Lighthouse Shadowbox

I've had this shadowbox for over a year, but it took me this long before I decided what I wanted to put into it. I think the company that made it is 7 Gypsies. I got it back when Becca Feeken had her kit club. It was part of the kit for one of the months, but I knew I wanted to do something nautical with it.

Since I sold the shadowbox right after I made it a few months ago, I am writing the steps as I remember them. I know I used some distress ink on the outside, but I can't remember the color. It looks like it might have been a dark brown. I couldn't really get it to shade the wood, but it did shade inside the edges of the little cubicles.

The backs of the cubicles are lined with some white CS which I shaded with VersaMark Aegean Blue. The bottom ones were shaded lightly, and the top one was shaded darker so it would make borders on either side of the stamped image. The stamp is Isle Au Haut Light in Maine, (or Robinson's Point), and is from a stamp I bought for my mother years ago from a company no longer in business. It was colored and shaded using various inks and Ranger nibs, Fantastix, and sponge daubers.

Real Seining twine from a weir was used in each cubicle, and I glued various shells I found on the beach in front of the shop into each one. The glue dried clear, but it was still wet and white when I took this photo.

Years ago, I also bought a little kit which made tiny brass lobster traps, lobsters and bouys. They were a real pain to make, but I had them made up, and the lobsters and bouys all painted. I had mounted them onto mahogany bases, and since Stonington is the real lobster capital of the world, I decided to put one of them into the center top cubicle.

Another Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse Card

I haven't had a chance to make cards or visit blogs since last week, so I'm putting up a card I made before that. Since I sold most of my nautical cards a few weeks ago, I had to make another lighthouse card. I don't ever make two cards exactly alike. This time, I used Memento Black to stamp with, but once again, I colored it with Ranger Nibs and sponge daubers, using ink from various stamp pads. I'm really liking the subtle colors I get when I use this technique on lighthouse cards.

The stamping was matted with green CS, antique gold Cs, and some white CS I shaded with sponge daubers, then I added a square knot at the top, and a carrick bend to the bottom.

PSX Marshall Point Light Easel Card

Here is another nautical card from and old Marshall Point Light stamp by PSX. If you've ever seen the movie Forest Gump, this is the lighthouse from the movie. It is located in Port Clyde, Maine, near Rockland.

I stamped this onto K&Co DP using brown ink, then embossed it with clear EP. The sentiment is from JustRite. I used my Ranger nibs to color it with white and various shades of brown. It was matted with generic CS in shades of brown and mounted onto an antique metallic copper colored card, and K&Co dimensional stickers were added.

Isle Au Haut Lighthouse Card

I hope you're not bored seeing another lighthouse card, but since I live on an island, I need to make more nautical cards for my shop.

This one is a very old stamp of Isle Au Haut, by a company, which I think is out of business, because I can find nothing about it on the internet. This lighthouse is very close to us. In order to get to the island where it is located, you have to take a mailboat from our town. My father-in-law used to run the mailboat before he passed away. The lighthouse was a bed and breakfast for quite a few years, and I wonder if the people who made the stamp stayed there, since it is a very obscure lighthouse. The company that made it was in California.

I made this one exactly the same way as I made the Portland Head one yesterday, using various stamp pads to color it using Ranger nibs and sponge daubers. This is a really difficult stamp to get a good impression with. So far, the only ink I've ever gotten a good one with is Stazon, so that is what I used to stamp this card with.

PSX Portland Head Light Card

I finally got a chance to make a new card. My shop is pretty well set up for the summer, even though it will be a few more weeks before the tourists arrive on our island. I don't have very many nautical cards, so I figured I'd better concentrate on those for a while.

This one is done from my old PSX Portland Head stamp. I was planning on coloring it with Copics, so I stamped it with Memento Black, then I remembered the soft coloring I got when I used stamp pads and Ranger Nibs on another card a few months ago. I liked the softer colors, so I used various inks to color this one with the nibs as well. The colors aren't quite as bright as this in real life, and the red is much less bright.

The blue around the lighthouse, as well as the wider blue mat were done using VersaMagic Aegean Blue with a sponge dauber. The narrow mats were done with a dark green and an antique gold metallic. The anchors were punched from the same antique gold using a MS punch, and the square knot was tied using hemp cord.

Bass Harbor Head Light Card

This is a very old stamp made in Maine of Bass Harbor Head Light in Bass Harbor, Maine.

I was looking at it this morning and wondering if it would look like snow if I embossed it in white, then colored it. Well, it didn't look like snow, but I kind of like it anyway.

I used a bunch of stamp pads and colored it with Ranger nibs after stamping it with VersaMark and white EP. There are a few touches of various markers and a bit of PenTouch gold as well. I shaded everything toward the edges and originally left them white, but didn't really like the look. Then I decided to use the VersaMark Aegean blue that I had used on the water to shade around the edges and in toward the rest of the colors.

