Inspire Me Monday ~ No Stone Unturned!

Happy Monday everyone!  Allison Cope here!  Welcome to Inspire Me Monday.

I don't know about you but I am constantly looking for inspiration all around me.  As a Scout leader, we're always on the go (when Covid isn't impacting us!) in the wild outdoors.

When we're not Geo-caching, camping or hiking we like to investigate the city we live in. So on our adventure one day, we came across this cluster of painted rocks.  Each one was decorated by someone different and each one was uniquely cool to look at. This art of decorating rocks is a trend right now.  An art perfect for any age.

So I decided to join the trend but incorporate stamps of course!

First, I sent out my 15 year old son and gave him the job of finding me some nice smooth rocks to check out.  He managed to find a few along our alfalfa field that were perfect.

I began by washing my rock and using my heat gun to dry it off quickly. (Can you picture this?!?!  Drying rocks with a heat gun?!?)

I grabbed the ever beautiful and Autumn themed stamp set, "Fortunes of Fall".  I just had to use that gorgeous stack of pumpkins on my rock!  I used Versafine Black Onyx ink and carefully stamped my image right on the surface.  Now, my rock was not totally flat so I carefully rolled my stamp all around to get full coverage of the surface.  Now because of the round surface, I knew I wasn't going to get a perfect image - no need to fret!  I knew I was going to cover up the ink lines with paint anyway!

Now I don't own all different kinds of colors of acrylic paint!  I just don't have the storage for it but I do own white acrylic paint....  Yup... and a LOT of re-inkers for some of my favorite hybrid inks.  So I simply took my white paint and used my re-inkers to color it up to what ever shade I needed!

So here's a little sneak peek of my in-progress project...

I tried to put down a few layers of tinted paint so my paints would be opaque.  I'm still working on my painting skills since I work mainly with Copic Markers so it's not perfect but I'm okay with that.  It's just there to put a smile on someone face after all.

Here's my final rock...

A little bit of varnish and it's ready for the real world!

A little close up.  I wish you could see the texture of the little white blossom areas!

I hope I've inspired you today to think outside of the box and how your stamps can be used in many other ways then just on paper!

Thanks for joining me!  I'll see you again soon!

Happy craftin'!

~ Ally ~