Two Stepping Butterfly Kisses

Here are two cards I made with what's now last month's {Stamps} of Life release. I meant to get them posted sooner but the snow and ice took out TV and Internet for the first few days of the week.



   
Nothing fancy, just a simple all stamping card using the various images on the stamp sheet and the two step stamping technique to add color.

If you aren't familiar with two step stamping, it's when you stamp one image and then stamp another one on top of it. Usually the stamp vendor has made different stamps for this purpose as a coordinating set and one or more fit inside the other one. For example, on this card the flowers start out as simple black outlines but there are other stamps in the set that fit perfectly into the two different wing sizes. It lets you add more color to your card with nothing more than another stamp pad. It's easy with clear stamps like these were because you can see where you are stamping.

To do this with rubber stamps you need to either admit you can't like two stamped images up under a wood block and go for an artsy abstract look or you need to use a Stamp-a-ma-jig. Its a tool where you place a plastic jig against the edge of a clear sheet and then stamp on the clear sheet using the corner of the jig to guide the stamp down. You then take the plastic sheet and line it up where you want to stamp. In this case, you would line it perfectly over the other image. Once in place, you put the plastic jig back against the edge of the clear sheet and then take the sheet away without moving the jig. You can now stamp in the corner of the jig like you did the first time to make the image on the clear sheet except this time it will be exactly where you want it on the paper. Here's what the Stamp-a-ma-jig tool looks like if you have never seen it:





 
As always click on the greeting card images if you want the full directions. The directions do explain the best order I found for stamping them and why which I didn't repeat here.

The card was really done as a general purpose card for someone special that you customize with the words inside. If you are still looking for a Valentine's Day card idea, imagine the butterfly wings in pink and red.

Happy Birthday Cricut Flower Card

Once upon a time, in a craft table mess that still partially exists, I cut out a set of three nesting flowers on white cardstock a half inch smaller than each other using the Cricut machine. My plan was to color them using a low cost technique like the colored pencils and mineral spirits or maybe water blending Tombow markers. Whatever I was trying didn't quite work out as well as I hoped and the two smallest flowers of the set got buried under stuff from the next project, and then the next one, and the next one and so on.

Too much of the craft table had disappeared and it was time for an archeology dig. These long since abandoned white flowers cutouts were unearthed, along with many other forgotten and abandoned spare images and card parts. In a twist of fate, (or was it planned from the start months ago?), they happened to be exactly the same shape as the clear stamps for the butterfly wings in this month's {Stamps} of Life set and a new card was created.

The morale of the story is one of two possible things:

1. Don't ever throw anything away and keep it in a big pile as long as possible because it will be useful one day.
2. Cleaning up is a good thing

Which one were you thinking?

Here's the result of the archeological dig. The image doesn't do it justice. The flowers are extremely dimensional in person. As always, click on the card for full directions.

Will Work For Freezer Space

Here's a much more complicated and time consuming Christmas card to make. This one combines two different types of glitter and coloring with Copic markers.

I had originally wanted to try to create a whole scene with the snowman but the practical reality was this is a fairly large stamp that barely fit on an A2 sized card and I prefer using A2 for anything like a Christmas card because it's easier on supplies, the envelopes aren't hard to buy and it usually comes in a little under the 1 oz a single stamp covers in the US.

This lead me to simply cutting the image out since there was no way to mat it. I like the effect stamping in white creates so stamping snowflakes to go with the snowman was the obvious choice, especially since the white ink in the background helped the white snowman in the foreground to go with the paper better. You have to be careful with white pigment ink though, or at least the one I'm using, because it takes a while to dry and the stamp pad is very soft so it tends to get all up in the stamp if you aren't careful.

None of the individual steps of this card are really complicated and they lend themselves to doing them in batches if you wanted to make a lot of them. You could easily change the coloring out for another technique, or simple non shaded marker colors if that's all you can do.

Once I had the pattern down it still took about 20 minutes per card to make these, not including the drying time for the glues and sealers and inks, which is something to think about if you need 100 of them.

If you want to see the full directions, just click on the image or here.

Cookie Says Happy Birthday

Here's a card I made to post to the {Stamps} of Life Gallery for this month's contest. It uses two of this month's stamp releases. The background on the paper is stamped and Cookie (the dog) is colored using Copic markers, trying to add as much of a realistic hair effect as I could manage. If you want more, just click on it.