 Hi everyone it's Vicky here and welcome back to another art journal video! Today I'm going to play with these new foam stamps, these are all designs by my friend Karen Tamir and you will find her youtube channel linked down below. They are available by juggles and they are really fun to work with. I'm going to show you all the designs available along with a few ways on how you can use them and I'm going to make a page as well on this video where I will be using a couple of them. Now a fun way to use these foam stamps is to work with acrylic paints and your gel plate. So I'm going to apply a couple of colors here and I'm going to blend them directly on my gel plate. The acrylic paints that I'm working with are by Arteza and I do have a coupon code for them down below. I'm just going to use my brayer and I haven't removed the backing from my gel plate. I like to be able to move it around as I'm using my brayer however it slides on me but I really don't care. If you don't want this to slide on you just make sure that you remove the backing from your gel plate as well. Now I'm going to ink up those foam stamps and you can see the lovely designs. Since it is black on black it is quite difficult to catch on camera but by adding some paint on them you can easier see the designs. So the second one has some letters on top and the third one is full of bubbles, really fun. And of course on your project you can use the stamp theme much like this one or you can use the print. So I do have a bunch of tissue paper on one side of my table so that I can pull some prints. Whenever I'm creating something interesting and I never throw them away I just pull prints one on top of the other until I find that something is quite interesting so that I can use it on some of my pages. Another way to stamp with them is to apply with a brayer directly on top of them some paint. This is where I'm working with white acrylic paint and I'm just going to ink up everything so you can easier see the designs. So some of them come separately but these three of them are in a set so you can use them to create a flower just stamp many petals. You can use them as trees you can also use them as leaves along a stem with a big flower on top. There are so many different ways you can use those. These are great for backgrounds. The XO is one of the stamps that I will be working with today. These are also great for backgrounds. They create those splash looking designs and let's move on to the next one. This is a beautiful flower and you can pair it with this leaf but again if you are quite creative you can create so many different things with them. And here is my favorite one the light bulb. I will be working with this one today. Don't be afraid to use different mediums like inks and not only acrylic paints. They are really fun to work with and they are really easy to clean up. You can wash them on your sink if you like or if you are like me and you don't want to bother going to the sink. Then just use a baby wipe. Now just like always you will find a list of all the supplies that I'm using with links to online shops down below in the description area. And here's another tip. This is a stamp scrubber by picket fence. This is a new find while I was in creativity last January. So I find that this one removes paint beautifully from those foam stamps. I have my scrubber slightly damp and they look just like brand new. And of course you can wash your scrubber and this is better than using baby wipes because you just throw them away. While with a scrubber you can use it again and again. Now I'm going to start working on my double page today. For that I'm working on my Dilusions book and I have one of those old tissue papers that has some printing on top and I'm going to stick it down on both pages by applying some matte medium. If you don't have tissue paper with warts on top then just use your text stamps and stamp all over the place on your background just to have something interesting to start with. Now to apply some color I will be working again with my Artisa acrylic paints since I have them on my table. I'm going to apply some dots directly on my paper and just spread it out with my brush. I do tip my brush into water. This helps the paint move easier and then I'm going to mix in a second color and so I'm going with purples and blues for today's background. I'm going to allow those paints to blend in together and I'm working with a lot of water so that I can thin it down. This way the colors blend in easily. They don't go as opaque on the page and I'm not covering up completely the text from the previous layer. You can let it dry or just use your heat gun. I'm quite impatient so I cannot wait for things to dry and I'm going to bring in some white acrylic paint just to tone down the colors a little bit. You can do that with Gesso as well and notice that I'm going only up and down for this background. I just love the look. Now let's make this background more interesting and add some visual texture. For that I will be using my XO foam stamp. I'm working on my gel plate as a palette so I'm applying some dark blue there and then I'm going to stamp by picking up my acrylic paint from the gel plate and then stamping all over the place. Now since I don't want to have a repeated pattern I'm not inking up the whole stamp. I'm just inking up areas from it and I also turn it around. Now I'm going to pull a print out of this. I told you I have some of those tissue papers that I keep along with me and I just print on top of them again and again so nothing goes to waste. Now I'm going to do the exact same thing but this time I'm working with white acrylic paint and I haven't cleaned up my gel plate at all and I'm going to do the stamping directly on top of what I've stamped previously. This way the previous XOs look like a shadow, nothing matches perfectly and that's the idea. And now with my brayer I'm just picking up any left white paint from the gel plate and applying it on my paper and I love how this