Recklinghausen Musings ...

Hi and welcome to the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop!

It's so lovely to be here and I have to admit to being a bit nervous as this is the first CKC blog hop I've been involved in and you know the talent out there can be a little intimidating!

I'm the first stop on the hop (yet something else to be a little daunted by!) and next up is the über-talented Melissa so make sure you pop over there as well as all the other Forgers on the hop - there's a whole lot of inspiration out there.

This month's challenge for the blog hop was to use a stamping technique for your project and this one was really a bit nerve-wracking for me. But my trusty Stamping Guru Deb advised I check out You Tube or just the internet in general and gave me a whole list of ideas as well. Ideas galore and certainly several of them have been squirreled away for the future.

After a little looking around, I settled on Jennifer Maguire's "Smooching" technique.

Her video (check it out here) was excellent and described how she starts off with a standard stamped image and then "kisses" the stamp onto a background stamp which removes some of the ink from the stamp. The "smooching" comes from the kissing technique but you just slightly move the stamp a little to sort of push the ink which makes the background texture more pronounced. The video makes it much clearer than this rather doubtful explanation!

To make this a bit clearer, let me share some photos.

I decided to use a Christmas bauble stamp as it had a nice flat surface and I've used black ink to show you the technique and difference between the methods.

This is the stamp just as it comes.

This is the background stamp I used for the kissing and smooching. I used Libby's  Stampin' Up "Sanded" stamp which is unfortunately now discontinued :-( 

This is the effect after "kissing" the image with the background stamp - you can see how the ink has been lifted by the rough lines of "Sanded"

And this is the effect after I "smooched" the bauble stamp on top of the "Sanded" stamp. You can see how much more pronounced the lifted lines are.

After practicing the technique in black ink for the photos, I moved onto this pale pink ink but the smooching effect can still be seen. I decided to stamp a whole sheet of the images so that I was flexible about what to do with them when it came to my layout.

Now that I had my stamped elements, I had the idea to cut them out to use as a banner - you know how I love banners! I knew I had another challenge on my hands as I had used a Christmas image for my stamp but was going to be using my Departing Summer CKC kit!

Selecting the Sketch Support sketch I'd printed out last month to use but hadn't got around to yet (single page sketch #8), I just got to work! I used my pink paper along with the music paper and added in some bling and the silver letters to make it a bit Christmassy. I even found a use for a few of my photo corners, the old journalling spots and the green paper trims!

If you've made it to the end of this mega-post, then congratulations!

Please leave me a comment to let me know you were here before heading over to Melissa and then onto the rest of the hoppers!

Lisa (that's me!)

Melissa

Sherri

Kim

Jemma

Margie

Susanne

Lisa

Gabrielle

Meridy

And don't forget to check out the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Sponsor for this month:

Ippity Chick Sherri

The prize:  a stamp set of your choice from her online store!

How to get it:  comment on the CKC blog hop post (on their site) on the 28th....and if you are participating in the blog hop you get an extra chance to win!