IO/MISTI Blog Hop

Greetings friends.  Today I am very happy to participating in a blog hop between My Sweet Petunia (makers of the MISTI stamp positioner) and Impression Obsession.  The two design teams have created projects that show the advantages of using a very precise stamp positioner with your rubber or clear stamps.

Be sure to visit each of the blogs participating in the hop and leave comments on each blog as you go so that you will be entered to win a prize.   On Wednesday, October 12th,  two winners will be drawn from everyone who leaves a comment on ALL the blogs in the hop to win a prize.  One person will win a mini MISTI and another will win a $25 IO gift certificate. Winners will be posted on the My Sweet Petunia and Impression Obsession blogs as well as their Facebook pages.  Good Luck!

For the hop today, I made two different cards that highlight the precision of the MISTI stamp positioner by My Sweet Petunia.  MISTI stands for the Most Incredible Stamp Tool Invented, and I have to say, it is absolutely amazing.  I have started using it in my classes, and I have yet to meet anyone who didn't love it.

The first topic I wanted to talk about was stamping on uneven surfaces.  I do a LOT of watercoloring, so I am constantly stamping images onto watercolor paper.  If you have ever stamped on watercolor paper, you have probably noticed that the bumps of the paper often prevent you from getting a nice, sharply stamped image.  Therefore, I have started using the MISTI with all of my watercolor projects so that I can stamp an image over and over on top of itself until I get an image that doesn't have missing lines.

Here is a picture of the Curious Squirrel by Impression Obsession before I did any watercoloring:

Even though this image is highly detailed, you can not tell at all that I overstamped the squirrel more than once.  The MISTI really lets you stamp an image precisely on top of itself.  Can you tell his cute little whiskers were stamped twice?  I also stamped the saying from the Card Sentiments set using the MISTI because I knew I would have to stamp it more than once on the watercolor paper.

Of course, I couldn't resist stamping my own background with two Impression Obsession Cover a Card backgrounds.  The "patterned paper" I stamped is a combination of the Distressed Denim CAC stamped first with Color Box Ice Blue Chalk ink to give a mottled look.  I then stamped it with the new Boxwood CAC with Color Box Azurite Chalk ink. 

The second card I made also illustrates the advantage of having a very precise stamp positioning tool.

The first step was to stamp the Watercolor Butterfly onto kraft cardstock:

You can see that with my first stamping, the body of the butterfly didn't show up very well.   This often happens with solid areas on stamps. Normally I would stamp it again with the MISTI, but for the bottom layer, my butterfly didn't need to be perfect.

For the next step, I colored the butterfly with an assortment of blue, green, and yellow Prismacolor pencils.  The best part of this technique is that you can color on top of all the lines of the butterfly wings.  Not having to stay in the lines makes coloring really fast!   When I finished coloring, you could still see the lines, but they were blurry and clouded.

I definitely had to overstamp the butterfly again using the MISTI to put the lines back on the image.  I wanted to add a glossy look, so I stamped the butterfly again with black pigment ink and embossed it with black powder to give the wings some shine.

Once again, the lines of the butterfly matched up perfectly.  On a side note...  I pressed really hard with the pencils to crush the color onto the paper.  When you press that hard with the pencils, I think it gives it a finished look that is similar to acrylic paints.

I didn't plan it, but I did mess up my sentiment when I added it to the card:

I took a picture so that you could see how I fixed it with the MISTI for the finished card.

I hope you visit the other designers in the hop to get lots of ideas and for the chance to win a prize!

Blog Hop:

Iliana Myska

Lydia Fiedler

Jeanne Streiff

Kia Gibson-Clapper

Maureen Wong

Ilina Crouse

Ceal Pritchett

Dina Kowal

Daniela Dobson

Anna Wight

Laura Fulcher (You are here)

Karen Amidon

Mitra Friant

Victoria Garrett

Kittie Caracciolo

Jenny Gropp