Ever have those mojo lows? I know I’ve had a couple over the last few weeks, and having talked to some of you on Facebook and Twitter, it appears that you often have the same problem. I therefore thought that I would start a little mini-series of mojo busting techniques that I sometimes use in the hope that it will help you too :)

Now, I don’t know whether it is my age, or just the need for something tangible in my hand however I have been reaching more for magazines lately than I have the internet. Are you the same? (Seems a bit weird asking that as you are reading this on the internet…)

Anyway, I recently wanted to do a bit of stamping but really didn’t know where to start (that mojo was M.I.A) so I started flipping through my stash of magazines when I came across some great designs from Stephanie De Geus (cool name huh?) in Issue 14 of Creative Stamping magazine…

The best thing about the article was that Stephanie had used the stamps that also came free with the magazine so I decided that I would use the stamps but try and put my own little twist on the ideas that I found in the magazine.

By the way, this is Issue 14. You can see some of the free stamp designs on the cover – they were a cool eclectic bunch of things – which was a help in itself.

Anyway, I started playing around with layouts using the knife, fork and spoon stamps from the set with black ink and white paper – and finally settled on this design.

The pencil drawn circle that I had marked on the design was so that I had a guide against which to cut the design. In the end I just used my Brother Scan N Cut to cut the design out with a simple circle shape so didn’t really need it.

For my next move I thought that I would also try and use the stamp in conjunction with my old fave the Inkadinkado Stamping Gear and just went with a simple repeat pattern, keeping the black and white style to the design.

The next step was fairly obvious and just involved a bit of matting and layering. I used the Brother Scan N Cut to make the layer for the circle and my Perfect Layers rulers for the square border but of course, if you have them, you could also use dies.

I should also mention at this point that the RSVP letting was cut using the Brother Scan N Cut, but it could equally have been a peel off, die cut or printed version.

As I’ve mentioned in a few posts recently I am hopelessly addicted to adding little gems to my cards – don’t know why, I just do. This was no exception and you can see how I included them in the design below.

That was about it. I didn’t really go on to add anything more as I liked the simplicity of the design. Here is the finished result.

And a little closer …

I always give my designs a little critique or review after have made them and I think that when (not if) I do this again I would actually try and use the offset technique with the stamping gear in order to create a “spiral” style to the knives and forks. Look out for that on Facebook and Twitter in the future.

I did also go on to make a very simple second card which I also thought that I would share with you. This time I just stamped out multiple copies of the knives, forks and spoons and used the Brother Scan N Cut to cut them out with a circular frame and also to create the black layers.

I then tiled them together and added a few faux pearls.

Here is that card.

And a little closer …

Result! Cards made, mojo kicked in – now if only I had the time to play some more – come on lottery, surely it’s my turn soon?!

Right, so that’s it for this post. If you have the unfortunate circumstance to end up with a lack of mojo in the future, I hope that the magazine mojo motivation method will help!

As ever, if you have any questions, comments or ideas about this project that you would like to share, please feel free to use the comments section at the bottom of this post.

Thank you for reading.

See you again very soon.

John :)