One Stamp - Endless Ideas!

You won't believe these three cards came from one stamp, but today I'm going to show you how to go from clean and simple to full-on color in minutes. Let's get crafting! Today I'm using an old Woodware Five Daisies stamp, some VersaFine Onyx Black pigment ink, and my stamp positioning tool. Now it doesn't matter what stamp you use, I don't even think this one's available anymore, although I did hear that Woodware brand got purchased by another company, so we'll see if they make a comeback. Now I'm simply lining up my stamp to go across one piece of A2, which is four and a quarter by five and a half inches, cardstock. Now this is white cardstock from Recollections. It is 65 pounds. I never stamp on my card bases if I can help it. That particular cardstock tends to be much more expensive and I don't mind the little bit of extra definition I get from adding that extra layer. Now I'm going to be using my pigment ink. Pigment ink stays wet longer, so you have a couple of choices here. I'm going to give this a really good amount of coverage and press it down. As this is a rather large stamp, I want to make sure I get good even pressure across the entire thing. Now as you can see in the top right, I didn't get a good impression because the magnet was sort of in the way. The magnet's actually higher than the stamp, so I just moved the magnet without moving the paper and re-stamp it. That is the beauty of a stamp positioning tool. Now my particular tool is no longer manufactured. It was a Stampin' Up product called a Stamparatus. I know here in the U.S. about the only thing that you can buy as a stamp positioning tool is the MISTI, which I don't own and I use what I have and I encourage you to do the same thing. Now here's where you have options. Pigment ink stays wet longer. I'm a hot mess, I know that, and I know that I'm going to smear it. So I am choosing to cover my ink with clear wow embossing powder. Now this is a super fine and a very large jar. I find that I go through clear most, so I purchased the larger jar, and I'm just going to give it a good once-over, cover up any parts that I missed. Again, it's a large stamp, and then I'm going to go ahead and heat set that. Your other option, of course, is to set it aside and let it dry on its own or use a heat tool. If you're new to heat embossing, I use a piece of copy paper that I fold in half to kind of get a good funnel, so to speak, and then I just dump it right back into the container before I heat emboss and put that lid back on. I'm not going to lie, I have heat embossed with the embossing powder simply sitting on my desk and, well, that didn't go out so well for me. So put it away before you heat emboss. To keep paper warpage down to a minimum, make sure that you preheat your heat tool for about 15 seconds before you start heat embossing. To keep this card clean and simple and quick, I'm simply pulling out a sponge dauber with residual yellow ink. Now, I don't even know which color is on here currently, but it is a Tim Holtz Distress Oxide color, that much I do know, and I'm going to trim this down about an eighth of an inch to a quarter of an inch on each side, and I'm going to mount it on black cardstock, that way I'm bringing the black back into the card from the stamp itself. I use Barely Arts Precision Craft Glue 99% of the time, but you could certainly use whatever type of adhesive you prefer, even if it's a tape runner. To allow me to be hands-free, I'm simply going to place a heavy object on top. This is my cutting plate from my Spellbinders Platinum 6. I've selected this happy birthday sentiment from my sentiment book, and this is one of my favorite tips. I use old index cards, and I use my circle punches, my heart punches, anything that I can use for a sentiment, and I cut it out of my index card and laminate them, and I write where they come from on the index card, and now all I have to do is hold them up and decide which die I want to use, and then it has the name on it so I know exactly where to look and which one to grab. This is a time-saving tip for sure. Now I've selected an Altenew Featured Sentiment die, and I'm just going to hold up the opening to which die that I think it is on my magnet sheet, and well, here we go. I'm going to run this through my Platinum 6 die cutting machine and we'll have our sentiment ready. Now my sentiment tended to just blend into the background too much, so I just took a black Sharpie marker and again I'm extending that black color into the card, and I just went around the outside of my sentiment from the back so I didn't write on my sentiment accidentally. I applied some glue and put it on my Accent Opaque 100 pound cardstock base, and this clean and simple card is done. For the second look with this same stamp set, I've swapped this cardstock out to watercolor cardstock and I'm putting it in the exact same place so I didn't need to move my stamp. I did clean my stamp off with nothing more than some water and a rag, and you're going to see I did not do a very good job of cleaning it, but it doesn't really matter. I am using Versamark this time. Now as you're going to see that I kind of need to give my Versamark ink pad a drink because it's pretty dry, so I am pressing this really hard onto this watercolor cardstock because it's not a very juicy ink pad. Now I don't have anything more fancy than a dry erase marker to add some additional pressure, but you can see there's a halo of the black ink left on that cardstock, which actually works out really well in this case. It's going to get covered up, but I can see where I've put the Versamark and that's the beauty of it. Taking back my copy paper, I am switching this off to Ranger's white heat embossing. Now you could choose any color. This is just