Creating Scenes with Leading Ladies Stamps

In this post I share my creative journey to creating scenes with Leading Ladies stamps. This journey brings together two previous streams of focus (creating scenes with rubber stamps and colouring with Copic markers) and enabled me to gain the confidence to create free-hand scenes that capture something about my card recipients.

I first came across the Leading Ladies series of clear stamps from Ellen Hutson via my favourite Copic marker guru, artist Sandy Allnock. I was instantly taken with how versatile these stamps were and that they depicted women doing a whole range of activities that I enjoy. So I started to invest in a few sets (and then a few more, and a few more). Initially I worked from already coloured images that I found on Pinterest to make basic scenes using the accessories stamps that came with the sets, and experimented with using them on different backgrounds. I also started using Sandy Allnock’s Human Rainbow skin colours (#thehumanrainbow – encouraging crafters to color multiple hues of skintones on crafty projects).

I then started experimenting with different stamps that I had from elsewhere to make different sorts of scenes. Very soon I realised that perhaps I could make the figures look a bit like people I know (and doing the things they do). These were still fairly basic but I started bringing in different stamps as backgrounds and changing some of the features (e.g. short hair) to better suit the person they were supposed to be.

Ellen Hutson also released some new stamps with a man, a boy, a girl and an older woman that opened up the possibilities for making cards for all my friends and family. I started to build my confidence in amending the figures to change the look: changing the hairstyle, shortening the sleeves or trousers etc. Somewhere along the line I didn’t have the right stamps to convey the scene I wanted and/or it seemed like the scene needed something more, so I took the plunge and started drawing the scenes free-hand (often in conjunction with other stamps) – and I haven’t looked back.

Birthday cards for my colleagues – improving each year.

Cards for my brothers and nephews 

Cards for friend’s birthdays and other occasions

One of my colleagues, Sam, has all the cards I have made for her pinned up by her desk at work. She says it is her ‘life story as told by Sue’s cards’. Her partner was impressed that I even got his stubble.