Colour, Texture, Shape at Stamps and Stencils

Hi everyone, it's my turn to host this months challenge over at Stamps and Stencils and I have a picture inspiration board for you this time around! Here's what I've created.

..and here's the inspiration board..

Maybe it's the colour palette ranging from cream and peach through to gold, warm browns and soft greens that inspires you...or you want to choose different colours and fabric, lace or metal in your project as texture? As for shape, what about flowers, leaves and architecture or the design elements that are gothic, steampunk or romantic? 
So lots of scope here for you.   Whether your inspired by one or all of the pictures, please share your mixed media creations with us, the only restriction - you must use a stamp or stencil somewhere in your project.

The picture bottom right is some of the beautiful stonework at Lincoln Cathedral, a place we visited last summer. I loved all the different patterns and warm tones that were present. Here's a larger picture and this is where I chose to take my inspiration from.

Having been lucky enough to play with Seth Apter's new releases I chose to use some of the stamps on a canvas to create columns in different tones of brown and grey. I also included some of Lin Brown's recent releases as well.

I was also inspired by a quote from the must have new word stamps by Alison Bomber for PaperArtsy ( I'm so glad she has designed these and look forward to more). At this stage I was thinking of creating some flowers and maybe touches of green for lichen and had also incorporated Kay Carley's latest 'sprig' stencil...however sadly this background totally changed and the sprigs are not visible by the end. The result was that however much I loved the background it was too imposing for any flowers; on reflection the stamped phrase would have probably worked beautifully on it's own but it wouldn't really be a mixed media piece so plan B...

I covered it all up with paint to start again but when it dried some of the archival ink showed through.

So working with this, a little more stamping in paint and I added some texture with crackle and some lace that fitted in with the patterns from the stonework. Now I didn't mean to go down the teal route again but I was having to refer to my colour wheel as this palette was a bit unfamiliar and not one I would usually choose....and teal was the complimentary colour.

I rather like how this turned out, it's always good to have an interesting art journey...you usually learn more!

Hope you'll be tempted to join in, for more wonderful inspiration please hop across to see what the DT have created and I'm really looking forward to see what you're inspired to create!

Ruth x