Stamping Tips, Tricks and Techniques for Beginners

1. Stamping Tips, Tricks & Techniques for Beginners Introduction: Welcome to stamping tips, tricks, and techniques for beginners. Sometimes when you're learning a new skill that can be a little bit overwhelming and daunting. So I've taken all my favorite tips and tricks, as well as my favorite techniques that are very beginner friendly and put them all in one class. I'll walk you through step-by-step and what I've learned in the past 30 years or so of my stamping journey. The first thing we're going to start covering is the basics. I'll go through the different types of stamps and the pros and cons of each, as well as my favorite stamping inks to use on a daily basis. I'll show you some tools that you're going to need, as well as some helpful tools that we're using for part of this course. And while some of these tools aren't required, they're definitely going to make your life a lot easier, especially when it comes to placing things precisely on the fronts of your cards. We'll go over basic coloring techniques for beginners, as well as my favorite way of coloring, which definitely has a little bit of a learning curve to it, but it is beginner friendly. If you're wanting to go that route. Will cover tips that I've learned over the years with heat embossing and what to do and what not to do. I'm going to go over water coloring as well as it's one of my favorite ways of relaxing and filling in images. And if that's not your cup of tea, I'll show you how to fake it. I'll show you how to get different gradations of color with the same stamp, as well as how to do watermark images. And then will level up those watermark images by adding some Micah powders to them. We'll cover a simple way to group different stamps together to make it look like one big stamp, as well as to add pattern to your silhouette stamps. Lastly, I'll show you how to use leering stamps, which are some of my favorites. Now let's get started. 2. Stamps & Inks 101: All right, First off, I start at the very beginning stamps. So there are three main types of stamps. The ones that most people are, most common width are the rubber stamps on wood blocks. They were sold like that for years. And they're great and it's really my favorite way of stamping because you've got a lot of control. But the thing is, especially if you love stamping and you accumulate a lot of stamps, they take up a lot of space. So you're going to find it takes up a lot more space to store stamps on wood blocks, then it dies. Unmounted stamps. For unmounted stamps, There's two different kinds. One is cleaning rubber stamps, which are the most similar to the rubber on the woodblock. These you use acrylic blocks with, and you also use acrylic clocks with the clear stamps. They clear stamps. The nice thing about them and the reason why a lot of people love them is because you can see through them and they find it makes it a little bit easier to stamp with because you can position things exactly by being able to see through the stamp. The only thing is the acrylic stamps are a little bit softer than the rubber. So if you use the same pressure with them, often you'll get a smudge stamped image from this one because sometimes you press a little bit too hard, whereas this one you have to press nice and firmly to get a clear image on it. The other thing that people have an issue with it, It's mostly with acrylic stamps, sometimes with rubber stamps, but it seems to be a problem more with a colleague stamp. Let me open this one up. When these are made, there is a release agent put on the mold that helps them come out of the mold easier. And that agent, and I realize I've already done that, but that's one that Egypt makes it resist ink. So the very first thing I do, especially with acrylic stamps, when I open my package is I take a white eraser, just a plain white school eraser, and I rub all over the stamping surface and that removes that residue and helps your stamp to receive ink better. Now the other thing you could do is do it, rub it on a t-shirt or a pair of jeans that will do exactly the same as this does. I've also heard from people light sanding paper, but I've never tried that one because to me that's the best way to ruin your stamp is something that's abrasive, whereas these are not abrasive. You're never going to ruin your stamp with it. I've been doing it for years and not one stamp has been ever destroyed by doing that. So after you do that, sometimes you'll have a little bit of eraser residue. So you're just going to brush that off. And as soon as I've used one stamp for my set, because the second I opened my set it to the entire stamp, I know that the whole set has been done. It never has to be done again. And that's going to receive in a little bit better. So this particular one here is a layering set and one of the segments on this class has a segment on layering stamps. I'm not going to use this exact one because I'm not sure if it's availability, but there's one that I have that I know is available to people and I'll show you exactly how to use them. They're really quite fun and easy to use. So like I said, with rubber stamps, you may need to use the eraser trick if you found that you're having a hard time, especially with silhouette stamps, because there's little bigger surface for the ink to stick to. Sometimes those are the ones you're going to have an issue with. But again, exactly the same trick. White eraser, rub it on, brush off the little eraser bits and you'll be good to go. And again, once I do want, I do the entire set so I just know the whole thing is done. Now for stamping aches, these are the main ones I'm going to be using in this class. So momental ANC is a dye ink is fade resistant and water resistant. So I'll often use this one for when I am coloring because it's nice and simple, as easy to clean off my stamp because it is just a dye ink, it's not a permanent ink. When I'm doing anything, especially with watercolor, I will use my stays on. It is a permanent ink. So what that means is when I go to clean my stamps, I need a special cleaner to clean the stays on off the stamps. But they have a store sells the stays on the usually solve the cleaner to it. So it's not that hard to find. The other thing we're going to be using is a watermark stamp. So it's just a clear ink stamp. It's often used with embossing, although you can use some other inks with embossing as well. But that's what is mainly used for. The other thing you can do with it is just create a watermark impression on your paper. Just give it, it makes the tone of the card stock just a shade darker in the pattern of whatever stamp that you use. And I typically have two of these because they do get stained after awhile. This one's actually not too bad. So I'll have one that stained and one that's clear. I can use the clear one or the non-standard one for my watermarking. This I tend to use with embossing powder that is not clear. So if I'm using gold or black or whatever embossing powder, you're never going to see the ink. So I save my steamed one for that. So even if yours does get stained, don't need to throw it away. You can still use it. The other thing that I think that I like to use often is distress ink. So just stress is a water reactive dye ink. So there's some fun techniques that you can do with it, and I probably won't be doing any of them with this class. I'll do, I've used them with some other