Project 154: Blended ink colored stamps and diy decopage

I have been loving the Online Card Classe's Stretch Your Stamps course. Just love it. This weekend I dipped into their session on floral stamps and had my mind blown. No exaggeration. Headline card features the main reason for this: I learned how to use a blender tool.

I have had these for years and never known what to do with them. I don't know if this is the exclusive use (I doubt it) but it's one that I was able to pick up really easily. Using dye-based stamp pads you pick up the ink on the blender and as it loses the color quickly you get the lovely shading and gradients like watercolors.

Here is an alternative image and color combo using the same technique:

I know - awesome right?

Both stamps are from Little Claire and the inks are Hobbycraft. I stayed pretty close to the layout in the tutorial I was following as I loved this "organic" pattern of just repeating the same image like a waterfall down the page. I kept the greeting simple and generic and added a bit of spotted ribbon and bling and left it fairly simple. I really wanted to feature the images so I was pleased with that.

This was another card on the same tutorial uses the same Little Claire flower only you create your own decopage. For this one I broke the layout (there was some crazy doily window-cutout thing going on - too much for me) but kept the new technique. I stamped and colored the image 3 times and then cut out the pieces to create the layers. I did two layers of petals with three layers of the center using small foam pads to raise each layer.

I wanted to keep the colors in the same family so I used two sheets from the Neopolitan collection from Michael's Recollections, and stamped the greeting onto a blank natural card tag. I punched the yellow strip with my Martha dotted scallop border punch though I think it's a bit hard to see over the chevrons. Nevertheless it's an extra dimension. Finally a bit of gold glitter and some candies and we're done.

Both techniques were a bit fiddly but I am so pleased with the results. I want to try the decopage thing again with some different images - definitely cheaper than buying kits and they feel more modern when you can color and embellish them yourself.

Will keep you posted on further adventures with the card classes.