Up here, we have a great deal of fog, and we get an interesting effect of very clear areas, up against the very thick fog when the sun begins burning it off. The fog is lighter, almost white where it is thin and the sun is shining on it, and gets very dark where it is still thick. That is the look I was going for when I shaded the edges.

The stamping was mounted onto pearlescent black/green CS. I colored another layer of white CS using the Aegean Blue and a sponge dauber. That layer was matted with antique gold, and mounted onto the card, then I mounted the stamp and green mat dimensionally onto it.

The compass was stamped, embossed and colored the same way, using ODBD's Sail On Set. It looks brighter in the photo than it does in person. This was mounted dimensionally on top of the lighthouse layer. I used one piece of dimensional tape on the top layer, and two layers of tape on the bottom layer to raise it up.

The seagulls were fussy cut from tiny seagulls in some K&Co paper and mounted dimensionally onto the card and white half pearls colored with a gold pen were added to the corners.

It's interesting, my blog friend Sasha called the effect on this card sea spray and made me look at it in a whole different way. Now as I look at it, the white embossin does kind of look like snow, and the way I shaded it looks like what we call sea smoke. It happens in the winter when the air temperature is very, very cold. The water evaporates and forms an interesting type of "sea smoke".

Lighthouse at Sunset

This card isn't as bright as this in person, but both my camera and my phone really like to enhance reds.

For this card I used a photo I had taken of a sunset printed out to 5.5 x 4.25 inches. Then I stamped Our Daily Bread Designs Keep My Lamp Burning using VersaFine Onyx Black onto the photo once, and onto a piece of ivory CS twice. I trimmed around the stamped image on the photo, and cut out the lighthouse and compass from one of the stampings on the ivory, and just the compass from the other.

I shaded the lighthouse and compass with a mix of Distress antique linen, and several shades of chalk, trying to get just a tint of the colors in the sunset. Then I added copics to the lantern room of the lighthouse to reflect the sunset, and to the compass.

The lighthouse is mounted dimensionally over the lighthouse in the photo, then the compass is mounted dimensionally on top of that. I layered the completed design onto some yellow CS, and two shades of antique copper CS, and then onto an ivory card. The brads in the corner are from Recollections.

I have 26 different sky images sized to 5.5 x 4.25 that I have zipped up to put on Etsy, but so far, even zipped, the file size is huge. Too big to upload. I really don't want to lower the quality too much, so I've got to figure out how to make them smaller. Sooner or later, I hope to get this background and the other 25 uploaded for anyone who is interested in downloading them to stamp on.

Lighthouse Double Easel Card

This card uses JustRite's Oceanside Oval Medallion for most of the elements, and JustRite's Sea Shell Bay Labels Twenty Two for the little shells which hold the card open.

The shading on the labels is Aegean Blue, and the distressing around the card is Distress Antique Linen. The coloring on the rope, border and wave is done with Copics. The paper is K&Co.

I stamped the lighthouse three times, and cut them all out with JustRite's Nested Oval Medallion Labels Dies, then I cut just the lighthouse out of one of the stampings, inside the red border, and traced that around the saying and cut the saying so it would be the exact same size and shape as the inside of the red border on the extra stampings. Then I mounted both the lighthouse and the saying dimensionally inside the borders on the extra stamped images. I hope that was clear as mud!

It was originally going to be a double twisted easel card, but I messed that up, and made it a double easel card instead. I made it so the two easels were different heights to make it look more interesting.

Lighthouse Card ODBDSLC109 Sketch Challenge

I made this card for the Our Daily Bread Designs Challenge 109. It's the first time I have entered one of their challenges, and I thought this beautiful Keep My Lamp Burning Set would be perfect for the challenge.

To make the card, I mounted a brown K & C0 paper with a subtle print onto an ivory colored card. Then I mounted two panels with Blue K & Co paper onto generic brown CS. The blue panels have bits of kelp at the bottom. The lighthouse was stamped using black Stazon onto more of the background paper and cut with Spellbinders Labels Four, and mounted on the darker brown paper, which I cut a little larger to create a border. Then I stamped and cut the compass out of the blue paper and mounted that on darker brown paper. Both stamped pieces were mounted with dimensional tape. The compass is on a higher level than the lighthouse.

The card needed something in the corners, so I added K & Co shells, and mounted them with dimensional tape. I used dark brown jute twine to add a square knot on the left hand side. I hope this knot qualifies, a bow just didn't look right on his card.

I am excited to say that this card won at ODBD!

Free Download Jonesport Lighthouse Label

This free download was up for over a year. I finally removed it to make more room for my blog images.