Add a little stamping to your layouts...

Hi everyone, it's Tracey here to share a layout with you and hopefully inspire you to get your stamps out hiding and onto your layouts.

I am well know for buying stamps and not using them.  They decorate my craft room shelves nicely but really I need to get them out and use them.  I know stamping can be a bit daunting but it doesn't need to be.  I decided to challenge myself and pick some stamps that I thought would fit with the theme of my photo.  I picked ones that were not big in size, but that added a little something extra to my layout.  Think of it as just adding another layer.  Another thing that might help is to choose an ink colour that is more of a neutral tone so that it doesn't necessarily stand out and therefore there is less pressure on "getting it right".  It also makes the stamping another element on the layout rather than a focal point.

I chose a yellow because there were hints of it in my photo, it added a little extra colour to my layout and it blended into the layout rather than standing out.  This also meant that if my stamping wasn't perfect it wasn't going to be obvious, so taking away that pressure I mentioned earlier.

I then laid out my pieces roughly putting things where I thought they should go.  I played around with the layout a bit and then once I was satisfied I added my stamping. I then went and secured all the pieces down. 

I finished off my layout with some stitching.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope I have given you some tips that will encourage you to 

add stamping to your layouts.

  

Happy stamping

Tracey - :-)

Simple Chalkboard Style Christmas Cards

Hi everyone!  It's Louise with you today and I would love to share a simple but striking card and tag that are easy to mass produce for Christmas.

I have used the stamp set and 6.5" x 6.5" paper pad from Kaisercraft's North Pole Collection and these are available at Tomorrow's Memories right now.

I diecut a bauble shape for my tags but you could also use a circle punch.  I then stamped a wreath from the set with Versamark ink and white heat embossed it.  I then stamped the "JOY" sentiment in Versamark and red heat embossed it.  To create the chalkboard look I simply sponged some white chalk ink randomly over the surface.

To create my card, I took the "MERRY CHRISTMAS" sentiment and stamped it repeatedly with white pigment ink.  While that dried, I layered some of the patterned paper and created another stamped and heat embossed bauble tag.  Once again, the chalkboard look was created by lightly sponging on white chalk ink- but take care to ensure the pigment ink is completely dry or else it will smudge!

These were super-easy to create in assembly-line fashion and I was able to churn out 12 cards and 12 tags in under two hours.  Be sure to leave a comment if you have any questions :-)