Technique – Stamping

Featuring stamping

Thanks for sticking by me

Hi there everyone!

Can you believe it’s already 1 July?! Seriously where did the first half of the year go?

When I was looking through my Concord & 9th supplies the other day, I spotted this ‘stuck on you’ cacti set that I got last year, but hadn’t used… so I put it into my July ‘must use’ pile!

The cactus is cut froma background I created by smooshing some left over Ken Oliver colourburst ink. Can’t believe the different effect that I achieved – the different colour particles that you get when you sprinkle the colorbursts aren’t present, but I really like the shade of green. Definitely going to try more colorburst smooshing in future!

I decided to enter this week’s CAS Colours & Sketches challenge so I assemble the card with and embossed the kraft rectangle and some My Mind’s Eye paper from my patterned paper mountain.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Pink Birthday

Hello everyone!

Today I have my second DT post for Crafts-U-Love using the fabulous Pinkfresh Studio stamps. You can see the first card I made with these stamps here.

I really wanted to use the large ‘Happy’ stamp from the Word Series set – I love the pretty flower and leaf details and knew I had to include it as a focal point. As you can see, these sets also have a lot of smaller images and as I rarely use a lot of smaller stamps on one card, I thought it would be good to challenge myself to use them on my next card.

I remembered seeing a cute card that May Park created last year using small stamped images and used this as my inspiration. I loved the idea of colouring all those cute images, but felt that a monochromatic colour scheme would support my ‘Happy’ focal point.

I started by embossing the sentiment in gold embossing powder – the ‘birthday’ is from the Hero Arts Happy Birthday Messages set (which coincidentally is actually part of this week’s Limited Time Offers at Crafts-U-Love this week!).

I then blended a background using Worn Lipstick Distress Oxide ink before randomly stamping the images using the same colour of regular distress ink.

Once I had decided on the design, this card came together really quickly and I enjoyed using those smaller images. Think I will definitely be reaching for smaller stamps more frequently in future!

Have a lovely weekend – thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Supply List

Here are the links to the products I used on my card. Products marked with an asterisk (*) were kindly sent to me to use.

Pinkfresh Studio – Itty Bitty Elements stamp set*

Pinkfresh Studio – Word series stamp set – Happy*

Hero Arts – Happy Birthday Messages stamp set

Distress Oxide ink – Worn Lipstick

Distress ink – Worn Lipstick

Embossing Powder – Nuvo Classic gold

Fly, Fly, Butterfly

Hi Everyone!

There’s a gorgeous new colour combo over at the Color Throwdown challenge this week (peach, pale pink, hot pink and green)! As I was already working on the sketch for this week’s Case This Sketch challenge, I decided to combine both and came up with this butterfly card.

To begin with, I stamped a few images from the Avery Elle Butterflies set using regular distress ink (spun sugar, picked raspberry and bundled sage) and then coloured the images using water and ink from the images. Then I stamped over each image again with the corresponding Distress Oxide ink colour, apart from the spun sugar butterfly where I used an ink by Altenew as spun sugar hasn’t been released as an oxide yet.

I stamped a few of the solid images onto the base card using one of my favourite oxide colours (tattered rose) and stuck the coloured butterflies on top. I added a sentiment from Avery Elle and a few sequins to finish off the card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Keep in touch

Hello everyone and Happy Monday!

I love that my Instagram feed has contained a few cards using older stamps recently and when I saw the current sketch challenge over at CAS Colours & Sketches, I immediately thought of my Stampendous wood-mounted scene stamps that I’ve had for many years.

I decided to use the Sailboat Bay scene stamp and coloured it with my Twinkling H2Os. I fussy cut the image (very easy!!) and adhered it to my grey base card. The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted. I really wanted to use a ‘happy retirement’ stamp… until I remembered I STILL don’t have a suitable one… need to rectify that!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Find Your Paradise

Happy Saturday everyone. Although looking at my card, maybe that should be Happy Caterday!

I finally managed to get my hands on some Distress blending brushes and couldn’t wait to use them on my more intricate stencils. I love that I was able to get great coverage without getting the brush caught in the plastic. Yep, I think I’m going to enjoy using these!

