2014 Olympics Inspired Stamping Technique

So have you all been enjoying the 2014 Winter Olympics from Sochi Russia?  I know I sure have been...I think I like the winter ones better than the Summer Olympics...the skiing, half pipe, figure skating, speed skating, luge, etc., they all have an element of danger which makes them all the more exciting.  I saw an excerpt from an interview of one of the women from down hill skiing and she said anyone can run but not everyone can alpine ski which is so true.

Anyway, I had planned to share this idea/technique with you yesterday but we ended up being without power for several hours yesterday!  Don't know what happened but the entire town went dark...schools, business, factories ~ they all ended up shutting down early due to the power outage.  Luckily we have a kerosene heater we keep in the garage for just such an event.  So while we didn't have any lights, internet or heat we were able to stay warm anyway.

Back to the technique...  If you've seen much of the Olympics you may have noticed the awesome design that adorns various buildings, signs, clothing, etc....  I LOVE them ~ especially the blue one...

Photo: GraphicArtNews

This design is called the Olympic Patchwork Quilt / Sochi 2014.  Here is a short little article about it... Sochi 2014 Patchwork Quilt.

So, as I was watching the figure skating the other night I was really loving the blue patchwork which is on the walls surrounding the ice arena.  I decided it would be fun to make a stamped version to create some cards.  Now I have to tell you this is a bit time consuming...not the stamping necessarily but the tracing and cutting will take you a while.

Here's what I did....  I started off by cutting up several pieces of blue cardstock which I then stamped with lots and lots of different background stamps using various colors of ink.

All stamps: Stampers Best/Deep Red Stamps

Next I printed off several sizes of diamonds to use as templates ~ I actually just copied one diamond, made 7 copies and resized them to make a nice range of sizes.

Then comes the time consuming part...I started tracing various sizes of diamonds on all of the stamped cardstock.  You need to be sure you get all sizes for the finished card to capture the look.

The second most time consuming part...cutting...and more cutting and even more cutting.  The good thing is that it's all straight lines but it does take quite a while.  Which is why I'm actually going to leave you here today. (I had to run lots of errands today that I was going to do yesterday but couldn't due to the power outage)  I still have several more sheets of diamonds to cut out and I'm not going to be able to finish cutting and making some cards until tomorrow.

So, until tomorrow...stay safe, warm and inky!