The Gingers are Growing

The next term for our talented group of Gingers, the Gingersnap Creations Design Team, is just beginning!

Several of our charter design team members are staying on for a third term and we are thrilled to be working with them again!

Please help us in welcoming back (in alphabetical order by first name) our Charter Gingers: Debby Boltman, Jean Franks Beck, Jo Capper-Sandon, Joanne Wardle, and Laura Liddell.

Returning for their second stint as Gingers are (also in alphabetical order): Dan, Jennie, Katy Fox, Linda Ledbetter and Suzanne Brookfield.

Joining us for the first time as full-time Design Team Members...drum roll please....

Penny Bennington

"I have a vintage collage style and I enjoy creating mini-books and altered art projects. I was on the Oxford Impressions design team in 2009 and was a Gingersnap Creations Muse for July 2010. I have been published in The Stampers' Sampler, Somerset Studio, and Somerset Studio Gallery. I live in Maine with my husband and four furry children who are very "helpful" in my creative process."

Petra Berendsen

"Being a bit of a craft addict, I immensely love anything to do with crafting - papercraft, sewing, and crocheting. In the remaining spare time my favourite pastimes are gardening, photography and baking (some say it is a baking obsession)."

Jules Eickmeier

"I'm Jules Eickmeier and I live in a small fishing village on the Gulf Coast of Florida with my husband and our two cats. I have been playing with paper and glue for about thirteen years now and have taught paper arts both locally here in Florida and nationally at conventions for a vendor. I have been published in several scrapbooking magazines. I have two adult children, one son-in-law and two of the cutest twin grandsons you'd ever want to see. I am so delighted to be a part of the Gingersnaps Team. You can find me daily on my blog, A Toast to Altered Art. "

Helene Huber

"My introduction to the paper crafting world was through a Stampin' Up party in the fall of 2006. After making a set of Christmas cards featuring her Victorian home, I plunged into scrapbooking to make an album of my dh's 30 years in education for his surprise retirement party. I was hooked on the hobby and sought classes with Wendy Vecchi and Linda Cain to learn more about art. I have been published in Take Ten magazine and was a featured reader as Spotlight Scrapper in the e-zine Scrapbook News and Review. I have designed cards for Queen Kat Stamps and currently I'm on the Pages In Time design team, creating layouts from monthly kits and hosting groups for the PIT on-line site. Parents of 3 children, my hubby and I are now empty nesters filling our days with many interests and hobbies. I also belong to several on-line craft challenge groups as well as a local stampers art club. My personal blog is LOTSA SCRAP. Please come and visit. "

and

Stephanie Severin

"There was a time in my life that I honestly believed I had a defective artistic gene and was crafting-illiterate, but it turned out that I just hadn't found the right medium. About 10 years ago, a friend took me to a crop at a local stamping store where I inked up my first rubber stamp, and I've never looked back.

When I discovered the amazing on-line artistic community in November 2006, I f elt like I had finally found my true home. In addition to hosting the Saturday Inspiration Challenge at SplitCoast Stampers, I am also a member of the Etsy Inspired Design Team and a Guest Designer for Artistic Outpost. Past design gigs include Caardvarks and Jacksonbelle Embellishments. Additionally, I've also been published in Stampers' Sampler Take Ten & have won prizes in several Hero Arts monthly blog challenges. I am a fast and furious creator who is constantly on the lookout for inspiration & who tries to spend at least a little time creating every day. I would describe my style as contemporary, trendy, eclectic, experimental, & ingenious."


We would also like to welcome back our Contributing Artists, Jennie of the Artistic Stamper, and Hels Sheridan, a Charter Ginger. Our regular readers are familiar with their fun and informative tutorials!

Joining our Contributing Artist team is the lovely Lucy Edmondson!


"I describe my style as 'the pretty end of the distressed spectrum!' I try to keep as much variety as possible in the items I make. I prefer altered art and mixed media to making cards, as I enjoy the 3D possibilties, and the range of different surfaces and products you can work with, in conjunction with rubber stamping. I am on the design teams for the Artistic Stamper, the Altered Element, and Imagination Crafts, and I wrote for Craft Stamper magazine for many years. I have also contributed to Crafts Beautiful and Making Gifts magazines.

I teach rubber stamping, both at home and through my local craft shop. I find it very rewarding to enable people to get so much more pleasure from their hobby. I have a blog, Lucys True Colours, and you will probably pick up from that, and other people's blogs, that I often have friends round for play dates!"