what I happen to choose, but the white does cover over that black ink. In fact, it'll cover over any color of ink. Once again, I am preheating my WoW heat embossing tool and I'm giving this a quick blast of heat to melt that embossing powder, and you can tell when the white is done because it's no longer dull. It's a shiny white. For our second card, we're going to add a little bit more color to our stamp than we did in the first card. I'm using Distress Oxide, they're my favorites, and I'm using Kitsch Flamingo and Worn Lipstick. I'm just putting them on a little acrylic block and I'm going to add some water to create a little bit of watercolor. I'm using a number six round watercolor brush, but the sky's the limit here. You can absolutely use regular watercolor, you could certainly use watered-down acrylic if you wanted to, you could use watercolor pencils, even colored pencils, whatever blows your dress up here guys. Have fun with it, but this one's just meant to be really quick. My original intention was to have different colors of pink daisies on my cardstock, and by the time I get to my Worn Lipstick one, I realize that there's not a lot of change. I probably should have used Picked Raspberry instead of the Kitsch Flamingo, but live and learn. I've sped this video up, but this took about a minute and a half to complete, not a real big deal in the long run. I'm just going to go ahead and add some more Kitsch Flamingo, a little tiny bit of water, and I'm going to continue on. You do not need to have any talent for this, trust me, I don't. The beauty of the embossing powder is that it resists the ink, so it doesn't matter if you get the watercolor onto the embossing powder, it's going to wipe right off. You're going to see I'm just going to go back to that one that had the Worn Lipstick and add a little bit more color to it. Moving on to my leaves, I'm using the same Distress Oxide, but this time I'm using Shabby Shudders, which is a pale yellowish green, along with some Rustic Wilderness, which is a much darker green. For the leaves I'm doing the exact same thing by adding some water, except for I'm mixing the two colors together to get a slightly lighter Rustic Wilderness and a slightly darker Shabby Shudders, and I'm just using this one color. Now you do have another option where watercolor is concerned. I could have spritzed my entire paper and dropped the color in, and that would have been considered the wet-on-wet technique. This one is the wet-on-dry technique. It kind of contains the color a little bit. If you want more of a watercolor effect, spritz your paper first. Like I said, there's no rules here. This is your art. You do you. To finish the center of my daisies, I did the exact same technique, but with Vintage Photo. Now I'm going to use my WoW embossing tool. This one has two settings. I've set it to one, which is the dry setting. The second option is option two, and that is the melt setting. Now here's where this technique shines. I'm just using a washcloth and I'm wiping a finger over my embossed image. Any watercolor that's still left on the embossing powder will now simply wipe up. Now I'm going to cut this down with some Scrapbook.com's Nested Wavy Dies. These are some of my new favorites, and I'm going to leave a little bit more white space on the far right side of this image. I'm simply going to tack this down with some low-tack mint tape and run it through my die cutting machine. Here's our finished product for that one. For my sentiment, I'm going to be using these Spellbinders Dies. This one is called Popular Sentiments, and it's really one of my favorites because pretty much every word comes out in one die. They're not individual letters. I'm going to be using this green glitter paper, and the glitter does not shed from this cardstock, it comes from recollections. But I'm saving myself some of that glitter paper and I just used the inside to die cut both the words and the shadows. It's kind of a twofer here. I'm going to use my same Barely Arts Precision craft glue and we're going to cover up where I die cut those sentiments out. No one's ever going to be the wiser. If you don't like glitter cardstock, use whatever type of specialty or regular cardstock you have for this. I just wanted to add a little bit of shine. Since I cut my sentiments out, I have both the shadow. I went ahead and used the shadow from the green glitter and I just die cut the words from white leftover scrap cardstock. With my block on there getting that good glue adhesion, I'm just using it because it's clear, I can see through, and I'm kind of figuring out where I want my sentiment so that I save some time here. I typically do top folding cards, but for this one I've decided to keep the white part of the card at the top and let the flowers be the base. So I'm going to go ahead and turn this, making sure that I have the opening on the correct side because how many of y'all have done that? Be honest! I'm going to go ahead and adhere my sentiment to the top section more so in that white area, but still leaving a little bit of white exposed. Now for my full-on color example, I'm using Distress Oxides again in Picked Raspberry, Chipped Sapphire, and Wilted Violet along with a water medium matte. This is a silicone matte and the reason I like it for this technique is right here. I'm going to add water and you see how it beads up? I'm going to break up those beads with just a fingertip through the ink. Now I'm using watercolor cardstock and I'm just sort of dipping it in to the ink. Now there are a million ways to get ink onto your background. You could certainly use ink blending, but I really wanted the randomness of ink smudging as well as just adding color to add color. I am using a Ranger Heat It tool. This is not like a hair