Making the Most of Mini Stamps - Part Three

Hello, I'm back again with a third, and probably final part in my mini series on making the most of mini stamps.   Today I've got a couple of super CAS cards using Mama Elephant's Little Succulent Agenda Stamp.

My first card sort of combines the two techniques in my previous posts - for this one I've clustered a few stamps together to make more impact with the small stamps but this time in layers.  I stamped 4 in a line using Shady Lane Versafine Clair ink over an ink blended stripe at the top of my card I created using Peeled Paint Oxide Ink - the two inks are tonally similar.   This gave me a nice solid background.   I then stamped 3 more using black ink onto a scrap of card, coloured with pencils using 2 shades for all the pots so they looked like they belonged together and cut them with scissors (you could use the matching dies for speed but in some cases like this where you want the background to show, fussy cutting can look better)   I added a simple sentiment from Mama Elephant's Occassional Labels to finish using the same versafine ink.

When I looked at the way the stamps were layed out on the stamp sheet, it occurred to me that (minus the faces) they would be a perfect fit on a 6 x 4 card....     So I inked them all up with Verdant Versafne Clair Ink - I did it in two parts - first I inked the 3 rows above the faces, stamped them.  Inked up the bottom layer and moved it up so it lined up and stamped that.   I didn't use a block, just the carrier sheet as my "tool" and with a good ink the little stamps are easy to get a clean impression, but if you do struggle you could either temporarily tape the carrier sheet to your block or stamping tool, or turn it upside down and use a brayer to rub over the card on top instead.

You might notice that I didn't properly clean the black ink off the 3 stamps I used in the previous card - however instead of scrapping it, I decided I quite liked the effect so just used a sharp pencil crayon to add some faked black ink detail to some of the other succulents too so it looked deliberate - no such thing as a mistake right, just a creative opportunity ;-)    You could use the same technique for a more colourful card - stamp in any colour and then colour in the stamps - this is just a really quick way to stamp a lot of little stamps quickly as the straight lines are there on the stamp already!

Again I finished with a sentiment from Occassional Labels in the darker green ink.

Happy Crafting!

Tara