To create the background, I added a layer of Antique Linen distress oxide ink on my base card, applying it slightly heavier in the bottom right corner, near where I planned to stamp the image. Then I splattered some ink using a paint brush. After stamping Newton, I lifted the Antique Linen colour from the image and then coloured it in using regular distress ink.

I then use an Echo Park Paper Co stencil to create the palm tree background, applying regular distress in with the distress brush. I didn’t bother masking the image off as it was easy to avoid stencilling in that area – thanks to the precision of the brushes!

Anyway, I’m entering my one-layer card into the current Timeout Challenge. The theme is ‘holidays’ which really means ‘vacation’ to me (one layer is the optional twist)!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

You are my happy

Happy Friday everyone!

And today is an extra-happy Friday for me because today is my first post as a member of the Crafts-U-Love Design Team.

I was lucky enough to receive a couple of cute stamp sets by Pinkfresh Studio in my DT package – I have been wanting to try these stamps for a while so I was delighted to see them!

I decided to use one of the images and do a bit of mirror stamping for my card. There are lots of process videos for mirror stamping on the internet, but I’ve included a few shots of my process here as well – sorry about the lighting in some of them!

Links to all the supplies I used are at the end of this post.

Step 1- set up your stamps

While you can buy specialist ‘mirror stamps’, all you really need is another cling stamp! I used the reverse of a Woodware stamp which was a little bigger than the swan image that I’d chosen to work with. I’m working with the MISTI as it means I can easily re-stamp the image if the ink coverage is poor after the first impression, but you can use clear blocks too, of course. I positioned the swan stamp on a piece of card in my MISTI so that I could remove the stamp from the MISTI without disrupting the placement of the stamp.

Step 2 – ink up your image stamp

I inked it a few times using Memento Teal Zeal. (I’ve found that the dye-based inks were easiest to work with when mirror stamping solid images.) Then I pressed down the cover of my MISTI so that the swan image was transferred to the mirror stamp on the cover. I carefully opened up the MISTI (the stamps never stuck together which was good!) and then removed the base card WITHOUT moving the position of the swan stamp.

I replaced it with some clean card and then closed the cover of the MISTI and pressed the mirror stamp. Then I applied even more pressure! When I opened up the MISTI, I was pleased with the coverage I got, but I wanted the ink to be darker so I carefully returned the card with the swan stamp to my MISTI and started the whole process for a second time.

Step 3 – add the second swan (straightforward stamping!)

Clean up the swan stamp, line it up in the MISTI in the regular way, ink/stamp in the usual way. I used Distress Oxide for the pink swan and stamped the image twice to get a nice deep pink coverage.

Here’s what the images look like together – the stamped mirror image isn’t quite as crisp as regular stamping, but that’s OK with me – I like that effect!

Step 4 – emboss a heart using a die

To create the embossed heart, I used the Stitched Heart die from My Favorite Things with an embossing mat under the die and one cutting plate on top and ran it through my Big Shot. I love embossing with my dies – perfect for adding a little extra something to CAS cards.

Step 5 – create a blended background

Once the heart was embossed, I made a mask with post-it notes and blended some distress inks to create the background.

TIP – to create the swan masks, I folded the post-it note in half so that the sticky end stuck together. I then stamped and cut out the image so that I ended up with two sticky masks pointing in opposite directions.

Step 6 – prepare the card base and assemble the card

I didn’t want to adhere my stamped panel to the glitter card so I stuck two strips of white glitter card to either side of the card base and then added an extra layer of card to the centre. Returning to my stamped panel, I added a sentiment from the Pinkfresh Studio ‘Happy’ set and then trimmed down the panel so that I would have about 0.5cm on either side of it when I adhered it to the base card.

Once the panel was adhered, I added a few gems to finish off the card.

I hope you found my instructions helpful – this is the first time I’ve done a detailed explanation on my blog so please let me know if I missed anything, or was too detailed! I hope to progress to video one day… baby steps!

I’m entering this in the current Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – frame it.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Supply List

Here are the links to the products I used on my card. Products marked with an asterisk (*) were kindly sent to me to use.

Pinkfresh Studio – Itty Bitty Elements stamp set*

Pinkfresh Studio – Word series stamp set – Happy*

My Favourite Things – Stitched Heart peek-a-boo die

Memento ink – Teal Zeal

Distress Oxide ink – Worn Lipstick

Distress ink – Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean

Brilliance ink – Lightning Black