dryer. This has a concentrated source of heat without the blower aspect of a hair dryer or a heat gun and it is great for just drying your projects. It will emboss if you leave it long enough, but I tend to use my embossing gun for that rather. Now I'm just dabbing up any residual ink and I'm going to wipe up my ink from my water medium matte and we're going to move on to another color. Okay I'm moving on to Wilted Violet and I'm just adding a little bit. This can be a little bit overpowering, but again add water and break it up a little bit and I'm going to add some Chipped Sapphire to this one as well and well, purple and blue, it's all good. It'll work out in the wash, I promise. Truthfully I knew the colors would go together. I just didn't know how overpowering it would be, so this is just a trial for me and I'm just going to add a little bit and dry it and start afresh. I want more purple so this time I'm going to just do the purple. Continue adding your color until you get the background you like. If you want it a little bit more watercolor-esque, just add water to your cardstock and dry in between. Now the beauty of oxides is that if you are adding wet on wet you get a blended color. If you're adding wet to dry you get a layered color. Now this card needs some shine and that's where my Distressed Spritz in Picked Raspberry is going to come in. Now this is kind of a clear medium with Picked Raspberry shimmer added to it and you do need to shake it up. Now if you are the person who doesn't like sprays or spritzes because it's blobby or it gets the sprayer clogged, then hang with me because I have a foolproof way to keep that from happening. Now I'm just making sure that the pigment is all mixed into or that shimmer stuff whatever it is that's in there that creates this beautiful look. I just want to make sure it's fully incorporated into the spritz. Now I also have a bottle of Nothing But Pure Water and I'm going to lay my cardstock down and I'm about six or eight inches away and I'm just giving it a quick spritz. Nothing major. I'm going to wipe off the nozzle and here's where I'm going to keep anything from happening to my sprayer. I don't want to have to replace them so this is what I do. I take the water sprayer off. Now that's just a Dollar Tree water sprayer, nothing special, and very carefully I remove the nozzle from the spritz being careful not to knock it over and I'm going to screw it on. Then the little plastic tube is longer so it kind of curls around in the bottle of water. I'm just going to give it a little shake and I'm going to spritz onto some watercolor cardstock. Now there's a lot of spritz left in that tube but I'm not going to waste it because I'm going to just use it in a different way. Spray it up onto my cardstock until it runs clear and then I'm just going to dry it, put it aside. I can use it for backgrounds, I can use it for gosh a myriad of other things, sentiments, you name it, layers, it's all good but it works and this will absolutely clean out your sprayer. Just remember that when you remove the nozzle from your water be sure to spritz any remaining water onto a cloth or wherever because you don't want that water to go back into your spritz or any of your sprayers. Now that my cardstock is dry and my spritz is dry I'm going to go ahead and put it in the same spot and use my stamp again on this background. Remember full-on color. Now I did make a mistake here. I should have gone with a darker embossing powder or even a dark ink like black ink would have been great here as well. My cardstock is a little bit wonky so I'm just using some painter's tape instead of my magnets and I'm just going to line my cardstock with that. I did put it on my skin a couple of times to take off a lot of that stick but painter's tape tends to be a little cheaper and I know it's not going to really damage my watercolor cardstock. Once again I'm going to use my dry Versamark ink pad and ink up my stamp. I do ink this up twice or maybe three times to get good coverage and then I opted to use gold embossing powder and that was where I should have gone darker. Maybe a copper or even a black embossing powder would have been fabulous. I don't tend to use it because I think it's the devil but it just goes everywhere. But I do have it and I could have used it. Even my purple embossing powder might have looked really spectacular on this but I opted for gold and I'm sticking with it. Sometimes when you commit to something you just got to make it work. Now I was far too lazy to dig out my wall heat embossing tool so I am using the Ranger heated tool here. It does take a little longer to melt the embossing powder but in the end it still works. If you've been around my channel for any length of time you know that I absolutely am not a fan of fussy cutting and in this case I don't have a die. I had no choice and I have to bring it clear up to the top of my face to be able to see it and well I wasn't going to make you suffer. Let's just put it to you that way. But it is beautiful. Now I have to decide on a background. I opted for a blue background and I finished it off with Spellbinders Champagne Smooth Discs for the center of my daisies. Looking back we did our black on white with just a hint of color for our clean and simple. Our second look was a watercolor card with Emboss Resist as our technique and some glitter cardstock. And last but not least our full-on color ink smushed look with gold embossing powder. My challenge to you is to use any single stamp with these three techniques and create three beautiful cards that are all yours. Post them to my Facebook page at Village Card and Crafts. But don't leave just yet. I've picked out some additional videos I think you're going to love. Until next time I'll see you real soon.