classes. But basically it's just a nice dye ink and it comes in 60-plus colors. I don't remember the exact amount rate now, but there's a few different techniques that we'll be using that with. Because it's DIE, It's very easy to get off your stamp to clean them. The other thing I wanted to mention, most ink pads, you can get refills for them and I haven't pulled the refill it for this one yet. So think of your ink pad as the car and the refill ink as the gas. When you've used up the ink and the car, you just rethink it. You don't need to buy a whole new stamp pad for it. You simply rethink it, and I'll show you exactly how that is done. So I will typically squeeze it out on the pad. And you can typically tell when you're squeezing it out if it's sucking it up really quickly, that means your pad is fairly dry. As you're filling it up. You'll notice that it sucks it up slower. But one of these refill bottles will fill up a pad 3, 4, 5 times depends on how dry you let it get. Typically, I don't let it get very dry. As soon as I notice it drying out just a tiny little bit, I'll just add a squeeze of the reoccur. And it's good to go. So that's good enough. I'm going to leave it like that. The other thing, when I've read yanked my pad, I'll put the lid back on and I'll just let it sit for a while like about an hour before I go to use it. If I use ET rate after I read ink, it's going to be Blache. If I let it sit for awhile, the inks kinda settled where it needs to go and I don't find a have any blotches with that. So that is all on the stamps and the inks that we are going to use throughout this class. Next, we're going to talk about acrylic bur blocks and positioning tools. 3. Stamping Tools: All right, so for width stamps, you don't need a holder because it comes already on a block of wood. So your stamp is good to go. However, with both the clear acrylic and the claim rubber, you need acrylic blocks. They're just clear plastic blocks. These cling to the block just like a window, clean clings to a window. And that's all you do to it. Some of them will have grid lines on them and I'm like you can see them. That just makes it easier to line up and have things straight, especially if you're using words, but not all of them have them. And for myself, there is sometimes handy, but I don't really pay attention to the grid that often. If by chance after using your stamp a lot and cleaning your sample lot, you're finding it's not sticking to the block as well. Typically that will be from ink residue or stamp cleaning residue. Wash both your block and your stamp with some warm soapy water and dry them off completely. And you should be good to go just like new. And that works for the acrylic stamps as well. The one thing to do, I would maybe wash them in a separate container, not wash them in your sink because if by chance you've missed a piece and there's one sitting in your synchronous, really tiny and you pull the drain, it'll go down your drink. So I typically do them in a separate container so that I don't risk that happening. Most of the time when I'm stamping, I am going to be using just the acrylic block and just eyeballing where things go. If by chance you're doing a project that you want things to be positioned perfectly. There is a tool here, this is called the position it. You can also get just L, L brackets or braces or whatever. And you can put your acrylic block in the corner and position your stamp and then put it on your block exactly how you're wanting it to go so that you have some control over exactly where you are going to stamp. So for instance, say I had and have a spare piece of paper and you may say I have a piece of paper in there and I know I want the Sam to be exactly right there. That's exactly how I want it positioned and I do that before I ink anything. I will go and I will put this block rate and the corner and then press it down to maybe put it on my blog. Then I will ink it up and I will know, and I usually have my piece of paper tape trade on there. I will know that I want that stamp exactly there. I will link it. And I can stamp it exactly where I want it to go on my piece of paper. The other thing, especially when you're new, if you don't get a clear stamping, if you've got a positioner and you've know exactly where it is, everything's taped or whatever. If I don't get a clear image, I can go and rethink the stamp and place it down exactly the same place the first one went. And I can stamp things exactly in the same position all the time. The other thing too is if I'm doing a bunch of exactly the same card and I want them to be identical. You can use a tool like this. Another tool you can use is this is very similar. The only thing difference between that and this one is this is on hinges. So I can put my piece of paper in here, put my stamp exactly where I want it to go on my piece of paper. And then this particular one, once I'd says clear, the other side says rubber. I put it on there wherever side. Lift up my stamp, ink it exactly the same thing. I can stamp it down. If by chance I didn't get a clear image, I can ink it again and stamp it again. So I'll be using this tool a couple times throughout the class, changing it from clear to rubber depending on what stamp I am using. This exact version is discontinued. You can't buy it anymore, but there are versions that were there. I know Misty is one company that carries them, so it shouldn't be too hard to find a version of stamp press like this. If I find one, I will link it to are on the supply list so you can find your own. But it is a really great tool to have, especially if you're starting out and for certain techniques that we're gonna be doing throughout this class. We will see you in the next video. 4. Stamping & Colouring Stamped Images: So the typical first place to start when you're learning how to stamp in your card making is just stamping and coloring images. Now, these are exactly the same image. This one is colored in with dye based markers. This one is colored in with alcohol-based markers. So I've got some Tombow marker markers here, which are our database. I've got Copic markers here works which are an alcohol-based. Now, Copic markers are my favorite way to color because you can get some beautiful blending with them. You can work the paper and it's not going to start pilling. But there's a learning curve to working with Copic markers and the diabetes markers, the tumble markers. They're similar to what we grew up with. The markers that we used in school. So most people start there because there's something familiar and they don't need to learn how to blend, like you do with Copic markers. But I'm going to show you both here. Now. I don't have a piece of paper here that's big enough for the whole card. Just because I want a scratch on the side and and want to be free to I'm not making a card front basically, I'm showing you how to color it. It's going to be exactly the same as if you had a piece of paper big enough for the card front. But I'm just doing them in smaller pieces of paper because I don't plan on using these afterwards. So I have my momentum, Inc., which is the water resistant Incas had died in ink. I need to use that with the Copic markers. I can't use my permanent ink with the Copic markers because they react and the alcohol ink in the markers will make the stays on Run. So these two are not a good combination. These two are the Tombow markers I can use either or for