SHADOW STAMPING...

…or halo stamping or stamping on the reverse side – I’m really not sure what to call it, but I kind of like how it turns out.  Stay with me a minute – okay, more than a minute. 

Hi, everyone.  It’s Charlotte C here.  Thank you, Sheila, for letting me visit again. I am so honored to be here among such inspiring and talented designers.

Somewhere in my journeys through the internet a long time ago I came across a technique of stamping with the back side of your stamp.  I know, kind of kooky, and not all stamps lend themselves to this technique.  The general rule is to use an acrylic stamp that’s rather uniform in shape and, of course, you need to use two shades of ink. 

I’ve used CTMH stamps here and created this shadow effect for a poinsettia by using two holly stamps in two sizes.  First I created a ½” circle mask in the center, and using a pink shade of ink I stamped six “petals” using the back of the larger stamp.  Yes, the front of your stamp will stick to the acrylic block.

I then used the smaller holly stamp, again the back side of it, and stamped to fill in between the larger petals.

 

I now turned the smaller stamp the correct way, inked it up with the darker red shade, and stamped over the original shadow stamp.

I now used masking paper to mask the smaller petals so I could stamp the top layer of the larger stamps.  I removed the ½” circle mask so I could fill that part in with yellow beads.  Unfortunately, I did not have yellow beads (didn’t know that when I started this project) so I made little “beads” of Stickles.  Then I cut around all the petals with my Xacto knife.

 

I mounted with pop dots on a top folded A2 card as you see here.

 To simplify this technique, you can choose to do direct to paper stamping as I did with this card using two shades of pink. Easy peasy stamping.  I offset the stamps a little bit, but it’s up to you how you want to do it.

 

For this quick holiday card, I embossed the white layer using a mat to leave a section in the center unembosssed (is there such a word?).  Then I used two shades of blue ink to stamp with and pop dotted the embossed/stamped layer onto blue card stock.  And the fact that this particular stamp is not exactly the same back and front doesn’t make a difference here at all. 

 Hope you have fun trying this technique.  I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.  Happy and blessed Thanksgiving wishes to you.