We hope that you will join us in welcoming our newest Gingers!

Lynn is Off to More Amazing Stamping Adventures!

What can I say about Lynn Stevens? She is an awe-inspiring artist, an amazing lady and one wonderful friend. Lynn joined us at Gingersnap Creations in August of 2009 as a Contributing Artist and wowed us with fabulous tutorials. In March 2010, she joined us as a full-time Design Team member and produced some beyond stunning pieces of art for our challenges!


Lynn is leaving us and, while we will miss her terribly, we can't help but be excited for her and all her upcoming opportunities.

Lynn recently became a Design Team member for Alpha Stamps in addition to her existing positions on the Artistic Outpost and Oxford Impressions teams. She continues to have her papercrafting and mixed media art published regularly and recently undertook a whole different kind of publishing when she illustrated a children's book. Lynn can also be seen as a guest artist on the blogs for Scrolls Work, Firecracker Designs by Pamela, Creative Cuts and More, Clear & Simple Stamps and The Artistic Stamper over the next few months!

We are sure you are as wowed by Lynn's art as we are so we have put together a selection of her Gingersnap Creations submissions for you to enjoy again.

We wish Lynn a future filled with love, laughter and lots of stamps!

Be sure to keep up with Lynn's lovely artwork at her blog, Trash to Treasure Art!

Holiday Happenings: Trees, Trees, Trees

This month in our Holiday Happenings, we are going to tackle cards with trees. Seems simple but it can give you a lot of different looks.

So far we have created cards with Outdoor Scenes, inspired by the heat of July, and Holiday Lights,inspired by the sunny days of August, to add to our ever growing pile of already made holiday cards! If you've been playing along, you may have at least 2 cards done and as many as 20!

For the serene month of September, I have chosen "Trees" as our inspiration in honor of the wonderful changing colors of the leaves at this time of year.


So trees seems to be a narrow inspiration, but you can actually do a lot with it. My extra challenge to myself was to keep the cards fairly simple with a minimum of stamped images so that they would be easy to replicate a few times.

Trees as the focal point:

Here I used a single image from Inka Stamps (now available from Scrolls Work) of a beautiful scene and sentiment. I stamped the image on some subtle but pretty striped green paper from My Big Ideas and isolated and matted the two parts of the image with black. I then set it all on a background of the same soft paper but offset the stripes.


To really put the these trees from Magenta in the spotlight, I decided to paper piece them! I had some wonderful double-sided paper that I knew would fit the bill. Of course, it wasn't holiday paper or even holiday colors - I just loved it! Sometimes you have to think outside the paper drawer and just run with an idea! Get creative and look at incorporating some of your favorite papers into your holiday cards even if they aren't silver and blue or red and green!


Here's how I used the same idea and same image with more yummy paper (Daisy D's I think) in 2008:


For the next card, I chose a pretty stylized swirl tree from Stubby Stampers and repeated it 3 times on the card using two coordinating inks. With a clear crisp design, this card is easy to reproduce multiple times without too much hassle.


Trees as a Background Element

The repetition in the above card made me think of making a card with trees as a soft backdrop. Of course, once I completed my two backgrounds, I decided that they needed little embellishment and no additional images.

Still in a green mode, I chose a beautiful evergreen bough from my Snowy Woods set from Artistic Outpost. I stamped the image in several different shades of green on a white panel, rotating the bough each time to get good coverage. I cut the panel into squares and mounted on coordinating cardstock. For this card, all that was needed was a simple sentiment also from Artistic Outpost.


For a more modern look, I pulled out this great "Soul Tree" from Rubber Soul. Its simplicity makes it a wonderful image for backgrounds. I stamped it severl times in blues on a white panel and then divided the panel into thirds. I added a vibrant bow and I was done! Talk about quick and easy!


As I had gotten away with not using any designer paper on the last couple of cards, I turned to some fabulous double-sided paper I got last year called Merry Christmas Sentiments from Karen Foster. I love the tiny trees and the bright colors in this paper. I paired it with a fun and funky image from Pink Cat Studios Digi division so still one image! I colored the image with coordinating colors using my copic markers and voila! another quick and easy card!


Are Trees Ageless?

Well, of course, trees don't fit a particular time period or look but their images definitely can. I went very traditional with this outstanding image from Artchix and this fun Debbie Mumm paper from Creative Imaginations. To add some texture while mantaining an almost monochrome look, I used some green ruche from PaperTemptress. Four brads later and I was done!


