A Collage of Blokes and Black Friday Deals

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Hello Portal Peeps.  Gail here today.  Have you been shopping all the Black Friday weekend deals???   Don't forget to check out both the Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda websites and use the codes below for 20% off and free US shipping.   Linda hasn't forgotton our international fans so you can order and get 20% off and get domestic shipping prices.  How awesome is that???!!!! Grab your codes and shop.  But first, a little inspiration from me..........

I am back from my annual trip to the old country and I think Mr Mojo is still in the holiday mood cos it was a bit of a slow start with this project.  I knew I wanted to use Carmen's Veranda Salvador Dali stamp, and that gave me the idea to go bit crazy.  So I just grabbed a whole slew of stamps and made a masculine themed collage.

I started by stamping Carmen's Veranda Salvador Dali, masking and then stamping Carmen's Veranda Hourglass with black archival ink.

I masked the Hourglass and stamped Lost Coast Designs Weeping Man, Magic Dictionary Words and the chief from the Mayan Hieroglyphs with brown archival ink, masking each image as I went along.  Then I decided to fill in the background using the Mayan Stele stamp.

I stamped the Mayan Stele three times with grey archival ink and unmasked everything!!!
Scary moment LOL.

Hmmm, not bad! I coloured the images with Promarkers and gave the background a Brusho watercolour wash.  Then I used a square stitched die to cut my panel to size.

I inked the edges with brown archival and mounted on a brown base card.  I decided also to add some more blue to the Magic panel, to make it blend in a bit more.

OK, that's it from me.  I'll be back tomorrow with a new challenge so get stamping and link up your For The Men inspired makes by midnight tonight for a chance to win Lost Coast Design dollars!!  And don't forget to use the Black Friday codes and grab yourself a bargain.  Hugz

Be Your Own Hero

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Still a few days left to play in
Challenge #88 - For the Men

Today's card is made with an image from one of my favorite sections - Steampunk!

I used the Steampunk Flier as the focal point for this image. It was stamped on a bit of kraft paper with VersaFine Clair Nocturne ink. I then tore and distressed the edges around the image and inked it with Pinecone and Nocturne inks.

It is mounted on a piece of Sapphire/Gold Glossy Rinea Foiled Paper that I ran through a dimension embossing folder from WeRMemory Keepers. I wanted it to be reminiscent of the sky but with the geometric lines to pull in the technical diagram look of the image. I added a sentiment from Finnabair Sentiment Stickers by Prima.

I hope you take some time out of your busy holiday weekend and give it a go.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!
- Ink Stained Roni

BLACK FRIDAY SALE!!!

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Gear things up - For the Man Challenge #88

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Hello all,

Making card for a man can sometimes be challenging. It doesn't need to be though, just look at the card below.  It's a simple black and white design that features only one background stamp. 

Lost Coast Designs:

Background Gears

Carmen's Veranda - Discover

Other Supplies:

Pigment Ink 

Small wood gears

Wire

Pattern Paper

White Cardstock

Instructions:

1) Stamp Gear Background stamp onto white cardstock and trim to approximately 1 1/2" by 4 1/4". 

2) Cut a single gear our of the extra gear stamp.

3) Ink up wood gears with Black Pigment Ink.

4) Wrap wire around the smaller wood gear.

5) Tear pattern paper across the top and bottom of a piece of pattern paper, slightly larger that the gear element.

6) Assemble and adhere gears.

7) Stamp Discover.

Done!

Click below to join in on the "For the Man" Challenge.

Happy day!

Lori

For the Men Challenge: Magical Merlin

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Hi again from Laurie for another project for the end of November Challenge:  For The Men.

I made a card for this one using the #7: Oracle of the Seven Enigmas at Lost Coast Designs.  There are 18 of these awesome Fortune Cards that are sold individually or you can buy a set which includes 9 of the designs.  They are all really interesting designs as well.  But this one makes me think of Merlin the Magician, thus my title for this post.

I began by taking a piece of card stock and using some Distress Oxide Inks I gave it a light cover of green and blue inks to create this kind of soft aqua background.  I stamped Merlin with black StayzOn ink, cut him out, and edged him in black ink.  I then very carefully attached this piece to a sheet of golf leaf.  I have this interesting piece of tissue paper in my stash with the aqua background and a gold design.  I made a copy of it onto card stock, cut it into the right size, edged it in gold pen, and affixed Merlin to the center.   I stamped some little gold stars randomly here and there and added some Glossy Accents to the 7 eyes.  And that's a wrap!

Let's see what fun and manly goodies you can create for the November Challenge!

Wrap it up with Style - For the Men Challenge #88

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Hello all,

Lori here, with another project to inspire you for this week's For The Men challenge.  Next time you wrap up a package for that special guy, don't turn to store bought wrapping paper, make your own!  It is easy to do with a few stamps and ink.

