Mixed Media and Stamping Fun with VivaLasVegas Stamps

Royalty! Ah, the glamor, the mystery all draw us into a world we think we would love to live in!  Well, I am most sure I will never be a part of any royalty so it shall remain a lovely mystery to me!  But at VivaLasVegas Stamps Card Swap they are giving me a chance to create my own brand of royalty!  Now most folks would go with the regal king and queen and their amazing court. Most folks.  Alas, you know I fall no where near that category!  My ideal royal court consists of freaks!  Yes, freaks.  As I contemplated an idea for the sway that must consist of a King, Queen, Jack, and Ace; I remembered this awesome sheet of rubber I had bought from VivaLasVegas stamps called, you guessed it, Freaks.  So I grabbed my notebook with my stamp references (thanks, Anne!) I found my queen first, quickly followed by my king, jack and ace.  Hurray! My biggest hurdle conquered! Remember we are talking about royalty so my language may reflect that.

Next came the issue of a background fit for my freak royal court.  Mixed media is a growing passion of mine that I am trying to learn as much about as I can sooo an Andy Skinner YouTube video gave me such inspiration that I wanted to try it right then and there.  So to summarize rather quickly, I glued on scraps of an old encyclopedia pages, painted the edges purple fluid acrylic, used vasoline to mask the parts of the pages I wanted to show and painted over the whole cardstock with red fluid acrylics. Then a baby wipe when dry to wipe off the masking leaving my lovely pages showing.  Another layer of masking and some orange painted over that and same process with baby wipes. Another layer this time using gold acrylic paint and a stencil of a crown and a key from a mini set of stencils from Red Lead using gesso and  I had what I thought was an amazing background. 

The fun part: stamped my freaks on white cardstock, colored with distress markers, fussy cut, glued down, added some bits of air dry clay painted with watercolor paints ( dollar set from dollar store), stamped some words from the sheet to make the sentiments my royalty wanted to express, inking them with pastel colors topped with a bit of gold ink pad, and placed everything where I wanted it to go.  Then for extra strength for the paint and the clay, I gave them a good 2 coats of matte medium by DecoArt, oops! after stamping their letters on their cards with black embossing powder.

Love these little freaks and now the whole crew has a Queen, King, Jack, and Ace! I am sure this will help the kingdom run more smoothly! 

Happy Crafting!

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