Featured Artist for October

There are so many amazing artists that play along with the operators on Stamping 411 on a weekly basis. We really love to take the time to highlight our friends from time to time. With that in mind for the month of October, we asked our friend Carrie Gaskin aka Artistic Avenger be our featured stamper for the month of October.

I asked Carrie to write a little bit about herself and this is what she wrote:

Hello there all, my name is Carrie Gaskin. I am lucky enough to live in on the amazingly beautiful coast of British Columbia, Canada and living here you can't help but be creatively inspired. I have been a SU Demonstrator now for almost six years and have loved every minute of both the creative and business aspects. I love making cards most of all as I am an "instant gratification" type of gal. Scrapbooking still intimidates me some but I'm trying, really! 3D projects are also something I love to do and share. I'm always making something for someone! Sharing in my love of papercrafting are my two kids (daughter aged 10 and son aged 8) - that is probably one of things that makes me feel the luckiest, I get to share my love of stamping with them and they feel such a part of what I do. Also thrown into my mix is my dear husband, Craig. Although certainly not a crafter (sorry hon) he is an extremely supportive partner who continues to help me look at things in different ways to expand my personal creativity.

Carrie will be joining us for the whole month of October. She will be playing right along side of all our operators with each weeks sketch. Make sure you stop over at her blog: Artistic Avenger, to check out all her awesome work and leave her some lovin'!! I asked Carrie to share with all of us one of her favorite techniques and she wrote us this awesome tutorial on Bleaching.

Bleaching Tutorial
By Carrie Gaskin

1. Start out with a piece of cardstock on which you’d like to showcase your bleached image. I used Crumb Cake in my sample. I have found it best to emboss your image first. I used Versamark and Black embossing powder.

1. Emboss your image.

1. Take a small paintbrush you can also use a Blender pen (although then this is all you can use it for) and gently add bleach to where you’d like on your embossed image.

1. You can either let it sit to dry or you can heat it with your heat tool. TIP: if you don’t want the bleach to move around, heat the paper from the underside.

1. Once dry, you can colour in using ink and blender pens. Take note: some of the colour may still bleach out once you colour it so use rich colours. And voila!

Thanks Carrie for this easy but awesome tutorial. I think I can now try my hand at some bleaching. Stay tuned in October to see lots of great new sketches and Carrie's take on our sketches, you will not be disappointed!!

Have a great day,
Tiffany