Monday, November 22, 2010

Smeared and Smudged and Kenny K

Today the Smeared Ink Design Team is hosting a very special hop featuring images from Kenny K, who happens to be the sponsor for two of our challenges at the Smeared and Smudged Forum! Kenny K offers some very sassy digi stamps, and I am personally in love with their images. Although I rarely use digi's, I really can see myself making many projects with these; they are super fun!

Kenny K very generously offered images for our Design Team to work with, and I was lucky to get Star. I adore her, especially because I am part of a very musical family. My husband plays guitar and bass, and we have four of them hanging in our office. I don't play, but I can imagine sitting with a guitar like Star and looking awesome....well, maybe not. If only I looked as good!

Anyway, Star inspired me to make a mini paper journal. You could use it to jot down thoughts inspired by your favorite songs (which is probably what I will use it for), or list your fave playlists or make a band collage book. I used lots of paint and a maraud of background paper. I decided to keep Star black and white to make her stand out from the chaos in the background and just colored in her guitar.









I also used a microscope slide, which we now carry in the new Odds N Ends section of our Smeared Ink shop for altering. It was really neat what I was able to do in just a minute or two, and I can't wait to really sit down and use one of these as a more detailed part of a project. The finishing touches on the cover were some blue microbeads, which we also now carry, some handwritten words, charcoal shadows, and some ribbon binding to hold all the pages together.

I hope you enjoy it and get some inspiration, and if you have the chance before the end of the month, swing by the Smeared and Smudged forum and enter either the Very Sketchy Challenge or the Photo Inspiration Challenge (or BOTH!) for a chance to win some free Kenny K stuff. Also, check out Kenny K's Challenge Blog where a new challenge is posted weekly.

So now on to the list of participating hoppers, have fun!

Tori

Alison

Kelli

Black Dragon

Lady Brayton

Meredith

Kapree

Lisa

Monday, November 15, 2010

Smeared Ink New Release Hop

Today on Smeared and Smudged we celebrate our latest release at Smeared Ink! Last week we added four amazing new stamp sets to our shop, and our Design Team has pulled together some fabulous projects to showcase for you featuring our newest sets.

Just in case you haven't heard yet through our newsletter or facebook page, we are very proud to introduce you to artwork by Misty Benson from Morbidly Adorable Creations. When we visited Misty's site for the first time we were immediately enamored of her amazing art, and we're so happy to be able to offer stamp sets that feature her work.

Two of the sets you see during the hop today are from Misty, and the other two are amazing background sets that you definitely won't want to miss! Plus, some DT members are playing with our super-popular and always fun Li'l Grumpies from the new Occasions Grumpies set.

For my first project, I worked with Morbidly Adorable Tarot: Set 1. I decided to make a mini envelope-book themed around a quote about divination that I adore- "There are two kinds of divination: one comes from art, the other from nature". You'll see this quote in my book. I do have to warn you that my pictures are not top quality, my battery was dead on my good camera so I had to use a pocket camera. But, you'll still get to see most of the details.

This is the outside front of the book. It started off as a kraft colored book that I used distress ink and sprayed watered down acrylics on. All of the papers that you see are from Graphic 45.


My vintage butterfly brooch closure.


Here's how the book opens.


Page 1 with the beautiful seahorse from The World stamp and my quote. You can see that each page has a flap that opens the envelope pocket, where I can store all my thoughts and goodies.


See the seahorse? I LOVE him!!


Page two with The Fool.


I decided to have her sitting on a key with her little skele-dog.


Here you can see how I popped the butterflies off the page.


Page three features images from The World.


You can't see it well in the pic, but her eyes have rhinestones.


Page four is a pretty butterfly tag with rhinestones as well.



This is the back of my book, and it has the gorgeous High Priestess. A rhinestone sits in her hand

Although you can't tell really well with these pictures, all of the images are a sepia-ish tone. I can't wait to start adding stuff into the pockets!



I also made a cute little bonus project: a mini card featuring the Very Skelly Christmas set.

This set is super fun to work with! I wish I had had more time to make all of the projects that are floating around in my head. But don't worry, 12 Days of Christmas is coming up on Smeared and Smudged, so I'm sure you'll be seeing more of the Skellies!

For now, I'd like to invite you to continue on through the hop, and then come on by our shop and preorder your favorite sets!! You absolutely want to get your hands on them as soon as they are in stock, especially for the holidays.

Have fun hopping, and thanks for visiting!

Tori

Alison

Kelli

Black Dragon


Lady Brayton

Meredith


Kapree

Lisa





Friday, November 5, 2010

New Blog

Hi all, I just wanted to let you know that I have created a new blog for myself. Since Smeared & Smudged is specifically for stamping related posts, I felt the need to have a place where I can talk about, well, whatever the heck I want to. If you're interested in following along on my very random personal blog, give me a visit at
The Difference Between Me
Hope you enjoy!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

31 Days of Halloween Winner!

Well, it took a while to go through my tally sheet of all of the comments and posts from 31 Days, but I have to tell you it was so awesome to see the final count! Did you know we had over 495 individual posts go up over the 31 days? Isn't that amazing?!? Way to go Wicked Bloggers! You all really rocked it!! And, with an average of 15 comments on each post, that comes to around 6900 comments!! Whew, I'm glad I pretty much kept track as we went along, or it would have taken me weeks to figure it all out! And now, without much more adeu, I'll get down to the winner of the grand prize!

We had 11 Wicked Bloggers who were able to pull through and post every day by the deadline. If you didn't make it, don't feel bad! It was tough this year and I didn't even get to finish, and I'm supposed to be one of the main hosts of the event! Congrats on trying and sharing your fabulous selves with us all month, and we hope you give it a shot again next year!

There were 14 people who completed the task of Horrifying Hopper; they hopped and commented on every blog every day! Some almost made it and missed only one or two days of posting, and we had many more who lurked and commented occasionally. You are ALL to be commended for putting in the effort and just enjoying this wild ride with us!!

I put all of these names in a list and drew a winner by random #. The winner of the grand prize is....
True Random Number Generator

Min: 1
Max: 25
Result:
6
Powered by RANDOM.ORG


DONNA MUNDINGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whooooo Hoooooooooo!!!! Congrats Donna!!!!

You've won the grand prize goodie package, so if you will email me with the shirt size that you want, I will get it sent out to you. Yay!!!! Thanks for playing along everyone!!!

If you would like to grab a survivor button to add to your blog, please feel free, and we hope to see you again next year for 31 Days of Halloween 2011! (Start planning now, muahahahahahahahaha!!!!)