Posted by Aaron Leventhal
on August 06, 2017
We are back, sliding in one more Countdown to Creativity post before launching our August My Monthly Hero Kit and add-ons tomorrow, Monday, August 7th, at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific. Libby is showing a fun and different way to use the stamps from this kit – thinking outside the card!
I absolutely love this month’s kit and all of the related add-ons! They had me at space-theme. Love!! And with The Great American Eclipse happening in a few weeks (August 21st!), I’m all about everything sun and moon and stars this month.
Another thing I’ve been loving lately is the “Kindness Rocks” craze. Have you heard about this? There are groups all over the country that paint rocks and hide them out in nature. When you find one, you snap a photo and share it with the group or person who painted it (social media links usually listed on the back of the rock), and either keep the little treasure, or re-hide it for somebody else to find and enjoy. Art hidden for people to find, and spread a little joy? I love it! I follow a couple of the local Kindness Rocks groups here in Georgia on Facebook, and when I happened upon this post, I instantly thought I had to try combining Kindness Rocks with this month’s kit!
I started by painting my rocks with a coat of black acrylic paint. I bought my rocks at a craft store. You can also collect rocks outside to use for this – just be kind about it, and don’t take them from places you shouldn’t. :-) All of the paints I used on my rocks are hobby acrylic paint, also from the craft store.
I began by stamping this sweet little girl from the My Monthly Hero kit. I sponged a very light coating of purple acrylic paint directly onto my stamp. I had a wet towel on standby, to wipe off the stamp as soon as I was done with it. Then when I was done with all of my rocks, I took the stamps to the sink for a thorough cleaning. The stamping is not perfect – and you have to sort of roll the stamp across the rock, depending on how flat or curved the rock is. I did a little touching up with my paintbrush, too.
The words were especially tricky to stamp, but I had fun with them! I covered the rocks with glossy Mod Podge to seal them when I was finished – note to self, next time I’m doing this to photograph for a blog post, I should add the shiny coating *after* taking the photos! :D Sorry for my fingers in all of these photos, but it was the best way to get halfway decent photographs, tilting to avoid the shine and glare. (EDITED: I recently learned that if you will be hiding rocks outside, Mod Podge IS NOT RECOMMENDED!! It is not waterproof. Use a spray sealant instead. Sorry if I lead anyone astray on that!)
For the rock above, I used a matching die from the kit to die-cut a moon from masking paper. Then I stuck the mask directly onto the rock, and sponged on several colors of acrylic paint. You can see my mask on the rock below.
For the third and final rock below, I was going for a galaxy look. There are a few stamps in the kit that look like a trail of little stars, or stardust. I stamped those in a few colors of paint, then added white stamped stars. Additional little lines were added with my paint brush, and the white flecks on all of the rocks were done with the white acrylic paint on a toothbrush – flicking the toothbrush bristle to splatter the paint onto the rock. Yes, my fingers were covered in paint when I was done, but it was super fun!
Win a kit before you can buy it! Just leave a comment on this (and every) Countdown to Creativity post! We’ll randomly draw one lucky winner from all of the comments left across all countdown posts and announce the winner first thing tomorrow morning, Monday August 7th, before the kit launches at 1pm eastern. The more you comment, the more chances to win!
I hope you enjoyed my little project using the stamps on Kindness Rocks! Now to go out and hide these little beauties…! Thanks so much for stopping by. Only one more sleep until this awesome kit & add-ons are released!!
