Background Paper TUTORIAL: Operation WRITE HOME bloghop + SALE + Giveaway!!

Hello friends!  I am SO EXCITED it's the Operation Write Home BLOG HOP weekend!  Having been the very blessed wife to my Army husband for the past 24 years, and raised 2 children through several years worth of deployments, moved 18 times in 24 years of marriage, and been enriched through lots of travel and amazing friendships with other military families...I truly have a sweet spot in my heart for all military and their families! I love that OWH has stepped in and provided such a wonderful service.  And without further ado, we shall begin our celebration.

In honor of this weekend, the military, and this blog hop, all of the INSPIRED STAMPS military/Independence category stamps are ALREADY marked down for you!  You can shop at:  www.inspiredstamps.com this weekend and get these great deals to make your own cards to send off to our troops!  We will have ALL orders placed this weekend out the next business day in the mail!


We are also having a  Giveaway:

WIN THE 'More Perfect Sentiments' clear stamp set
 and our His Little Ones: Soldier Boy!  Just leave us a comment by Monday noon and we'll choose some winners for these stamp sets!!  Winner announced in Monday night's post here and on our FACEBOOK page (come like us!)
   

Here is the tutorial followed by the cards:
To make the background paper:
1.  RANDOMLY stamp your largest image, trying to make a 'triangle' each time you have your stamp down.  So here is the first set of 3 I stamped in a triangle manner using a stamp from the Psalm 91 Protection stamp set:

 Then using 2 of the 3 stars I stamped as my guide I add another stamped star (notice those 3 stars also make a 'triangle' shape)

 Keep stamping until you have your entire piece of paper (6x6 here) stamped.  It looks best if some of the stamps are partly off the paper:

 Next I took the 3 stars from the same stamp set and arranged them like so.  I again will stamp the paper using somewhat of a triangle stamping formation to keep it looking even:

 The 3rd stamp is your smallest and it gets to 'fill in' the areas that are left:

 2.  NEXT:  you will need sticky notes.  I use a triangle form, but you could use squares, circles, hexagons, whatever you like.  I use these as masks (meaning they are giving me a line I want and keeping the ink off the rest of the paper:

 I sponge tea dye first, then the walnut stain only on the edges of the sticky paper.  Start sponging on the sticky paper and move into your triangle to get a smoother sponging!

 When I remove the sticky notes, this is what I have:

Using one of the sides of the above inked triangle as my guide, I set up another triangle with sticky notes:

 Below I show you that the sticky note that is slightly raised leaves a little white off of the edge of the sticky note so that there will be some white lines in between each triangle:

I finished triangle #2 with the white line.  If you smudge (you can see one of mine in this shot below), no big deal, just make sure that gets ink when you set up the sticky note triangle that covers it:

 Here's an edge further into the inking:

 And the sides I put the sticky note off the paper so that it will get sponged too:

 Here is my handmade background paper using only Inspired Stamps and Distress Inks.  You can do this is ANY color (reds or greens at Christmas; pastels in spring; blues, etc):

 3.  Cut your paper based on what you need,  I made 2 cards using this 6x6 background piece and the OWH SKETCH #96 for this one ...INK THE EDGES OF EVERYTHING YOU CUT!! 

 (and Sketch #42 for the next one)

I used Copic Markers shown below for the His Little Ones Characters (HLO: Soldier with helmet and HLO: Soldier Boy): E 33 & 37 for the uniforms and one pair of boots, E 30, 34, 55, and YR17(not shown) for the hair;  E000, 01, and 02 for the skin; C8 & C2 for the 'black' boots (not shown) 

 The text on each is from the MORE PERFECT SENTIMENTS stamp set.

I created this guideline you can use for other soldier coloring:

Thanks so much for stopping by today!!

May God bless you!
Antoinette and all of us at Inspired Stamps

www.inspiredstamps.com

Now be sure leave us a comment to be entered in our giveaway before you head over to see the rest of the amazing blog hop:
OPERATION WRITE HOME BLOG HOP...CLICK HERE