Paint Party Friday: Painting Stamped Images

I've been working on a series of ATC's featuring elements from the periodic table (click on the ATC tag below for details and other examples). This one is Thallium, an extremely toxic substance known as "inheritance powder" because it was commonly used to poison people during the mid-1900's.
I used my twinkling H2O's to color in this stamped image. I've never been very good at using markers to color in stamped images (and refused to go down the copic marker rabbit hole of consumption), but I'm pretty happy with how these work. I think I'm just more comfortable with a paint brush in my hand than a marker.  I also like using radiant pearls, but they take too long to dry. Linking up to paint party Friday and asking does anyone else use any type of paint to color stamped images? 

Double Duty Stamps and Supplies

I got a little creative time last weekend to finish up my ATC's for the "Elements" swap in which I'm participating.  A friend is coordinating a group of a dozen stampers to make ATC's for all the elements in the periodic table (over the course of about a year). I've posted some of my other contributions here and  here (or click on the ATC tag below). I made Rhenium, above, which is used to make jet engine parts and propellers. I was going to use game spinners for the propeller but didn't have enough and the ones I had were too big, so I used a pair of photo turns instead. I thought it was a nice, creative use of an embellishment!

I also completed Technetium, which is a silver grey radioactive transition metal used in X-rays. It's hard to tell in the picture, but this has a piece of plastic (stamped with the number and letters) stapled on top of a shiny silver paper stamped with the skeleton. It's supposed to look a bit like an x-ray. I didn't have an x-ray stamp, so I used a dancing skeleton from my Halloween stamp bin.  It's nice to use my theme stamps in other ways.
{Tomorrow, I'll post Thallium as part of paint party Friday.}
I liked how my stamps and supplies performed "double duty" in these ATC's - makes me feel less bad about having such a large inventory. And I'm always looking for more ideas in this vein. Have you found a creative, non-traditional use for any of your stamps or supplies lately?

Stamp Give-Away

I'm really not as crazy as my post yesterday might suggest  - LOL! I do have a lot of stamps, but I'm happy to hear that are others with a similar addiction.  In my defense, I have been collecting stamps for about 15 years, and I used to teach stamp classes (so got stamps for free or at a serious discount), and I have used almost all of the stamps I own at least once!  But I do have two sets to give away to anyone who wants them .  The first group, includes the image I used for the stamp above.  I'm calling the group "happy stamps."

The second group is a Stampin' Up set featuring farm crate labels:

If you want either (or both),  just let me know in the comments.  I'll draw a name this weekend.  Thanks for helping me get some room to buy more stamps. . . 
Updated to add:  Congratulations Cheri for winning the Happy Stamps and Melissa for winning the Farm Labels.

Confessions of a Stamp Hoarder

I fear that I have too many stamps.  The problem is that I love almost all of them and have trouble figuring out which ones I could give away. It started innocently enough.  I bought a few wood mounted stamps (the first one I bought was a swirly heart).  Then I joined Club Scrap, where I received two stamps a month and I bought others as well.  After a while, I bought these plastic chest of drawers and filled them up:

Each chest has six drawers and most are filled with a double layer of wood mounted stamps, arranged by subject. That wouldn't be so bad, but my wood mounted stamps won't all fit in there.  I've started to create bins arranged by subject, which I store on the top shelf of my clothes closet:

The two small plastic bins on the left have birthday stamps in one and Easter/4 Season sets in the other.  The large rectangular orangish box is full of halloween stamps. The larger circular box in the corner is full of "people" stamps. The two plastic bins on the right have "kids/sports" in one and "birds, fish and seashore" in the other. The small wood box has "mail art" stamps, and  the rectangular box with the rose print houses my Christmas stamps.  The brown leather-like binder and the plastic file have acrylic stamps and cling mounted rubber. Here's what these look like up close:

Because, yes, at some point, I started buying unmounted stamps.  These two containers wouldn't be too bad, but I have more:

I have five binders full of unmounted stamps! I store these in a cupboard in my bathroom. And, finally, for good measure, I have some wood mounted sentiment stamps:

I have three decent sized rectangular containers with stamps in a single layer.

So, there you have it. A full confession and accounting of my stamp collection (foam stamps not included; yes, I have those, too. Sigh). I didn't count my stamps, but, if I had to guess, I would think there's about 1500 wood mounted stamps (based on the fact that there's about 40 in each sentiment container and each row in the plastic drawers) and an equal number of unmounteds (based on about 20 stamps per page in a binder, ten pages per binder, five binders; plus the two storage continers in the closet).  Am I insane? Is this worse than my paper hoarding, described here? How many stamps do you think you have? And do you remember the very first stamp you purchased?

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Check back tomorrow for a few stamp give-aways!

New Music Monday: The Women

Last Monday, I shared some of the new music which is in circulation on my ipod right now. In looking at it, I realized that it didn't have that many women represented. So, this week, I thought I'd post some videos of my favorite current female recording artists.  Up top, I posted "Simmer Down" by Nostaligia 77.  In a totally different vein:

Here's "Rock On" by Love Inks (I wonder if she stamps?).  I bought a few other songs from her: Skeleton Key, Too Wild, and In My Dreams.  Next a live performance with David Letterman:

This is Feist performing "How Come You Never Go There?" She also has a totally cute Sesame Street video floating around on You Tube! Finally, a woman who has become pretty popular, but I like a couple of her new songs:

This is Florence + Machine performing "No Light, No Light." I also purchased her new song, "Shake It Out."
I hope you enjoy the music today! Got any favorites in this batch? Or any recommendations of your own?

And so it begins . . .

My son takes such joy in playing soccer - in whatever venue it takes.  This week, the regular high school season began, and I'm looking forward to a little of this:

And a lot of this:

It's going to be a tough season, as the boys moved up to a higher division after winning the championship last year.  But, regardless of what happens, I'm looking forward to spending time with this boy:

I love you, son.
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Weekly OLW Check-In.  Things slowed down, as I've been busy grading exams and helping the soccer team, but I did manage to:
1. Finish organizing and filing all my collage images - a big project that I'm glad to have done.
2. Reorganized/expanded my stamp storage and put away the big bag of stamps that had been accumulating for quite some time!  I hope to show you what I've done pretty soon.

Paint Party Friday: Colorful Characters

Thanks to everyone who visited last week as part of Paint Party Friday!  I tried to visit as many of the participants as possible, although blogger seemed to be eating many of my comments.  I really enjoyed the link-up, and I'm back again this week with two more characters.  For these, I wanted to make the faces more colorful (last week's all had fairly true flesh tones), and I really liked the results. In comparing with last week's faces (here and here), these seem to have more character and depth. I think it's a result of my growing confidence.  I want to try something similar using acrylic paints, instead of watercolors.
It's funny, I've always said that I don't like working with watercolors. But what I should really say is that I don't like working with traditional watercolors.  These paintings were done with twinkling H2O's and a water brush.  I'm curious about what other water color and brush combinations people use and like - please share your recommendations in the comments.
And thanks for stopping by!