Aye Aye!

I've been aye-ayeing this stamp set for a while now, but I've so far resisted (just too many things on my wish list). My son Matthew is now 7 and is more into bikes and soccer these days, but I really REALLY wanted to have a play with it.

Some of my lovely customers decided to aid-and-abet my stamping addiction by stamping out images for me to use... Don't we all need friends like that?

This set is called Ahoy Matey and is on page 62 of the Idea Book.

I used some of the Fall Flowers designer series paper, colored the stamped images with Really Rust ink and blender pen then went over it with the chalk pastels. Colour also added with my new neutral markers, which are fantastic. The base cardstock is Really Rust, with the matting in Basic Gray. A few little pieces from the Hodgepodge Hardware finish it off.

The neutral markers are great value. Four markers come in the pack, in Stampin' Up!'s colours of Sahara Sand, Basic Black, Going Gray and Basic Gray. They can be used for colouring, as I've done here, or you can use them in place of a stamp pad by coloring in the rubber and then stamping. The best thing is, when using this method of inking up the rubber you can omit any part of the image that you don't want. AND you can use different coloured markers to create a muli-coloured image. See on the right for an example of this using my Soft Subtles markers.