A challenge!!!

We've been away on holiday to Somerset for a week- had a lovely time, with great weather (when we went away this time last year, it snowed!!!). I can't believe I've been walking round in a tshirt at the end of October!!

Before we left, I posted a question on the DoCrafts ATCs forum asking what essential crafting kit people thought I needed. Long story short- my mate Tina (Furryboots) challenged me! The rules were that I could take my basic craft kit, inks and just four stamps. Yep, you read it right, only FOUR stamps!!!! I can use 4 stamps on a single ATC easily! I had a long think and a browse through my stamps and finally decided on these 4, mainly because I thought they'd be versatile.

Left to right, I took my old faithful Hero Arts Old French Writing, a clear swirl from a HOTP set, Fly by Hampton Arts and a gorgeous collage stamp.

Anything else I wanted to use had to be found whilst on holiday. I really, really enjoyed myself trying to use the stamps in different ways and scavenging bits and pieces to add on to my ATCs. I took several already made backgrounds, along with my Stazon and Distress ink pads. I loved it, I used my Distress Inks to watercolour, stamped onto the inside bag of a cereal packet, cut out words from cereal packets and the packaging from a toy, picked up a scrap of red tissue paper form the dance floor, tore up the white corrugated divider from a box of chocs.....you name it!!!!

Sooooooo- onto the results of my toil.....

These were both stamped onto red/yellow shaving foam backgrounds, stamped with lots of swirls in red and clack, then the main image in black. The left hand one is stamped onto the bag out of one of the kids' cereal boxes! For the right hand one I stamped the frame out again onto white and layered it up. The words are from some toy packaging.

These two both take the face from the collage stamp, but it looks completely different on each ATC. The left hand one is stamped in brown Stazon, the watercoloured using various Distress Inks. The right hand one has a background of acrylic blue paint spritzed with cosmic shimmer mist. I stamped the face and butterfly onto another piece of cereal inner bag, and layered it up with the frame from the Fly stamp. The Delicious word is from a cereal box.

I didn't realise how similar these two were until I posted them side by side. I tried to take elements of the two collage-y type stamps, but wasn't too precious about inking the stamps up, so it's quite a rough and ready look. The green ATC has a background made with a makeup sponge and Peeled Paint Distress Ink. The background of the pink ATC is made using a Tim Holtz barbed wire mask.

This is my favourite of the batch, I think because it's almost totally scrounged!! The blue checkerboard background is from toy packaging, the red tissue paper was picked up from a dance floor, the words are cut from cereal packets, and the bottom silver embossed piece is the foil from a tub of margarine! Even the stamped bird was an offcut from making another ATC. I'm amazed at how inventive I got!

So the moral of today's blog post is to try going without and seeing how inventive you get! I'm a bit fed up of these 4 stamps now, but I definitely had my money's worth out of them this week.