this because this is a water resistant ink. It takes a lot before water or moisture makes it blend or smear. And because my drawing is quite fine, even if it does smear a little bit, you're probably not gonna see it. If I'm using a bigger surface or water coloring, I will use seize on because I want to make sure that my ink does it run. So I've got my stamp on my block. Like I said, it just clings to the block like a post-it note. You should do that before you put ink on the stamp so you don't get ink on your fingers. I'm going to tap it in the ink and then I'm going to position it where I want and then press down firmly. And I tend to rock just slightly. And I'm going to stamp both of them at the same time. This particular image has the stems and the flowers separately. And I obviously didn't clean it after the last time I used I used it with permanent ink and every point it off. So I haven't I'm not very good at cleaning my stamps sometimes, especially if it's permanent doing it, it's not going to affect anything. So now I'm going to stamp the stem. Now I'm going to eyeball it. If you're concerned with exact placement, you can use either the position it to or the stamp platform. For this, there is a tiny little bit of overlap there, but for what we're doing, it doesn't matter even on the front of the card, I just eyeballed it. I didn't bother using the positioning tools for it. So for the die based markers will do that first. Now the reason why Copic markers are my favorite as opposed to die markers is with dimer occurs. You have to color fairly quickly because already, I sure if you can actually see it already, the paper is pilling and lifting almost like Linton fuzz on clothing. So you have to work fairly quickly with them. And you don't really have a lot of time to just blend and play with your markers because it starts to affect the paper. For an image like this, because the spaces are fairly small, it would probably be fine if the paper started pulling parts of it, especially the center of the flower, we'll just add a little bit of texture to the flower. So I'm just going to go and just, I'm just kinda flicking the color from the center out. I only want the color on the center part. And really for flowers, It's whatever you want because, I mean, there's so many different colors they come in, as well as the fact that sometimes they're dark on the outside, sometimes they're dark on the inside. If it's a flower that is all one color, the darkness tends to be on the in-source, the inside of the flower where the shadows are. So I only used one brown for my center of the flower there. And I'm going to use the green to do the leaves. And I'll typically for this, I'll do it later in a darker color. The darker color just adds a little bit of interests, a little bit of shading. You don't need to. I could have colored it all one. Plain color and it would have been just fine. But sometimes adding that x second color just adds a little bit more interest to it. Now when it comes to coloring with the kopecks, I'll start with the center of the flower. So there's a little bit of a technique to it. I'm showing you the basic coloring. I do have a class just based on Copic markers that if this is something you're interested in, I highly recommend it because it just goes into further depth with different techniques you can do. So the basic way of coloring with kopecks is start with a light color, then put the darker color in the shadows, and then go back with the lighter, the green. So when you're starting out with kopecks, typically, you start out with two colors. So you start with a lighter color. And you can tell You might be able to tell on here, I'm not sure. I'm not being super, super careful with the lions. If you look really closely, I do go a little bit out of the lines, but that's also because I'm trying to be speedy while I'm coloring and I'm also talking, which means I'm not totally paying attention to perfection here. But the basic coloring with two markers is light and then dark and then go back over to the light to blend it out. It takes a few minutes for the ink to dry and the ink continues to blend while it's drying. When you get a little bit more into when you get to the intermediate area of coloring with Copic markers, you're going to use three colors. So I'm going first in with my light color. Then I go in with my medium color. Especially where petals go beneath or behind each other. That's where there would be a shadow. Before I forget to mention it, the nice thing about Copic markers is you can get refills and you can refill them markers. So when your markers dry out, you simply refill them as opposed to the Tombow markers. You can't refill them. You need to throw them out and you need to buy new ones once once you've run it in ink. The other thing is, is the tips are a lot higher quality on the Copic markers and they tend to last a lot longer. But if by chance you have a typical funny, you can get replacement tips. So even if you have a tip that goes on weird. And I've had my copays for about 15 years and I've only had to replace me be a half a dozen of them. But if you have one that goes weird, you can just get a new tip for you don't have to throw out the whole marker, whereas the Tombow markers again, you can't replace the tip so you need to toss the entire thing out. If by chance it goes weird. Oh, before I forget. So the Copic markers, I can sit here. I could sit here for hours if I wanted, and go back and forth, back and forth. And that paper never starts to break down and pill. I'm not sure if you can you can see it right on here. But yeah, that paper, I've used them for years. The paper never starts to pill, but the dye based 1, it starts to feel quite quickly. So you have to be a little bit careful or more careful with that. And with the Copic markers, with the blending, you take a little bit more time. But one thing to keep in mind though, is because as you're working them, you're adding more and more and more and more ink does tend to go out a little bit. So you do want to be adjusting your coloring so that your ink doesn't go past the lines. And like I said, it's a learning curve, but it's definitely a learning curve that's possible. And to me, I just like the blending that I can get with the kopecks more than you can get with the Tableau markers. And I can go back. I'm going to wait for this to dry and I can go back and continue to work those flowers because some of the darker color went a little bit past where I want it to go. But that's what it looks like when it's completely dry. So we'll see you in the next video and we're gonna do some embossing. 