Sunday 4 August 2013

Recent Makes: Autumn Stamps

Drumroll......my first autumn batch of stamps!!!! Hurrahh!! 

Autumn is not far away and I am feeling really inspired by all of the bright vintage-y colours I've been seeing about this summer. I was really inspired too by Geninne's Making Impressions book on stamps, and visiting her blog I'm just brought to life by all of the bright vivid colours and the crazy swirliness and the calmness of the quirky birds.

I sketched and carved these stamps from photos of flowers in my house and in my back yard:



This one I sketched from a picture of Mexican Golden Poppy I thought was really pretty:


And these are the cards I made with them:




I've been trying out different methods of colouring the images. I've been trying Hero Arts dye inks and Tsukineko's VersaCraft inks. VersaCraft wins by FAR for this type of stamping. I'd bought these Hero Arts dye inks in a summer palette:



They are really nice colours but because it is dye ink it is very thin and bleeds very easily when stamped on to normal card paper. I can see now (being the newbie stamper that I am) why these are only good for use on glossy paper and for detailing.

The Versa Craft Inks I bought were these shades in: Cherry Pink, Poppy Red, and Chocolate:


They are really nice and creamy and rich, and oh-so-dreamy to use. They can be stamped on to fabric as well and ironing the ink on to the fabric makes it permanent (although I've read it's still not colourfast; I'm going to try this out). It makes a nice, clear, solid image (you can see the teal ink is a different brand, and it's not stamped as well as the others). Definitely going to be using VersaCraft from now on! :-)

I used Tsukineko StazOn Jet Black ink for the outline of the Mexican Golden Poppy and LOVED this ink too. It's so bold and this can be used on glass, plastic, metal, and ceramic too. It dries almost instantly and is permanent so it doesn't smudge if you wipe water over it afterward. I used watercolour paint for the golden yellow and I really liked how it turned out and how crisp it looks.

Not too bad for a first attempt!! Anyone else use VersaCraft? What are your thoughts?

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