Fall Fiesta Fun!!

Yesterday, after a leisurely morning, I headed to the rubber stamp show in Mesa, AZ. It was pretty crowded when I got there; I couldn't even get into some of the booths! I was looking for a few specific things- a Christmas card sentiment, a couple smaller size acrylic blocks, and I'm always on the lookout for new techniques.

Above are the stamps I bought (all unmounted). The corner flower stamp was bought to go with the hummingbird; not sure if it will work or not, but I'll keep my eye out for more flowers. Now I just have to get a close look at our hummingbirds to see how exactly to color them! I saw tons more that I could have gotten, but I managed to restrain myself pretty well, I think.

The picture below is of the one technique that really caught my eye; it is "encaustic wax painting" and was being demonstrated at the After Midnight Art Stamps booth. http://www.amstamps.com/encaustic/index.html Their website has a few more examples... the paint is "suspended" (? I don't know if that's the right word) in wax. The artist (Cory Celaya) used a small craft iron, the wax/paint, and glossy cardstock- she melted and blended the colored wax onto the iron, then spread it onto the paper. It's amazing what just a few strokes of the iron and wax can create! The sample below reminds me a lot of the rolling hills and fields in the midwest,with trees in the foreground. She has a studio in Glendale, AZ, which is a NW suburb of Phoenix- she teaches classes on this, and many other techniques. They were selling kits for doing this at their booth, but I held off on spending money on it. I'd rather take a class on this first, to test it out, but in the meantime, I think I'm going to try it out using crayons and my mini craft iron!

The sample above is of different pens; I've been searching for the "best" white pen to use for coloring- some of the 2peas (Godelieve and Sylvie, especially) stampers do amazing things using white pens. The first one I bought was the White Writer, which is on the left... it has more of a "paint" finish, but the ball in the pen leaves a bit of a "line" thru the ink and it doesn't cover very evenly. Yesterday, I stopped at Target on the way home, because someone on 2peas mentioned they found the Signo Uniball pens there- Yup!!! The white uniball is a lot smoother, and a finer point. It came in a set of three, so now I have gold and silver, too. Now, I just need to do some stamping, coloring, and probably will make a big mess with the iron and crayons!!!