Blog Hop: Pam Carriker's New Stamp Line

I am thrilled to be supporting my friend Pam Carriker by participating in this blog hop, the first ever hosted by Stampington & Company. Not only is Pam an outstanding artist, she is also the mastermind behind an ever-increasing line of art supplies. Today we are celebrating the release of her new cling mount stamp line, a collection that includes 23 stamps that range from grungy background to perfect portrait.

Pam herself kicked off this blog hop last week with her own step-by-step tutorial in this post on Somerset Place, Stampington & Company's blog. This week is my turn. But you are going to want to follow along in the coming weeks to see how Pam's stamps are used by Jen Cushman, Mary Beth Shaw, Dina Wakley, Traci Bautista, and Christen Olivarez, Stampington's Director of Publishing.

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Now onto the art...

I started with a piece of watercolor paper and created my background by adding layers of acrylic paint, acrylic glazes, and gesso. The layers were added in no particular order and continued until I felt that the painted background was complete. Today it took 9 layers and you can see the step-by-step process below.

Done. I was happy with how the piece looked so far and decided it was time for stamps. I started with Sketched Background and a black ink pad.

This is the perfect stamp for me as I knew I could use it to add both random marks on the surface as well as more deliberate marks around the edge of the piece. I always feel that "framing out" an artwork makes it look more complete. For that reason I also rubbed a black stamp pad around the edges of the paper as well. 

It is hard to see the stamping online with such a dark background but you can see it more clearly in this close-up detail.

I moved on to Pam's Columns of Dots stamp.

I love the grungy and random way the dots were created. This time I stamped using both a black ink pad and a metallic gold ink pad.

You can see in this close up detail that I also used a white gel pen to randomly add curved marks around some of the stamped circles. 

I went into my stash of alphabet stamps and found a set that had the perfect font and size for this piece. I used a black ink pad to stamp the words "take flight" and outlined the letters with a white gel pen to make them stand out from the dark background. I also drew a scratchy rectangle around the word "flight" using black, white and gold pens.

For my next step, I painted another piece of watercolor paper using the same process I described above. I used a bit of a different color palette and added metallic gold acrylic paint as my top layer.

I saved the best for last: Pam's I Will Soar wing stamps.

I stamped them onto the painted paper using a black ink pad. Once stamped, I cut out the wings using the edges of the stamped wings as a guide. I actually often think of wings as being one of those images that has been a bit overused in mixed media art. But I couldn't resist using Pam's wings. There is something very special about their design!

I added the wings to the piece, inserting small squares of book board between the substrate and the wings so that the wings were lifted off the piece, adding dimension and echoing the title of the artwork "Taking Flight."

Thanks Pam. These stamps are going to get a lot of use!