If you like Modern or retro, take a traditional tree, like this one from Penny Black, and jazz it up with some wild paper and an off-beat color! This tree is definitely in the pink!






We hope you play along with us in keeping ahead of the calendar and getting those holiday cards done! You'll still have all that baking to do, but at least your cards will be complete and ready to go by November. We've added a linky to this post, so you can share your tree cards with the Gingersnap community! The linky will be open until our next edition of Holiday Happenings on October 25th.

If you want more general ideas for holiday cards, check out my blog, Ill Tempered Ink, where I usually devote a month each year to making Christmas and Chanukah cards.

Remember - keep them simple and keep them coming!

Creative Connection - Haunted

Welcome to the brand-new Creative Connection feature on Gingersnap Creations where we challenge you to take your art and craft it forward! Each month, we will give you an inspiration to work with and ask that you use your passion for papercrafting to create an amazing piece to display on your blog and share it.

The Gingersnapper community is all about showcasing art from our readership as well as from our Design Team so we are asking you to help create a blog web of wonderful art.

We want to see how far our inspiration will spread so you link to more than just this post! We want you to link to the blog where you heard about this Creative Connection too!

Once you have completed your Creative Connection art using "Haunted" as your inspiration, upload it your own blog with a link to the blog where you first heard about this month’s Creative Connection and a link to this post with the following text:

“I am participating in a GC Creative Connection. I heard about this month’s GCCC - Haunted - from (insert artist name here) of (insert referring blog name and link here). Why not play along? Post a creation to your blog mentioning my post and the Creative Connection post on Gingersnap Creations. Let’s all craft it forward and see how far we can get this connection to go!”

Then, come back and leave a comment here on the blog post so we can see all the gorgeous art that you have created!

To get us started, the lovely Helene Huber, long-time Gingersnapper, has created a sensational Haunted piece!

Artwork by Helene Huber

Let's see how far we can get our Haunted Creative Connection to flow!

Fond Farewell to Elina

All good things must come to an end and, after a year making amazing art for Gingersnap Creations, Elina Koutsouradi will be leaving us but moving on to more new and fun adventures in scrapbooking.


Elina is a Charter Ginger, meaning she joined our very first Design Team. When she applied over a year ago, we found her art stunning, her style fresh and her sense of enthusiasm absolutely contagious.

Elina has made so many wonderful pieces for our challenges over the last year that we just couldn't choose a single one. Instead, we wanted to let you see a selection of her beautiful work in this slideshow.

We wish Elina the best of success with all her future endeavours and will obviously miss her terribly. She has touched all our hearts with her art, her wonderful friendly personality and her dedication to papercrafting.

You can keep up with Elina at her blog, aptly named Elina!

Wrap-up: GC68 - Red & Black Color Challenge

It's time to wrap-up another Gingersnaps Color Challenge. There were many beautiful entries for the the Red & Black challenge, ranging from ATCs to scrapbook pages, cards, tags and altered items. And there were so many interpretations of this color combination - Asian, Romantic, Back to School, Circus and Halloween, to name just a few.

This week's randomly drawn Yahoo Home Page Artist is....

Netty
from Netty's Craftings

Congratulations, Netty! Your artwork will be showcased on the Home Page of the Gingersnap Creations Yahoo Group as well as on the sidebar on the blog.

Now, onto our fabulous Ginger Gems. When each challenge closes, we also pick 7 Ginger Gems - fabulous creations that we feel really exemplify that challenge's objective. The Ginger Gems appear in a slide show in the blog sidebar for the entire week, as well as in this wrap-up post, and their creators have the honor of displaying this Ginger Gems blog badge.

For more information about Ginger Gems and entering our challenges, please visit the FAQ page.

Created by Evelyn

Created by Gayle

Created by Georgia

Created by Denise

Created by Meggy

Created by Julie

Created by Linda

We hope you'll take a minute to stop by the Gems' blogs and congratulate them!

Come back tomorrow for a brand new color combo to challenge you!

Fond Farewell to Irit

As we draw to the close of our design team term, we are sadly having to say goodbye to some old friends and some new ones.

Irit Shalom is leaving the Gingersnap Creations Design Team to concentrate on her work with Scrapbook News and Review.


Irit's irrepressible style was evident in all her pieces from scrapbook layouts to intricate cards to imaginative mixed media creations. She has a definite talent for layering embellishments and bringing together fabulous elements.

