Hello!

I’m here with my first  Crafts-U-Love DT post for the quarter.

This time, I received the fabulous Penny Black Floral Silhouette stamp set* and a pack of Lawn Fawn ink cubes*. Crafts-U-Love has kindly given me a discount code for you to use for these products – just add LUCIE20 at checkout.

I love Penny Black products as their clear stamp sets include many amazing images which stamp beautifully – I was delighted with my DT package! I’ve created quite a few cards with this set, which I will be sharing during the rest of the month.

For today’s post I wanted to share an easy way of stretching dye inks, like the Lawn Fawn inks, that I learned from the great crafting guru, Mr Tim Holtz. The technique is called ‘highlight stamping’ and whilst Tim used Distress inks when he taught it, I wanted to try it with non-distress dye inks. Translucent dye inks are impacted by the colour of the background that they are used on and can end up looking quite different on a dark surface. Highlight stamping is a great way of getting dye inks to ‘pop’ on coloured cardstock.

Step 1 – stamp image in white on dark cardstock

I chose a larger image from the set and applied some white ink. Tim used Picket Fence Distress ink for this technique but you can use another white ink, like the Ranger white pigment ink at this stage.

If you have a stamp positioner, you may want to stamp the image a couple of times to get good, even coverage.

Leave the image to dry or speed up the process using a heat tool – it’s important for this technique that this layer of ink is completely dry before you move on to step 2.

 

Step 2 – stamp the image using coloured dye ink

I applied two inks to the stamp. (The dye inks may pool a little once applied to the stamp. I find they stamp a little more evenly if I breathe over the inked-up stamp just before stamping.)

For this technique, you should offset this stamped image a little so that the white ink is completely exposed in some places and completely covered by the dye ink in other places. If you have a stamp positioner you might want to use it for this step to improve ink coverage.

 

As you can see, the dye inks become quite vibrant when you stamp them over the white ink and those white lines around the image create a wonderful highlight. The intensity of the colour will fade a little as the dye ink dries – here you can see my dry test image on the left compared with the freshly-stamped image that I created for this post on the right.

I also used the same Lawn Fawn inks on white cardstock  – isn’t it interesting to see how they stamp on the different colour surfaces!

To complete the cards, I made a mask using an oval die and then used this to carefully blend ink around the image. I used white ink on the kraft card; for the white card, I applied a third colour, Butter, from the Lawn Fawn ink set.

For the kraft card, I then simply cut a sentiment from the Karen Burniston Words Set 1 – Greetings dies set from white card and adhered it to my card base before adding a few gems* to finish off the card.

I wanted to tweak the design of the white card a little so trimmed the panel at both sides. I then blended the Butter ink to both sides of my card base and adhered the image panel on top, creating two narrow yellow strips. I blended more Butter ink onto some spare white card and used this to cut another sentiment from the same die set. Finally I added more gems to the card.

Distress Oxide inks have been released since I learnt this technique and they stamp amazingly on dark cardstock. Nevertheless, I still think that this technique will stand the test of time as it’s a quick and easy way of stretching dye inks on darker cardstock.

I do hope you give it a go, even if you have the Distress Oxides. Please let me know in the comments below if you do try it – I’d love to see what you create with it!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Products marked with a ‘*’ were sent to me by Crafts-U-Love for this DT assignment.