5. Embossing Stamped Images: Alright, embossing, there are thousands upon thousands of embossing powders out there. So the sky's the limit really when it comes to embossing, there's metallics, There's glitter sparkling, one's looking up, the other one right there. There are different variegated ones where there's a few different colors within the mix. These ones here are glazes, so they are like a clear translucent embossing powder. And then there's just some solid colors. And by solid, I mean, they'll end up being shiny unless there's some specific ones that have a matte finish to them. But the process with embossing is the same. Really no matter what powder you choose. Now, most of the time, we use the verse of Mark, the watermark stamp for embossing. The other option that you can do if, say for instance you want to do one image embossed with a red embossing, say for Valentine's Day, what you can do is you can use are red ink that stays wet for a little bit longer and then a clear powder with it in order to give the illusion that you've used red ink for it on paper here. And you're going to have some needs some scrap piece of paper. But this is the process. So I need to get him out of the way because I don't need them. I'm going to emboss with gold. I'm going to use my steam pad because the gold is an opaque color. So even if this is a little bit off tint and places the gold is going to cover it. You're never gonna see through. So I'm tapping my pad and I'm making sure to cover the entire surface. So I worked with scrapbooking store for years and so often I would get people going, but the stamp is bigger than the pad. How do I do it like how? This is how you do it. Flip the stamp over and pounds it up and down. You don't wanna do this because you can wreck your path that way. And by pouncing it up and down, you can get good coverage. You can see exactly where the ink is because it's shiny. I'm not sure if you can see it on camera and then you're going to press it down firmly. Now I typically hold my finger in the center so that my stamp is not going to move. And then I will press around the perimeter of the stamp to make sure it gets a good impression to it. Pour the powder on the image here, and then tap away the excess. Now this one was really good. There's not really any excess there. To get it off. You can flick this side gently. If by chance I had say a fingerprint here and the powder stuck to it. All you do then is you take a soft brush and just brush it off. You have to do that before you melt it. Because if you wait until after it's melted, it's going to be stuck to the page. You're not going to able to get it off. All of this excess goes back into my container. So I'm not wasting any of that excess that I poured onto it. Close the container before embossing. Now to emboss, you need a heat gun. You do not. It will not work with a hairdryer because a hairdryer blows air, a heat gun emits heat by blowing air, what it would be doing would be drawing that income, blowing the powder rate off by emitting heat. It's not blowing anything. It is just melting that powder. So it's going to be a little bit loud, so I'm not going to talk during it. But here we go. You're going to see it go from HDL and mapped, too shiny and gold. So you'll notice it took a bit for the first little bit to start melting and that's because my heat gun was cold. The other thing you'll notice I'm moving it around slowly, giving it time to melt. I'm not doing this. So many people, that's their first reaction is to do this. And all you're doing is spreading the heat around it and ends up taking a lot longer by moving it around slowly, you're giving it a chance to melt the powder. The other thing is I typically do this holding a piece of paper because then he can go through, if you do it on a surface, you either want to make sure that your surface can handle the heat or you want to make sure that you have a map there to absorb the heat. And sometimes if you're on a surface, it can curl the paper up a little bit. The other thing is, is if you are holding the paper, make sure to point the heat going away. It does get quite hot and you don't, you don't want to burn yourself. So I'm going to do a last half now. Alright, and then before we do any techniques I tend, tend to attend to it are tilted in the light to make sure I haven't missed in area. If there's an area that's not as shiny as the rest of it. It's not quite melted. There we go. So this piece is ready to use. We're going to be using it in the next section where we're going to be doing some water coloring. 6. Watercolouring Stamped Images: All right, so there's a couple of ways to watercolor and image. Either you can stamp with your permanent ink and then watercolor the image. I don't recommend men this as a beginner simply because no ridges around it when you emboss, there's kind of ridges around everything. So if you were to say color this flower, you would either need to color each individual petal separately or you would need to color this petal, say than this leaf, you'd have to wait until sections were dry before you could color beside it. Case in point. So this one here, I painted all the same yesterday. And you'll notice where the dark parts are. It just blended rate over the lines. Whereas on my embossed version, it stayed within the lines because it had the ridging from the embossing. So the ink stayed where I wanted it to and it didn't bleed into the next section. Neither one is right or wrong. It's personal preference. And if by chance you like the look of the black outlines and one and Emboss just use black embossing powder. So I'm using these inks that water coloring with our distressing. These are the refill inks for the distressed ink pads that I am using periodically through this class. So this is the ink to refill the pads of the same color. Obviously, I wouldn't be using the pink one to refill the green one. But I have this pink one out because it is one of the colors that I'm using to watercolor with, and I happened to be empty on that. So this particular palette is intended for this. And I have a well, for each of the colors, I have a little label that I've marked what the colors are and I've also painted it so I know what the color looks like. The one thing to know about this though is the inks never dry on here, so it has to be sword horizontal. You can't put it vertically to dry. But here is how we are going to watercolor on here. I'll do this little, this little, my paper towel. I'm gonna do the little flower right here. So I've got the first color that I'm using is called spun sugar. And I'm doing this as if I was like I don't, because this one here has we've gone over the lines to blend. I'm going to do the same with this one. I don't want to do a different style of painting. So I'm just putting the dark color towards the center of the flower. This brush here has water rate in the handle. So when I want to change colors, I just squeezed the water onto the paper towel and my brush is clean and I can go to the next color. So I used spun sugar and then warn lit or in lipstick on the center. And I'm just going to use some bundled sage on my leaf. And I typically will end my painting in a section where I want it to be the darkest if by chance like that one went pretty much all even and I want it to have a bit darker center. What are the words, the base, I'll get a darker color. And just do that while it's wet and it will continue to blend in. So I'm going to leave this one to this side because I want to do the water coloring or the rest of the water coloring on the one with embossing. I find this is much easier for a beginner. Like I said, because you've got the ridges. So if I put dark in one area, it's going to stay in that area and I don't need to worry about it bleeding where I don't want it to go. So I find it kinda get a little tiny bit of insurance if you say, if you will. Now this particular image is very fluid and It's not very precise anyways. And because of that, I'm not trying to paint precise. Oops. I went into the lighter color and I wanted to go into the darker color. If you get a little bit too much like that, just brush your are clean your brush off, and then just lift it back up and you can lighten