Lost Coast Designs stamps:

• Large Dominoes Set
• Rulers Background

Others:

• Packing Paper
• Pigment Ink - Warm Breeze
• Ribbon

Instructions:

1)  Stamp the Large Dominoes and Rulers Background stamps onto packing paper with pigment ink.

2) Wrap your package.

3) Tie with ribbon.

4) Stamp coordinating mini-card to accompany card.

5) Attach card to package.

Click here to join in on this challenge.

Happy day,

Lori

For The Men: A Vintage Art Journal Page

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Hi everyone,
It's Dot here today with a tutorial for you using one of my favourite
Lost Coast Designs's stamps - Thick and Thin Men.

This is an Art Journal page. I thought it might be fun to do a little image transferring.

Someone had told me that 'Vogue' magazine is the best mag to use
so I was keen to give it a go.

It would be fair to say that image transfers have been a bit hit-and-miss

for me over the years. But I really liked how this page has turned out.

The image transfer went straight onto a page from my Art Journal.

The picture was painted with gel medium, as well as the
art journal page and then the image was attached face-down and allowed to dry.

 I started gently rubbing my finger in circles (dipping it in water every now and then)

until the image started to appear.
You can see where I might have taken off too much of the image, but that's okay
because I had already decided to create a vintage piece
so it kind of adds to the effect.

To finish this part I painted some gel medium over the whole piece to seal it.

To create more of a shabby chic look I swiped a little white paint in from the edges and

stenciled a pattern in a matching paint tone.

Stamping was all that was needed to finish the page off.

I stamped Thick and Thin Men onto photo copy paper

and cut the image out.

The ATC Grunge Set has some wonderful stamps that are ideal for background stamping.
I used one of these to add a little more interest to the background.

As an after thought, I also added a little shadow effect with water colour pencils around the men's feet, for grounding.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Lost Coast Designs has a challenge this fortnight called

For The Men.

You only have to use real stamps with a men's theme and you could be in with a chance to win a prize.

Happy Stamping!

Dot x

For the Men...Man's Best Friend

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Stamps: Carmens Veranda - Dogs Are Our Whole Lives Clear Sentiment

Lost Coast Designs - Many Dogs

Hello Friends and welcome!

Today I decided to use one of Lost Coast Designs newest stamps - Many Dogs for today's challenge #88 "For the Men". It's so  dog gone cute (sorry - couldn't resist!).

I started off by stamping the dogs onto a piece of white cardstock which was then colored using a combination of Marabu Art Crayons and water. It creates such a lovely intense watercolor look. Once dry this panel was mounted on a black card base.

To create the sentiment I applied various metallic watercolor paints using a piece of cling wrap, pouncing on the colors until I was satisfied with the look. It appears more orange in the photo but it's actually a shimmery copper color that reacted to the lights. It's so hard to capture that shimmer with a camera.  The sentiment was stamped onto the paper once it had dried and was then edged with Blue Belle VersaFine Clair ink to finish it off.

I cut a half circle from Rinea Foiled Paper and mounted it on the card then affixed the sentiment using foam tape. I added a few sequins to finish it off :)

Hope you like my card and are inspired to join in the fun! 

For the men: Happy everything!

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Hello everyone, Liesbeth here showing you some ,men-inspiration' fot our 88th Challenge called ,For the Men. HERE you will find everything about participating and nice inspiration cards from the DT. Hope you will join us!

A very simple one this time! On a left over piece of painted cardstock (rusty and teal colours) I stamped some fragments of the Gears and ATC lattice set with black ink. Also with black, I stamped the men (Tres Caballeros) and cut them out. The same with the text. I sponged a bit of black ink around the edges of the three pieces. I glued them onto the card and I glued it onto a black card.

Liesbeth XX  

For the Men Challenge: Day 1: Albert Einstein

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Welcome back from Laurie for this fun theme:  For the Men.  We want to see what creations you can make using some Man-power!

For this challenge I made a card using the Albert Einstein stamp from Carmen's Vernada.
I started by stamping my image with black ink onto a page from an old architectural textbook - I loved that Al's image is sitting atop some lines and angles!  I cut it into a square and edged it with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

Next I took a piece of Astrological tissue paper I had in my stash and, using Matt Medium, I glued it to the page from an old book.  After it dried I cut it into a circle using a circle die.  I edged it with the same Distress Ink.

I then used a couple of different stencils and stenciled randomly with brown ink.  I also used an alphabet stamp and randomly stamped it with black ink.  Using foam tape, I positioned Al right in the center of my circle.

I layered the circle with black and cream card stock.

So get out  your stamps and show us what fun creations you can make "For The Men"!

