Dies, Stamps & Stains

Hello Crafters 

I have been away a few days from posting as I had a few things to catch up with. Todays post willintroduce some new stamps, dies and my review of the Tim Holtz Stains that I mentioned in my last post.

Lets start with the Tim Holtz Stains as this was the first part of my journey to making my card

I first tried the stains when I saw them on offer at Craft Clearance. I use Tim Holtz Distress Inks, although I am not good at blending with them, despite having several blending brushes and tools. However, I do love the shaded background look thy can produce. As they were on offer I bought a few and tried them out. They are simple to use, ( I recommend seeing Tim Holtz video on YouTube for all the techniques to use them) but as he shows in the video the colour can be appled easily and built up to the depth you want for cover of the background or edging to your card. As they seemed to work well I thought I would purchase some more colours and now have a good selection of about 8 pots. 

More dies and stamps have been arriving through the post and I selected a stamp to try. 

As it is a stamp with a Shabby Chic look and flourishes I thought I would have a coloured background to my card and stamp out the image in solid barely black ink. The stains were a little dark for the work but I tried a new technique I have seen and this made the colour more subtle. If you are not great with blending or using water colours the following technique is going to be very useful.

Take you inks and (distress pens, inks pads or stains) rub them over a piece of plastic, any smooth surface will work, I used an old polly pocket that I was going to throw out, build the colours from the bottom of your plastic sheet. I went from green base, to turqouise to a blue at the top. SPray with water and then lay your card over the inks. I loved the finish on this. 

When it is dry stamp your image. This is best done in a stamp platform, I have the Tim Holtz platform, and this is especially useful when the stamp is new and the card may be warped a little from water.

This stamp being new it took several attempts to get the full image cover, and perhaps it would have been better in a darker black but I like it with a softer look. 

I then took out various dies and layered the image before placing onto a 17cm square scalloped edged card 

Here are all the items used 

The bird stamp image was first cut out in the oval picture frame the largest of a set of 5 dies

Then from the set of scalloped oval dies I cut the 6th out of 10 that was just bigger than the picture die, I cut this in white card, and then the next size up again in silver card

Back later in the week with a new project. This time no dies just embossing boards. 

Future projects to include:

Using up your various paper pads

Using your home printer to print your paper to make gift bags and embellishments 

Different ways to recycle old books and pages.

Dee