it a little bit. Squeeze your brush out when you want to go to a different color. I'm gonna do this little yellow flower here. And I'm sorry, I'm doing this super quickly. If you want, you can be a lot more precise and to each individual petal separately. But I prefer how it looks when you do it somewhat quickly. I like the fluidity, fluidity of watercolor. And just do this little flower here. I mean, like I said, you can even tell the image itself is very loose because there's a leaf right on top of the pet or raid on top of the flower. And the lines from the flower go right through that leaf. So it's not intended to be something that's absolutely perfect. Which is great when you're starting out because you can just interpret the different sections to be what you want them to be. And I'll mark down on the supply list all the different colors that I used to do this. But really the sky's the limit. You can use whatever colors you're wanting. This is a perfect card for. So in anniversary, say Valentine's Day, a birthday. And it's just a fun one to paint. So I've got to leave overlapping each other there if I want one to look a little bit different so that you don't lose the other one. I can add a second color of green there. The great thing about this brush with the water in it is if you happen to be a little bit accident-prone like I am, you don't have a jar of water sitting there waiting to be knocked over. I'm nearly done, so I'm not going to stop. Well, my furnace kicked in there. So just a little bit on these little buds. Little bit of dark towards the center. And then a tiny bit of green on the base. And then all I would do from here would be to cut a match. To enhance some of the colors in here, I did a pink, what you could do a green, and then put it on a card based this particular one, I have some extra spaces, so I stamped a sentiment there and I actually twisted it because this particular image, it doesn't really matter which way it goes. But there you go. Simple, easy watercolors stamped image. See you in the next video. 7. Faux Watercolour Technique: So while I absolutely love water coloring and I find it very relaxing to do sometimes you don't necessarily want to go to the extensive stamping and embossing an image and then doing the water coloring. And sometime the stamp doesn't lend itself to this, this one here. I quit stamp it and emboss it and then watercolor the inside. But there's also a fun technique that gives you the watercolor look without needing a palette of colors, without needing a brush or whatever. So this is full, the full watercolor technique. What you're going to need is dye ink pads. You could also do this with dye marker. So this will work with those tom will markers that I was using as well. And what I'm doing is I'm using the edge of the pad to ink where I want the color to go. One thing I need to mention that I forgot to mention in the last video with the water coloring. If you want to make sure you're using watercolor paper for this, as well as for the stamping, embossing and water cooling. Anytime you doing water coloring, you need to use the specific paper that's meant for that regular card stock is not meant for the amount of water that's needed with watercolor. So I've got my stamp completely inked. Now you'll be able to see that there's ink all over it. But I use this at 1 with some black permanent ink. And purposely didn't wash it off because I wanted to. You'll see all the detail so I can't see exactly where the color is. I know the general area. So I'm going to take a misting bottle with some water. I'm going to missed it so that it is wet. Now, really, I shouldn't have missed it quite as much, but I noticed there was a spot that was that the mist head myth or the water had missed. So I wanted to make sure that got done as well. I'm putting my stamp down, holding it in place for a few minutes to make sure that the ink transfers. And there we go. So I'm going to let that dry completely like that. Only other thing I added to this as I added a little sentiment, often I'll wait for 17 minutes until I'm handing my card zone. I like to just make cards for fun. And then I typically will wait until I'm actually going to give it out before adding a sentiment to it. But this one just seemed to to need a sentiment on it. So while that's drying, I'm going to glue on my mats to my card. I've got them all pre-cut. Typically I'll use this or my collage medium. I'm just using this one right now only because I'm trying to use it up so that I can toss away the tube. The glue works really, really well. I just don't need just don't need a whole bunch of different choices on my desk. So I'm just putting a thin line around the edges. Don't need any more than that. The thing I like about liquid glue, especially when you're starting out and buy liquid glue. I mean a liquid goo that's meant for this. You wouldn't want to go and yet get Elmer's school glue or whatever. That's not meant for children's craft is not meant for hard making. But what I like about it is the liquid blue part allows you to have a few seconds to shimmy things in place, in line everything up. Whereas tape runners, while they are convenient and easy, you pretty much have to put it down and you don't really have a big opportunity to lift things up. If it happens to be a tape runner that you can lift it up, those cards tend to fall apart over time and sometimes we'll even make it to the recipient without falling apart. But there we go. We've got a foo water colored card. This one is still wet. This is what it looks like once it's dry, but it's a really fun technique to do. It works awesome on silhouette stamps. So these stamps that would work great on, I didn't want to do them for this particular card just because they're quite small. And I figured there was more opportunity for color choices with the butterfly. But all sorts of stamps will work with that technique. We will see you in the next video. 8. Generation Stamping Technique: So another fun technique to try is called generation stamping. And really all it is is you have one stamp in this case, I'm using a tree, one ink pad, and you stamp it three times without rethinking it. And you'll get different hues are tones or tense of the original color. I mean, it's just a fine way to get a little bit of depth, to have a little bit of interest with a very, very simple technique. So all we need is a piece of card stock here. I've got my ink pad. I'm going to ink my stamp. And anytime you ink it like this, especially once it, if it's not, doesn't have permanent ink on it, you can see exactly where the ink is. You want to make sure that it's completely covered properly. And I am doing this a little bit to the side. And like I said, I'm immediately stamping it again and then again for the third time. So each time I stamp it, there's less ink on the stamp, which results in the ER, the image hovering, the appearance of different colors when you actually don't. So super simple, super quick. Let me get this out of the way so that I don't get it on my piece while I'm gluing it together. I've got my mat already cut. I'm going to glue that onto my card base. And I'm just eyeballing it so that it's center. Some people prefer to use a ruler to make sure that it's centered, but I find that I can eyeball it pretty good. And because I'm using liquid glue, I can shimmy it in place. If I don't initially put it completely straight. Place the second one. And there we go. So this works better. If you have a silhouette stamp or stamp that's got a lot of surface area on it. If you were to do it with an outline stamp like something like this, it would make no sense because there's never really an instance I can think of that you would want that stamped a couple of times. And also because they are such fine lines to this, you're not really going to see a whole lot of difference to it. So you definitely want to use this with some more solid images. Will see you in the next video. 