Background stamp and embossing folder

Welcome to my blog,

In this post I want to share how you can use background stamps with matching embossing folders. There are so many techniques, I just want to share one of mine. This is a twist on a technique that Tim Holtz shared on his blog years ago. 

Here you can find his original post.

This is the original tag made by Tim. He uses a custom made stamp pad to stamp this. I am going to show a way that is kind of cheating a little. 

Here we go:

I went for the christmas theme as I am making christmas cards at the moment. Tim has several background stamp and embossing folder combos. These make great vintage looking cards 

This technique works best when you use a stamping tool, as we need to stamp the stamp several times in the same position. To make sure my paper stays in place, I always have a piece of Sizzix Sticky Grid on my platform. It is like double sided Post It. A must have for your craft room!!

This way I can stick my card away from the edge as I want a nice print all over my card. 

My trick is... Distress Markers! Instead of creating a giant stamp pad, I colour the stamp in various colours and stamp!

I colour the desired part of the stamp with my marker. Here you see I coloured the numbers with fosselized amber distress marker. Before I stamp, I breathe a few times on my stamp to moisten the ink. And yes I have accidentally touched my stamp with my lips and had distress lipstick that way lol. Just add new colour and huff and stamp. This is why it really only works with a stamping platform.

Here you see that I already stamped with barn door and fosselized amber. You do this with all the different colours. 

Here you see the finished stamped background. Now we need to vintage this up ;-)

I always use frayed burlap distress ink to give my cards a vintage feel. There is something about that colour that makes everything look warmer.

The next step is embossing the card to give it some dimension and interested. You line up the words with the embossing folder and run it through your machine. 

Don't be shocked when you find out that the top is perfectly lined up, and the bottom is totally offset... this is normal and has a logical explanation... the top runs through the machine first and pulls up the paper a bit when embossing. You just have to embrace that imperfection ;-)

This is the bottom of the card and you see the text is not aligned with the folder anymore. The only way to kind of prevent that is to wet the paper before embossing, but that would make your ink run. I don't mind this offset look, it all adds to the vintage feel in my eyes :-)

To complete the look I ink the edges with walnut stain distress ink. Mind you, no craft item leaves my desk without walnut stain ink hahaha.

These are my tag and cards that I made using this technique. The middle one has some foil on it. I will do a tutorial on that technique tomorrow ;-)

Thanks for stepping by and taking the time to read through my post.

Have a wonderful day, take care and...

Keep your craft on!

Freddie

xox