These are some of the lovely pieces she shared with us.

To see more of Irit's art, you can visit her blog, Irit Shalom Designs.

We want to wish Irit great success in all her future endeavors, both in life and papercrafting!

From Summer into Autumn by Jennie

This is my 7th tutorial for Gingersnap Creations, and I cannot believe how fast each month comes around. I really do have to apologise for the photos this time, as I should try to get them "in action" as they say, but I always forget, and by the time I write this it is too late!! lol However this week, I am going to try to take you step by step through a tag that uses the new texture fades by Mr Timothy Holtz. I used a tag for this tutorial, and ran it through one of his new embossing folders. It makes a great border for the dragonfly.



To colour the cattails, I used some distress ink lightly applied to a piece of cut n dry, and gently wiped it over the raised parts, starting with the green at the bottom, and using a clean pice of cut n dry for the yellows. I then used tumbled glass to get a very light blue sky. I spritzed it with water to get a cloudy effect. Dry quickly with a towel by dabbing it.



The dragonfly was inked in the same colours after stamping and cutting out, so that the edges get inked too.



A very thick layer of rock candy crackle paint finished him. I used quite thick card to make him, otherwise the crackle paint will curl the card. Attach him to the tag with 3D foam.

This is a simple technique, and makes use of the embossing folders to create a bright and summery look , just when Autumn is starting!
Happy Creating
Jennie

Spice Up Your Storage! - A Tutorial by Lucy Edmondson

As soon as I saw this wooden spice rack in my local charity shop, I knew I wanted it for my craft room wall, to hold my re-inkers and those lovely apothecary-style Distress Ink bottles! If you are anything like me, the wall in your craft space is the only bit left, before we start hanging stash from the rafters!

I was going for a sort of hand painted kitchen look, and if I had a chance to re-do my kitchen this is what I would go for!

What you will need:-

• Spice Rack


• Ink Pads or Brush Markers


• White Gesso


• Pale Yellow Acrylic Paint


• Sandpaper


• Wild Flower Rubber Stamps


• Crackle Stamp

Start by sanding off any rough bits.

Paint with white gesso.

Paint with a couple of coats of pale yellow acrylic paint.

Ink up the crackle stamp with several toning colours and stamp all over the spice rack.

To get into awkward place, take the stamp off the acrylic block and wrap it round your hand.

Ink up the stems with green ink (at least two shades of green looks more natural) and the flowers themselves in a range of colours. You may find brush markers or tear-drop shaped ink pads easier.

Stamp flowers all over the spice rack, doing some secondary stamping
(without re-inking) to add depth. Huff if needed.

Sand back to the gesso in places, for a distressed look.

Wrap Up: GC67 - Go 3D!

Wow! So many great entries! Everyone went above and beyond the paper to create some really outstanding and amazing art! Thanks to all who played!

There were such amazing variety in the submissions that in all fairness we could not narrow it down to just 7 Ginger Gems! We also had to put a little more depth in our selection and have selected 12 Ginger Gems! We have a shadow box, a purse, a mailbox, a cupcake, an altered book spread, some wall art, a stair step card, an eiffel tower, a grunge 3D letter, an altered container and even a dimensional ATC.

The randomly drawn Home Page Artist this week is

Marja
of
Marjas Scrapfun

Congratulations, Marja. Your artwork will be showcased on the Home Page of the Gingersnap Creations Yahoo Group as well as on the sidebar on the blog.

Now onto our fabulous Ginger Gems. When each challenge closes, we also pick 7 Ginger Gems - fabulous creations that we feel really exemplify that challenge's objective. The Ginger Gems appear in a slide show in the blog sidebar for the entire week, as well as in this wrap-up post, and their creators have the honor of displaying this Ginger Gems blog badge.


For more information about Ginger Gems and entering our challenges, please visit the FAQ page.

Our Outstanding
Ginger Gems

Artwork by Donna


Artwork by Kim B


Artwork by Lindsay


Artwork by Debbie B


Artwork by Rinda


Artwork by Susie W


Artwork by Suzie


Artwork by Shelley


Artwork by Nancy Y


Artwork by Crafty Dawn


Artwork by Sam


Artwork by Scappy Pam

Congratulations to all our Ginger Gems this week! We hope you take a minute to stop by their blogs.

August Muse, Penny Bennington, also paid us a visit with her beautiful 3D entry.


Come by tomorrow for a new Random Redhead Challenge.