Birds and boughs

This month it is my pleasure to introduce you to Maddy, another of our talented Design Team and allow her to share her five favorite stamps with us and tell us a bit more about why they fit into her unique style of crafting. I will hand you over to Maddy.....................

I use a lot of different stamps to make up designs, often mixing and matching from different sets and using 20+ on a project, so it is exceptionally difficult to choose just five of my favourites.

  

1. Ant - My favourite stamps tend to fall into categories, and those I find myself reaching for most often are nature-themed. my absolute favourite set is the acrylic "Hedgerow" set by a European company called Artemio and it was one of the first stamp sets I ever bought.

There are meadow stamps that can be combined to make some fabulous grasslands, and some lovely insects, but my favourite stamp in the set is the tiny ant which can be used to make ant colonies snake across the page!

2. Bird on a branch - Another of my favourite nature-themed stamps is from a set by one of our fabulous sponsors, Crafty Individuals, called "CI-234".

I just love that leafy branch with the two birds on the right and use it constantly in all sorts of ways, isolating parts around the edge of a piece to make a "frame" for example.

3. Tim Holtz bird - I could pick a hundred Tim Holtz stamps and declare them all to be in my top 5, but I am limiting myself to just one, the bird from this Stampers Anonymous set "Bird Song".

It's the stamp I used in my Design Team card this month and is so detailed that it looks fabulous overpainted in watercolours or thin acrylics, or just stamped in archival over an inked background. The deep rubber gives wonderful detail to all these stamps.

4. Fish

The very first stamps I ever bought were three tiny fish by Kars. The set was the princely sum of £1, and I have used it time and again in my dimensional cards. Sadly, I don't think it's in production any more, but I have used it on my card below.

5. Snowflakes

There are so many other stamps that deserve a mention, from IndigoBlu's beautiful flower borders, to Justrite's amazing sentiments, and Sizzix innovative stamp and diecut framelits sets, but my last choice would be any intricate snowflake stamp that I could use to create resist backgrounds for my Christmas cards.

Thank you for sharing with us Maddy, please do remember to pop over to her blog and check how she created the piece of artwork at the top of this post.