9. Watermark Stamping: So watermarking, so this was the ink that I used when I was doing the embossing for stamping and embossing. The other use that you can use with it is just watermark sampling and all that is is inking your stamp and stamping it. And this is what the stamp or the paper looks like ahead of time. And this is what it looks like after. So it just gives you the impression or the image from the stamp with a slightly darker tone. And it's a nice way to just add a bit of a print, a bit of a texture to your paper without needing to do a lot of work really. So all you're going to do is anchor stamp makes sure it's perfectly inked here. And I typically go over it a second time. And by doing that, you tend to fill in any areas you might miss the first time. And I'm just going to stamp the ink that's outside my card stock is going to go onto my surface, but I'm just going to clean my surface off before I work on something else. If you don't want it to go on to the surface you're working on. You can put a piece of scrap paper underneath there. But you'll notice I'm using one hand to hold and then the other hand is going around and pressing. And by doing that, I'm making sure that my stamp doesn't shift or move. I'm keeping it all in one place and making sure that I've gotten good pressure all around the stamp there. It will typically stick to the stamp because the watermark ink is a little bit sticky. But there you go. Just a perfect way to add a little bit of texture with a very, very simple technique. So in the next video, I'm gonna show you another way that you can use this ink. 10. Watermark & Perfect Pearls: All right, So when we do the embossing, the reason there's some art works so well is because it's a nice sticky ink. The other thing that we can use it with is perfect pearls. Now these are just really, really fine. Micah, Micah powders that have a binding agent put in them just to make sure that your powder is all the way to the bottom. It's always a good idea to tap them before you open them. Sometimes it gets stuck in the threads of the lid. And in that case, you end up with a bunch of powder on your desk that ends up being wasted. So we can stamp with our versa mark on a piece of paper. And then we can dust the perfect pearls on it and get the image of our stamp. And it's going to be nice and shimmery. So there's a couple of different perfect pearls. There is a metallic, there's just a color, which is cappuccino. This one is cuter, and then there's ones that are called interference. Now the interference are the ones that work best on Flack. This here is the same exact interference, one on white and you can see it on the white, but it definitely has more impact when you use it on the black. So here's how you use it. Let's put these cards to the side of the way. So I've got my pieces of paper here already cut to size. I'm going to put these to the side here. And you're going to want to work on a piece of scrap paper. So I'm going to take my stamp. I'm going to ink it with some arc. There happens to be a hair sitting on it. So let's pick that rate off. And we're going to stamp it makes sure that you've got nice pressure here and then lift it up. So because we've got the watermark ink, it's kinda hard to see where everything is, but it does have a bit of a shimmer. So I'm going to dip my brush into the powder. I'm going to tap the excess off. And there are deer mean here, then I'm going to make the brown color and there's a couple of birds up in that sky there. So that's all I'm doing with the brown. For this one I'm going to do the silver. Don't really need to clean my brush off between colors because there's so little on it by that time that it's not gonna do anything. So all I'm doing is putting some powder on my brush, tapping the excess off because you can always add some more. If you have excess powder that ends up being on your scrap piece of paper, it's going to go in the garbage. You can't reuse it. So best to use less and have to add more. Swiffer cloth is going to be your best friend with this technique has once you've got all of the stamp image covered, you use the Swift for cloth and it takes all the excess that's not stuck to your stamped image. Now there's one more step that we need to do before we can start assembling it to a card. But I'm going to ink the next 1 first. So we're going to ink the stamp. So for this one, I'm going to use that interference green that I said works much better when we use it on black. But I'm just going to show you It's exactly the same technique to use it on white. Once again, I'm going to put some brown on those deer because they would look awfully silly if they were green. Tap the excess off. And then I'm gonna put the green or the green on. I didn't have enough off, so it got a bit of brown on my trees, but that is totally okay. There we go. So you see, you can see some of the green there, but it's not bright. When you to go and use the interference colors on white, they're very, very subtle. And so many people don't realize that they work best when used on black card stock. So stamping my inking my stamp for one last time, stamping it down, make sure that everything's gotten some pressure so you get a good image. And then once again, let's do those. Do your brown or had a little bit too much a little bit too much powder, but that's okay. Now let's do the green look how much better and how much brighter those trees appear on the black background. And that's the thing with interference. Anytime you see interference colors, you can get wax pace, you can get paints that are interference. You're going to have a huge difference between how they look on Black and how they look on white. Okay, before we go further, I'm going to close these containers. And then I need to use the Swiffer cloth on this one. And I realized while working on this one that I didn't do it on this one. So I need to do that. Make sure all the excess is taken off. Now here's the thing. If we were to leave these pieces like this. The ink will dry and then you'd kinda be able to wrap the powders off. But there is a binding agent in them that is activated by water. So I'm going to leave them on the scrap here. I'm going to miss them with water. It just needs to be a light myths, but you do want to make sure that it's all covered because wherever you don't get water, it's not going to seal. So that needs to sit and then dry completely. And then we can assemble our cards. So I'll be back once they're completely dry and we will put those cards together. Okay, so those are dry. I'm going to set those to the side so that I have some space here to use to put my cards together. So I'm going to do the first one. The one that had the Peter. Like a powder, perfect pearls. I've got a map here already pre-cut. I'm going to glue that to the cart and I know I want it a little bit higher. I want to put a sentiment below it. I have one