Practical Scrappers DT Challenge: Use Stamps

It's Wednesday so that means it's time for me to post another project for Practical Scrappers!

This week's challenge is Stamps! You can use any kind of stamp - digi, rubber, acrylic, foam - we want to see all of them! This week there will be a top three and a Grand Prize Winner. The Grand Prize winner will receive bonding powder and a Stampee foil of their choice. What's Stampee foil you ask? Go to Practical Scrappers and check it out - they are a brand new sponsor of ours and we are delighted to have them! PS will be featuring projects with Stampee Foil every day this week!

For my project, I decided to get my green on in anticipation of St. Patrick's Day and here is what I came up with:


The polka dot paper was from Hot off the Press. All the little Irish themed stamps were from Studio G. I stamped the images onto green CS with black Stazon, then heat embossed them with clear embossing powder. After I had enough of the little images stamped and embossed, I pulled out my trusty craft sheet, tapped a tiny bit of green Perfect Pearls onto it, then misted my craft sheet with water. I mixed the pearls and water, then painted inside the embossed areas - the embossing acts as a resist so it rolls right off the stamped image plus it also contains the pearly paint mixture inside the embossed lines... cool! I continued the process with white and gold Perfect Pearls until I had all the images painted. At this point I chose to hit the painted images with a heat gun just to speed up the drying but you can just let them dry on their own.

Here is a close-up of how shimery and fun the Perfect Pearls look:


I cut the images out in 1 1/4" squares then matted them onto 1 1/2" black squares. Now what would a St. Patrick's page be without a wee litte bit o' the gold??? I had some leftover gold coin confetti and matted 4 pieces onto green then black squares of cs, then alternated them with the stamped images onto a white strip of cs, which was also matted on black leaving just enough room above the blocks for a little journaling. Three of the stamped squares were adhered to the border with 3D pop dots and the gold coin blocks were just glued straight onto the border, adding a little variety.

I used 3d foam dots on the remaining 8 stamped images and put 4 on each side of the page giving the layout a very symmetrical look - very different for me!

The title letters were cut using my Cricut and San Serif cartridge, the shamrock was from Paper Doll Dress Up. To get the shading and shadows just right on the shamrock I went over the edges of the cut BEFORE removing it or the leftover paper from the mat with a fantastix loaded with black ink. This is such a simple way to achieve an inked edge look to any cut without having to try to run an inkpad over the edges. All you do is simply trace the cut with the fantastix until you get the desired look. I remove the image, check it to see if the ink covers the edges enough and if not, replace it on my mat where it was cut and add more ink. As the ink is removed from the fantistix, I like to blend the inked edges up onto the cut very subtly to give the cut a more realistic 3D look. I also use this technique to add shadows to my cuts, which you may be able to see on the right side and bottom of the shamrock's stem.

I'm very excited about next week's challenge at PS... but I can't tell you what it is yet! Make sure you come back and visit my blog next Wednesday and check out my DT challenge layout... I really LOVE it and am looking forward to sharing how you can get a very cool look using just a few supplies and some Bazzill CS.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy crafting,
Barb