the box lids on top of the face and embellished the canvas with paper flowers, leather leaves, brads, hinges, bead filled bottle caps, split rings, corners and gems. I also used gilding wax on all the edges of the canvas and on the embellishments and the stamped bottle cutouts.

If you look closely, the vial with the lace around it contains a teenie tiny light bulb!

Finally finishing off with the wording “I am powered by the light”

By the way, this is also the first time I have actually written down how I have created a project so my apologies if I have not explained this very well!