picked out that works perfectly, in my opinion with this image. And blue this piece down. Oops. Making sure that it's straight. Here we go. So I've got a little sentiment here that says walking in a winter wonderland. And we're going to put that here below. You could put it in this entry if you want. I like to put it below and a little bit to the side. And I just tilt my block just a little bit just to make sure to get a good impression of that sentiment so that one There is done. So that to the side. Now we're ready for the next one. There's my glue. A lot of these colored card stocks have prints, printed or textured sides and solid sides you choose which side you like. Often I'll use the textured side out. Sometimes I decided to put that the flat side note, it's really personal preference, no right or wrong. Some people like the texture, some people don't center this one here. This one I'm going to leave just as is. I'm not going to put a sentiment on this one. So I will check that one to the side and let's put together our last one. But something dark green card stock for my map for this one. See how I had it far, too, far, too close to the side. So it's super easy when you've got liquid glue to just shift it over to where you want it. All right, there we go. And I've got a different sentiment for this one. This one I just put, it's your birthday. Now I happen to have felt my finger go in the ink. So if you're paying attention and you feel your finger go into the inkwell, your inking, your stamp, make sure you clean it off because it will transfer over if you happen to touch your lovely white card stock base and we don't want that. So there we go. So one card, two cards or three cards. Very simple but super-effective technique that looks stunning. 11. Masking Technique: Now sometimes when you are sampling, it's neat to be able to take three individual stamps and be able to group them together as if they were one stamp. Now if I were to go and just stamp out, just gonna do this on a scrap piece of paper here. I only need to do to, to demonstrate what I'm talking about. So if I were to just go ahead and stamp them, I'd have the overlap between the two stamps. So there's a technique called masking that will mask the one image, the image that you want to be at the front, and it will make it appear like the other images are behind it. So this is how we do it. Let's put this away. So first off, we're going to take that first stamp. Now I've already got ink on that stamp from that first damping. So I'm just gonna take a little baby wipe here and wait my fingers off so that I'm not transferring it. So first thing we're gonna do is we're going to stamp that first image. And I'm putting it right in the center. And then we're gonna take that image and you can post or stamping on a piece of copy paper. I've got Post-It note here. While I'm doing the next part, I'll just put the lid on the stamp pad. So putting the lid on your stamp pad helps it to not dry out. So I've got my image here. I'm just going to quickly cut around. You wanted to be fairly precise with this because the better you, better job you do it, cutting it, the more accurate your mask is going to be. Now, having said that right at the bottom here, these legs, I don't need to cut those out because they're just lines. So that's not going to matter. Almost there, just go to this little tiny bit out right here. All right, so I've got my mask here. Now if I were to just lay this on top of here, it might work, but it also might shift and move around. So what you're going to do is you're going to take a glue that is removable and tumble multi here. So one of my favorite blues, if I put that onto the back of the paper and then just let it dry completely tell it's clear. It's going to be like a jacket or like a post-it note. So right now it's white. Once it's dried, it looks completely transluscent, a little bit yellow. But that's what you want to you want it to look like if there's any whiteness to its still has not dried and it's going to leave glue residue on your piece here. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna take your little mask and you're going to cover your end image, masking it. And typically if I make these masks, I just go and store them with my set because often I want to do the same technique a couple of times. And now I'm going to stamp this second guy. And then I'm going to stamp this third guy here. Got a little piece of paper or on the ink pen. I'll take that off in a second with some tweezers. Alright, so now we've got our images stamped there. All you do now is lift this masquerade off. And you'll notice I just did a squiggle line of that ink on the back of there. It doesn't need to be completely covering it just enough for it to hold while you are stamping is perfect. Now, before I move on and before I forget to say yes. I talked at the beginning about cleaning your stamps. Now there's many different companies that make stamps, scrubbers are stamped cleaners or whatever out there. Some of them have fuzzy partners. My other one here. Some of them have the fuzzy part on both sides. Some of them have it just on one side. We'll have just lifted up. Basically, if you have it on just one side, you're going to put your stamp cleaner on there. You're going to use that describe your stamp and then you can use paper towel to dry it. If you happen to have a scrubber that has an on both sides, you're going to use one side to clean once I did dry. So I've got some stamp cleaner here. And you're going to use your cleaner while your stamp is still on the Block. Wrote on the one side, rub it on the other side. This one because it's dry, it cleans your stamp off and then you can put it away. And typically because I was trying to show the masking, I took my stamps off before going to the next step. So typically you'd leave them on and you clean them as you go. But that's how to make it super simple to clean your stamps. I've got some ink on here because I've been doing permanent stuff with them. So I've got some permanent ink residue left on them from before. But stamp scrubbers are perfect for cleaning your stamps quick and easy. And if you happen to be doing a lot at one time, it's just a great thing to have out. And then before I forget, let's take that little piece of paper off of my ink pad there. Otherwise it'll interfere with future projects. All right, So there we go. That is how you mask your images and it works with any image. The one thing I would caution against doing is images that are far too difficult to to cut out, typically simpler images. You're going to have more accuracy with your mask. But a great way to get an image and make it look like it's a group rather than three separate individual steps will see you in the next video. 12. Stamp to Stamp Technique: So another fun technique to do is called stamped to stamp stamping. So what you're doing is you're using texture stamps to add some texture to more solid silhouette stamps. So I've got three different textures on those trees there. If I were not to add those textures, this is what the trees would look like there. So just adds a little bit of interests to it. And it's just a fun technique to do. So this is how you do it. And we've got two different colored inks, 1 darker than the other. I've got my tree stamps. And apparently I don't have a piece of paper ready for him to do them, so I got it right. So now we are ready. I'm going to take my two ink pads here. