Handcrafted By Esha: Stamping Fun!

Hi there,

I am back with a new and an exciting post on stamping and its techniques.

Stamping is something that I have taken to a lot of liking off late and and in a very short span of time, I have accumulated 20 plus stamps and still have many more to strike off on my wishlist.

For a long time now I had been hunting for a cute set of animal stamps as I wasn't very happy with what was available out there in the market. I wanted a pack of animal stamps which had an assortment of animals and not just the same animal in different angles. This is when I chanced upon the exclusive set of stamps for stamp club members only by Peek-a-Boo Designs. I quickly subscribed and got my hand on this ultra cute set - Cute Critters and Little wonder from their April release, fearing they would run out of stock soon :)

I was very excited about the Cute Critters set and I decided to use them in making some baby birth announcement projects. I zeroed on 2 projects to use these stamps - one was money holders and other a multi-purpose card which can be used as a tag / bookmark / journal card. Now lets take a look at these 2 projects in detail.

For the money holders, I used the technique of masking, where in I used the leaves from We R Memory Keepers stamps ( picked from Itsy Bitsy ) to create a strip of leaves along with tress, shrubs, snail and a ladybug from the Cute Critters set. I used this layer to mask the animals and stamp them behind. This creates an impression of leaves appearing in front and animals standing behind the leaves. This created a lovely background for my money envelopes. I used a mix of color pencils, crayons and sketches to color the animals and the background. I finished it off with butterflies from the Cute Critters set and an "It's a boy" sentiment from the Little wonder set.

Here is the picture of the money holders.

For the multi-purpose card, I am going to show you a step-by-step tutorial. This card is so adorable and versatile that it can be used as a gift tag, bookmark, photo mat or as a journal card to pen down a few baby memories. This is how the card looks like.

To begin with, you need the following supplies:

A couple of designer papers - I used a few papers from Papericious in yellow and orange keeping a jungle theme in mind.
A white card stock for the background - I used something which has a wooden texture feel.
Animal stamps - Cute Critters from PABD
Baby sentiments - Little Wonder from PABD along with stamping accessories such as stamp block and ink pads.
Color pencils / crayons / sketches for coloring
Bakers twine in dark green
Glue, scissors and double sided foam tape

Here are the steps to create this card:

1. Start with stamping animals, I used Memento tuxedo black for stamping them. I wanted to create a 3D look for the animal face, therefore I stamped 2 of each animals.

2. Next fussy cut them and color them. While fussy cutting the second set, I cut only the face of the animals leaving out the ears as I planned to give a pop-up feel to their face using double sided foam tape. For coloring I like to go lighter in center and darker on the sides and edges of the stamped image.

3. Cut the base white card stock in the size 5.8 x 3.75 inches. The dimensions of the yellow paper are 1.75 x 3.75 inches and that of orange pattern sheet is 4 x 3.75 inches. Paste them on the white card stock as shown and round off the edges.

4. Post this, I used left over scrap paper to cut out flags and created a banner streamer using bakers twine. I stuck it where the yellow and orange paper meet. And then I stuck the animals above this streamer.

5. I then stuck the faces of the animals using double sided foam tape to create a 3D look.

6. Finally, finished it off by adding bows made with bakers twine in the streamer and a stamped sentiment "Little wonder" from the stamp set. I used distress ink in spiced marmalade for stamping the sentiment and distressing the card stock in mustard seeds.

So these were my 2 projects that I loved making using these animal stamps. they were so much fun and enjoyable to work with. There are so many ways in which these stamps can be used.