Diamond Jubilee

I've been intending to play along with the GPP Street Team's Challenges for quite some time now, but this is the first time I've actually done it. GPP stands for Green Pepper Press, and the challenges are "monthly creativity crusades hosted by Michelle Ward." Now, I'll admit to being just a bit put off by the term crusade, but I know that that is a personal thing, so I'm trying to get over it. It certainly isn't the reason I haven't gotten the challenges done before now. This month's challenge (Crusade No. 27) is called Shape Up, but it isn't about getting in better physical shape; it's about choosing a shape and studying it in your journal.

I chose the diamond, which is one of my favorite shapes. I have a diamond punch, so I punched some diamonds out of decorative scrapbook papers and glued them to the right page. I also used the punch to make both a stencil and a mask. I used the stencil with white paint on the left page. I used the mask with black ink on the left page as well (that one doesn't show up very well, since the background is so dark, but I doodled dots inside the diamond). I took some fun foam and cut a diamond out of it. (I know, it looks just like the punches, but I didn't punch it. The foam was too thick to fit in my punch. I used my mask to draw on the foam and then cut it with an exacto knife.) I stamped my new stamp on the right page. I glued harlequin scrapbook papers to each page. I used a commercial harlequin stamp when I created the background. I doodled some diamond shapes on both pages, and I doodled around the other shapes. I found a quilt pattern that uses diamonds and glued that to the left page. This was an interesting exercise, and I think I'll probably play around with other shapes in the future.

Below is a scan of the fancy tools I made. On the left is the stencil. I took a piece of a magazine page and punched the diamond in it. The white you see around the diamond is the paint. In the middle is the mask, also using a magazine page (it's very thin, which is good for both stencils and masks). I used repositionable glue on the backs of both the stencil and the mask so that they would stay in place while using them. On the right is the hand carved stamp. I took a piece of a transparency and laminated it to make it stiff then taped the stamp (fun foam) to it with permanent tape. This could then be mounted to an acrylic block with repositionable tape if desired; I just used it as is.