looks so I'm going to add just a little bit more. So by now you can probably tell that I don't have a specific plan on my mind on how I want my background to look so I'm just playing with paint and ink applying more layers one on top of the other until I'm happy with the outcome. On this stage the only thing I know is that my focal point is going to be yellow since it is going to be my light bulb. That's why I'm working with colors that will help that focal point stand out later on. I'm adding some splashes which is a technique that I always like to do. Now I'm happy with how my background is looking, I'm going to leave it aside and work on the focal point. For that I will be working with my acrylic paints on the gel plate to create a background and I can see on the labels which one is opaque which is semi opaque and since I want to have a thick first layer I am going to mix up some white which is going to tone down the color as well as turn it into opaque. So I'm going to do the mixing directly on my gel plate and you can see that these two yellows are very close to each other so I wasn't too happy with that that's why I'm going to bring in a third color directly on top which looks more like orange to darken it up a little bit. Now I like it better and I'm going to pull a print and I don't know about you but playing with my gel plate and all those acrylic paints and the colors give me so much joy so I really had so much fun while I was creating this journal page. So now I'm going to pull the paper and you can see the beautiful blended look and the fact that I'm working on a dirty gel plate gives me more interesting looks that I actually expect. Now I'm going to do some stamping and this time I'm going to use my archival ink. I'm going to apply ink directly on my foam stamp and you can see that it works just like a regular stamp. I'm going to make sure that everything is nicely inked, place it on top of my paper and press to get a good impression and you can see the lovely stamped image. I'm absolutely happy with this one. Now I'm going to use my scissors and cut it out so this is going to be my focal point. Now back to my background and I'm going to do some stenciling with embossing paste. I'm using an old stencil by Tim Holtz with those rays. This is one of the stencils that I have been using again and again, it's one of my favorites and I'm applying on top some white embossing paste with my spatula. I'm going to add some glue at the back of my light bulb and stick it where those rays are and then I'm going to have some fun with my acrylic markers. I have a bag with acrylic markers that I have been collecting for some years now. Most of them are by Pebio and I do have some by Liquitex. I like that they come with different nibs and you can choose which one you like to buy. The colors go opaque on top of other colors so they are going to completely cover up anything underneath and you can see here how this red acrylic marker is going to cover up completely the black and since this is acrylic paint it's going to dry permanent so it's not going to mix with anything you do on top of it. I'm going to use the white acrylic marker to add some highlights at the top and you can see I can even smudge it with my finger before it dries. I just have to be quite quick and I do have a few markers here that are by Pebio but they are oil based so I'm going to use this one which is copper and it is shiny. This goes opaque as well and I'm going to go over that line. You can't really tell on camera but it is nice, copper and shiny there and now I switch to my white gel pen just because it has a very fine tip to add some highlights here and there. Now I'm going to use some black cardstock and I'm going to create a little plug for my light bulb. I just did the rough sketch with my pencil now I'm going to cut it out with my scissors but once I place it on my paper I will decide on how big I actually want this to be. So I am doing a little bit of paper pressing here it's a lot of fun to create your very own elements and you don't really need to have a stamp for everything. Now to complete my plug I'm going to use this silver cardstock cut out two very thin little pieces. These are about the same size I'm going to make sure that the top edge is slightly rounded and then I'm going to stick them on my plug. Now this is going to go on my page for that I'm using my Nouveau Deluxe glue at the back but of course you can use your matte medium or any other type of glue that you have. This little detail completes the cable adds some shine on my page and I like how the main focal point the bulb has an extension on the other page so it kind of brings everything together. Now for my quote I'm going to combine stamping with printed letters. For the stamping I will use this foam alphabet this is a stamp set by Tim Holtz. I like to collect alphabet stamps I absolutely love them and use them throughout the years on my art journals so here I'm going to spell the word idea which I stamped with black archival ink and then I'll print it out the rest of my quote and I'm just going to cut it out into thin strips so that I can stick it down so the whole quote reads everything starts with an idea and I think it is super appropriate with my light bulb that says create art. I'm using a black marker to darken up those stamped letters just a little bit and then just like always I will use my white gel pen to add my highlights which helps those letters pop even more against the background. Now all I have to do is to stamp the date and I'm going to call this page done. There is a full list of all the supplies that I used down below the description area as well as on my blog and here are some close-up photos on the project that I made for today. I hope that you had fun that you got inspired don't forget to leave me a comment down below I always read all your comments to like and subscribe if you haven't done so already. Thank you all so much for joining me today and I'll see you all next time.