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm gonna take my darker ink and I'm going to put it on my darker or my pattern. And I don't need to ink the entire stamp. The stamp that I'm using isn't big enough to fit this whole thing anyways, so there's no point in making up that entire stamp. Now I'm going to ink my tree up with a lighter color and then I'm going to simply stamp it onto that background stamp lifted and stamp it onto my card front. So there we go. And now you've got the texture from this stamp in this one here. So I'm going to change up my stamps so that I don't have three exactly same ones in a row. If you want to have three exactly the same, you absolutely can. And I'm just choosing not to today. So dark ink on the pattern, light ink on my tree and then I'm going to stamp it firmly on the pattern. And then stamp it on my card fret. Let's get these guys out of the way. You definitely want to make sure that your stamps or on a solid surface and not on a bumpy surface. This one here, this is just a set that's about some random patterns in it. But they are big enough to cover my tree there. So I'm going to use this guy right here. Make sure it's completely covered. Now putting a light color on my tree. And then the stamping it to my pattern. And then rate to my card front, tuck that aside. And then I've got just a little sentiment here. I thought BY original was cute with this one simply because The trees are a little bit original because of the patterns. But there you go. Fun way to get some pattern within some solid colors, dance. Solid rubber stamps. Some patterns are going to work better than others. But there you go. Just a fun technique to try and to experiment with. 13. How to use Layering Stamps: All right, For my last sample, last technique, we're going to use some of these color layering stamp. So I'm going to use this little turtle guy here. And what it is is they haven't structures on the back, which is fantastic for people that may not know exactly what piece goes where. So you're going to stamp one solid silhouette, and then you're going to stamp the different layers on top. And it ends up creating a realistic looking image, which is one of the reasons I love, love these stamps. Now, you could try to position all of these stamps on your own without a stamp press. But I like using them with a set with a stamp press because if by chance you don't get a clear image, you can go back, rethink it, and easily stamp exactly the same spot. So first step we're going to do is the silhouette of the turtle. And then as I'm doing it, I'm going to do this little seaweed guy three times with the different colors. So I've got three different colors of distressing. I've got bundled payment for small, so I've got them sitting there open with their lives by them, so I know exactly what color is what I've got those stamps exactly where I want them to be. So I'm going to close this. It is going to I just realized I have it on the wrong side. So this particular stamp press has once I for rubber, one side for clear and I hit at it on the rubber side but I wanted on the clear side. So let's make sure they're positioned where I want them. All right. Oops. I have my paper rate in the corner here. These magnets are holding it down, but if by chance it lifts up like that, like it with that like it did with that. It's doing it right now because the sand has a little bit sticky. I can just put my paper rate back in the corner so no problem if it does that. I'm taking my lightest color. I'm going to ink it. Now for this particular one, they are all going to be a shade of green. There are some layering stamps that are flowers and stuff like that that you would choose different colors for. So you see how it's a little bit splotchy. There is a brand new step stamp. And even though I've done the eraser technique that I taught at the very beginning. Sometimes when stamps are new, you will get a little bit of that. So that's why this is perfect because I can just go back and re stamp it. Now. If that was the only stamping this whole thing, I would worry about resampling it again, but because we have several different colors that we're going to be using, I'm not going to worry about that. So the next section, this one goes here. And this is where the clear stamps come in handy because you can see through them so you know exactly what's going to stamp where. Hardest part is. Sometimes the bottoms of the stamps want to stick to your fingers a little bit when you're positioning them. Which is really not a huge problem to have, but sometimes happens. All right, so that one goes there. And this one goes there. We've got another stamp that's going to be the second layer for the shell. But I need to do that separate because it will interfere with these leg and arm pieces. And I've already repositioned my seaweed. So now I'm going to stamp in the medium shade. Makes sure that everything is covered. Make sure I've stamped on each one. And there you go with a little bit more dimension to it. And typically if I was doing this just on my own, I would take the time to clean the stamps between each stamping. I'm not doing that right now because I'm wanting to make sure that I have enough time to do the whole video. And I don't want to I don't want to possibly waste time cleaning and make the video go too long. All right. So I don't need to move this because it's going to stamp at the same place anyway, so I don't need to worry about that. Now I'm going to stamp the shell in the medium shade. There we go. And now I'm going to do the bottom one. The bottom one I simply mean the darkest color. And why I said the bottom layer, but really I actually mean the top layer. So I've got that position where I want it to go. Just for fun. I'm going to do this shell part of this 1 first. And this is where the clear stamps come in handy because it's really nice to be able to see exactly where those bits are going. To. Use my dark ink, ink that up. Here we go. Don't you just love all the dimension that the different layers give it? No, I don't need the seaweed anymore. And now I just want the last bits of the head and arms, two more. And in this particular set has a few different words in it. One of them is Surf's Up and then there's more hollow. And so I'm just putting surface up on this one here. So I'm going to close it one more time. Stamp, that last layer. There we go. So now we've got to all stamped. One thing to note is I've got my magnets for this platform are wrapped in washi tape. And the main reason is, is there really, really strong and sometimes if they're too close together, they attract each other and they slapped together and they can break. So by wrapping them in washi tape, I have a bit better grip on them and it protects them just in case that happens. So there we go. We've got our stamped image there. What I'm going to do is cut it down just like this one here. So I have a bit more of the green border on it. And then I'm going to turn it into a card exactly like this. But I just love how all those different layers give the turtle really realistic look. The coolest thing. Love it. 14. Stamping Tips Tricks & Techniques for Beginners Thank You: Thank you so much for joining me for stamping tips, tricks, and techniques. I hope you found the information very helpful and took some of the intimidation out of learning this new skill. Hope to see you in the next class.