Vintage Valentine & Tutorial

Hello, Lisa Hoel here today with a guest spot. Today I'm going to show you a way to stretch your dies and use them to make stamps! I promise, it is really easy. All you need is adhesive backed fun foam and scrap packaging plastic. First, the finished card:

 The border around the heart is actually stamped, using the Stitched Fringe die to create the foam stamp. I printed out a copy of my graphic and the heart outline to use as a guide. The base for the stamp is clear plastic cut from some old packaging. After cutting a fringe strip out of the foam, I used my guide to position the foam and adhere it to the plastic base. A little trimming and adjusting was needed to get it all in place. (I ended up using three fringe strips.)

Now I needed my card base to stamp on. I wanted a subtle cloud pattern in the background. Cutting a stencil out of scrap cardstock, I put the edge under my Core'dinations cardstock and sanded it with my distressing block. The bump of the cardstock made the cloud pattern show as I sanded off the surface of the paper. Using thin chipboard as a stencil would have made a stronger impression.

my freehand cut "stencil"

the clouds show up as you sand

Later on, I decided the cloud pattern wasn't showing up quite enough so I used my same stencil on the front side and blended a touch of Distress ink on the edges to make the clouds pop more.

Then I was ready to stamp! I used a juicy pigment ink pad so the color would be more opaque. (Paint works well on foam stamps too!)

 After laying the foam stamp in place on my background, I carefully placed a large acrylic stamp block over the whole thing so I could press down and stamp with even pressure.

I stamped my sentiment on my graphic printout, cut out the heart and adhered it to the card base with 3D foam squares. The retro cupid image is from The Graphics Fairy, available for free download.

I hope you are inspired to think of new ways to use your dies. The possibilities are endless if make them into stamps too!


AJVD products:

 

Other products:
Ranger Distress Ink, Archival Ink, Adirondack's Pigment Ink, foam adhesive squares, cardstock, baker's twine, adhesive backed fun foam, Core'dinations Whitewash Collection cardstock



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