Gotta Love a Heffalump!

My grandparents' house was filled with elephants, that I just adored. Large, carved wooden elephants, tiny wood elephants - they were just everywhere - my grandmother loved them, and I love them too. They traveled all around the world for my grandfather's work, and they collected so many cool and unusual things, many of which were animal themed.

It's impossible for me not to buy every elephant stamp I've ever seen in my life, partially for this reason. They are just near and dear to my heart.

Did you know that elephants are the only surviving family of animals in their order? It's true - all the others are extinct. The order is called Proboscidea (because of their big schnozzes and whatnot.)

One of their closest living relatives is actually another adorable, sweet beastie - the manatee!

I must now go in search of manatee stamps!

Anyhoo, the elephant from Altenew's Baby Zoo set caught my eye, because while it's a layering stamp that is sort of whimsical, the silhouettes in the set are very classy and they stand alone, so I tried two fun things with this heffalump.

First, I stamped him three or four times in Versamark, using my MISTI, to be sure I had the entire image perfectly stamped. Then I applied Pan Pastels to him - I thought since the 4th was coming up, I'd make him a patriotic elephant. I used my brightest red and blue - Ultramarine and Permanent Red. I applied them with this Sofft knife.

I did get some Pan Pastel outside the outline, but if you're careful you can use a sanding eraser like this one or even a regular eraser to remove that and clean up your edges. I actually like the softer look of not staying inside the outline, but I cleaned him up this time and made him a little crisper. I used the mermaid sequins from Hero Arts and the teeny sequins from Concord & 9th to make him blow some matching bubbles. The sentiment is also from Altenew, from Painted Poppy. He is a perfectly patriotic heffalump now. Happy Independence day!

Speaking of happy, I am happy to be part of a fun blog hop today (with prizes of course) my friends at My Sweet Petunia and Altenew - both of them are giving great prizes away too - two mini MISTIs and 3 Altenew $30 gift certificates - and so I couldn't resist one more super out of the box thing that you can do with larger, solid images like this.

 My sister and I always SAY we're going to get together and craft weekly, and then we don't because a bunch of more boring stuff gets in the way, and that's stupid. But a few months ago, we did make some time, and we played with - wait for it - PERLER BEADS!

We had just been to the opening of Craft, here in Austin, which is a super cool space you can go craft in, take classes, rent by the hour, etc. and we had a ball melting beads there and wanted to do some more. It's a very zen-inducing activity. So I bought this bucket of beads and trays and we just goofed around for the day. I also bought some larger trays like these.

I thought that it would be fun to make an abstract, pixellated heffalump using this nice big, solid stamp - so I stamped it on cardstock and put it under my tray to help me place the beads.

 That worked great! I wanted the elephant to be in cool colors, but I wanted the background to emulate a sunset, so I added warm colors. This is what he looked like before I ironed him to melt the beads.

And here's what he looked like after.

I love how some of them totally melted and some didn't.

So if you have some kids around this summer, or some unsupervised adults like me and my sister, try using your solid stamps as a Perler pattern instead of just the basic shapes that come with the kits. It was a fun little relaxing piece of art.

So NOW - onto the hop, with some of my very favorite people on earth!

Altenew

My Sweet Petunia

Therese Calvird

Lydia Fiedler

May Sukyong Park

Jeanne Streiff

Yoonsun Hur

Maureen Wong

Lydia Evans

Kelly Latevola

Svitlana Shayevich

Francine Vuilleme

Agnieszka Malyszek

Ilina Crouse

Yana Smakula

 Altenew is also having a sale for all you MISTI fans out there, and the winners of all the prizes will be announced on July 3rd on the company blogs.

Thank you so much for stopping by today - and good luck winning those prizes - leave comments everywhere!

Loveyameanitbye.