CHALLENGE #88 - FOR THE MEN

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Greetings.  It's time for our new Challenge.
Our challenges are now fortnightly!  A new challenge starting the 1st and the 15th of every month, with chances to win your self some Lost Coast dollars. We will be announcing winners on the 5th of the month, so do pop back and see who wowed the team and gets our snazzy blog badge and the coveted Lost Coast dollars.

Now for our new Challenge!

CHALLENGE #88

FOR THE MEN

Use real stamping and create a man themed project.

Please remember we do have some Challenge Rules to follow so look them over to ensure your entries qualify to win this month's prize!

You are welcome to play in our Challenges using rubber stamp images from any company but if you use any of our Lost Coast Designs or Carmen's Veranda stamps...we love it when you do...then your entry counts as two which doubles your chances of winning in our random prize drawing.

PRIZES

To ensure you all have a fabulous time playing in our Challenges this is how our Prize system works!
The more entries the better the Prize so tell all your friends to join the fun too!

1 - 4 Entries = one winner chosen by the team is awarded our Challenge Winner's Badge
5+ Entries = one randomly picked winner will receive a $5 gift certificate to spend at
Lost Coast Designs/Carmen's Veranda
10+ Entries = one randomly picked winner will receive a $10 gift certificate to spend at
Lost Coast Designs/Carmen's Veranda
and all winners get our snazzy Challenge Winner's Badge to proudly display on their blogs!

If you don't have a blog then no prob, you can still play in our challenges by sharing your projects from public photo sharing sites which includes our Facebook Company Pages for Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda.  Please include our Challenge info and the link back to our challenge in your photo's description!  As long as the privacy setting for your photo is public you're good to go.  See, it's so easy to join the fun!  FYI, you can't link up projects shared in closed Facebook groups! 

Here's some inspiration from the team to get us started.  ENJOY!

Laurie has used a brand new stamp now available at Carmen's Veranda called Einstein, for obvious reasons LOL.

Liesbeth made this gorgeous card using Lost Coast Designs 3 Waiters and stamps from Victoriana set. 

Lori made this elegant steampunk themed card using Lost Coast Designs Steampunk Balloon Guys and Gears Background.  Discover word by Carmen's Veranda.

Now it's your turn.  Are you up for the challenge?  We can't wait to see your projects!  
Submit your entries in the linky party below by 5 to midnight PST on the 30th and don't forget to follow us so you don't miss anything!  The team will be posting more inspiration throughout the month so check back and join the fun.

Happy Stamping!
Gail
Challenge Host

Challenge #88 - FOR THE MEN
November 15th - 30th Please read over out RULES to be sure your entries qualify you to win!
ALL rubber stamp companies are welcome.
Linky closes Saturday, November 30th 23.59 PST.
All entries must be entered in our link up but your don't need a blog to win.  See our RULES page for more info
 

Beautiful

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Roni here with one last card for
Challenge #87 - Dia de los Meurtos!

Beautiful!

I love the Skull with Wreath stamp so I thought it would be fun to celebrate the final day of the challenge with her/him.  I stamped the image with VersaFine Clair Nocturne ink then colored it a bit with Memento Dual Tip Markers...added a few colors of green for the leaves, red for the berries and a bit of grey on parts of the skull to give it some depth.

I made the background by spritzing some Fireworks! spray on a circle stencil and pressing it onto the paper. I then stamped the Long Swirl several times over the panel with Morning Mist VersaFine Clair which is a really lovely grey. I then went over all the swirls with some glitter...because you can never have too much sparkle!

The panel was matted with Rinea Foiled Paper and mounted on a black card blank. I then mounted the skull on a piece of Sapphire Rinea Foil and a gold scallop oval.

I topped it off with a little fish tail sentiment - Beautiful.

I hope you join in on the fun and enter our little challenge!

Crystal Skull - Day of the Dead

Welcome back to Lost Coast Portal to Creativity where Lost Coast Designs and Carmen's Veranda collide to bring you twice the inspiration and double the fun!

Hello all,

Lori here, with a colorful card using the Black Nose Sugar Skull stamp.  I used fluid acrylics to add vibrant color to key sections of the skull image; leaving enough white space to allow the colors to really pop!

Lost Coast Designs:

• Loopy Background
• Black Nose Sugar Skull

Other Supplies:

• Fluid Acrylic Paint
• Metallic Acrylic Paint
• Permanent Ink

1) Stamp skull image with permanent black ink and then color with fluid acrylics.

2) Stamp script onto a separate cardstock panel with permanent ink.

3) Add metallic paint splatters over script panel and then edge panel with black ink.

4) Adhere script panel onto card base.

5) Fussy cut skull and then adhere to center of script panel.

Hope this card will inspire you to join us in the Day of the Dead Challenge.  We would love to see your creations!

Just Click Here

Happy Day,

Lori