Friday, February 3, 2012

Stamps & Sangria Party



















Back in November, I attended a school fundraiser and was a high bidder for a place at a "Stamps & Sangria" party.  Last week, it finally took place, and I had the time of my life drinking Sangria like a fish and stamping like a maniac!  Woo hoo!  Many thanks to Heather, Kelli, Krissy and Norine for organizing such an original evening.  I haven't done a lot of block printing, and I was thrilled at all the different ideas the women had for creating stamps and printing them.

We began with a basic "chop" stamp for our inititals, which we would use not only to identify our never-empty wine glasses, but to stamp on the corner of all our artworks.  We designed and cut them out of sticky-back foam, and attached it to a wine cork.


















A few drinks later, and we're onto the REALLY fun stuff!  I was given a thick block of condensed foam and some grooved cutters to create another design.  This time, I made my crab logo from my new "artful crab" site that I'm working on.  It took a little concentration, which I admit was difficult because I was laughing so much.  Kudos to Norine for putting a host at the cutting table to supervise the carving of her inebriated guests!

Then, we rolled paint on a piece of glass with the brayer (roller) and pressed the stamp into it.

I ended up making cards with this design, which I used as thank-you cards to our wonderful hosts.


















































Finally, after a great Mexican dinner and a few more drinkies, we moved onto another kind of stamp on a piece of wood.  Using the same sticky-back foam,  I pressed a Kandinsky-inspired design into it and attached it to a block of thin board.  Because of the four separate pieces, I was able to use four colors of ink for this design:







How cute is this goody bag they gave us to put all our arwork in?  It also included an assortment of papers and this beautiful hand-crafted tissue paper flower.

























Fun, fun fun.  I learned something, and had the best evening ever at this fundraising event.