Thank You Party Demo's Overview and More

Thank you so much to everyone who came to our Thank You party! We had so much fun, and we hope you all did also. Sue Moffat's cookies were very nearly all gone, and oh my gosh they were amazing!

It was wonderful to see you all, and thanks so much for all your good wishes. We will miss you too!

Thank you to Avanelle Hansen for the door prize stencils that we handed out randomly. Everyone who received one was thrilled.

Please continue to come and see us, we will still be at the shop through October 31st! We still have furniture and fixtures and a little product to sell. We have a few new things coming in our orders that have not already been sold.

Two of the smaller class tables are still available, as well as the large class table. Also some display tables, wall shelves and more! Come in and get a little piece of Art 'n Soul.

We have had such a great reaction to our demo's from the party on Saturday, so we wanted to post a few things for you to reference. The technique that Susie Tracy did at the party was well received and we have seen questions on Facebook, so we went looking for the Technique of the Week that Susie did back in 2015, which was before we had this blog. We have retrieved this article from one of our email newsletters, and we are re-printing it here. We are also going to provide you with links to both the Stampscapes catalog and a video by Kevin Nakagawa.

Technique of the Week: “TURNING WOOD INTO ART – THE EASY WAY!”…by Susie Tracy

You may have noticed a number of different samples at the store that have wood as the base – a couple of different books, some picture frames and some boxes, perhaps.  These are often admired and customers question how they are done. Well, the answer is “they are easy!!”  And now here is how they are done.  (As with so many things I learned how to do this from Helene at Magenta.) 

Make sure there is no dust on your wood product.  Using a felt applicator, color the wood with alcohol inks.  You can create a rainbow effect, or a sky and grass effect, or just choose whatever colors feel good to you at the moment.  It doesn’t take a lot of ink but you do want to completely cover the wood product.

When the piece is ENTIRELY DRY (and it this case I don’t recommend a heat tool because the wood can burn a little) stamp whatever you choose on the product.  I use black StāzOn ink.  When the ink is dry – which should occur quite quickly -- grab your Prismacolor pencils and start coloring the stamped image.  You can apply quite a lot of “pencil wax” for a fairly bright effect.  Generally, the pencil will cover up the alcohol ink color beneath it.  But even when it doesn’t, the subtle layering of colors is, I think, really pretty.  I typically use a lot of white pencil for accents and brightness.

Of course you don’t have to color at all.  You can just use the alcohol inks and when the wood is dry, you can stamp an image on top and call it DONE!

We have several examples throughout the store for your enjoyment and inspiration.

See – I told you it would be easy!

Now to share a bit more about Kevin Nakagawa, creator and owner of Stampscapes.  We were so happy to see many of you watch Kevin create his scenic masterpieces during the party on Saturday.  

Kevin has a wealth of information available on his website which you can find here. In the future, you can order his stamps directly from him. His website also has lots of videos on a variety of topics - everything from ideas for combining specific stamps and stamp sets, to a variety of techniques for shading, adding color, creating skylines, bodies of water and so much more.  From the Stampscapes Home page, click on "Lessons" to see his videos.  The videos are also available on YouTube.  

One of Stampscapes most popular stamps is "Lakeside Cove", (049G).  For even more inspiration, you can find several videos using this popular stamp in a variety of ways here.