Scrap & Stamp

I bought my first pile of stamping supplies around the same time I started scrapping (1999). My neighbor hosted a Stampin’ Up demonstration, and the projects shown by the consultant were gorgeous. Besides thinking it might be fun to start making cards, I had the brilliant idea that I could do some stamping on my scrapbook layouts as well. I ended up spending a not-so-small fortune on stamps, inks, and supplies. When my supplies finally arrived, I attempted my first card and was EXTREMELY disappointed! It looked nothing like what had been shown at the demonstration! (I basically stamped an image onto the card base, colored it in with colored pencils, and wondered why it looked so boring!) I had no idea what I was doing, no knowledge of the many cool techniques that were out there, and quite frankly, I stunk at stamping! I couldn’t get a clean image consistently so I was petrified to bring my stamps and inks anywhere near my scrapbooks!

For my early attempts, and there were not many of them, I stamped letters or words from alphabet stamps on separate sheets of paper and cut them out to attach to my pages. If I messed up, and I did often, I could just re-stamp it since it wasn’t on the layout yet. I posted one of these examples yesterday. It was my daughters “Watch Me Grow” page. (Click HERE to see it.)

Another example was on my “A Magical Birthday” and “Happy New Millenium” layouts. The letters were stamped on scrap paper and individually cut out. I liked the look, but that’s as much as I was comfortable doing early on!

After these early attempts, my stamps ended up in the basement in a box, pretty much forgotten. A few years ago, my neighbor decided to get rid of a bunch of her stamps (I guess hers had ended up in her basement as well!) and asked me if I wanted them. I decided to take them and give it another try! Now, I was determined to figure out how to use them, discovered You Tube videos and StampTV, and learned that I love stamping! I’ve gotten better with practice and have learned a lot since I first started out, but I will admit I am still a little scared of stamping directly on the page!

Here are a few more recent examples of where I’ve incorporated stamping in my scrapping:

On this Easter layout, I created the bunny scenes in the corners by masking and stamping the elements on cardstock and matting the panels before adhering them to my layout.

For this spring layout, I used stamps for the border blocks.

I used a distressing technique on the journal box to give it a spookier look and to make it match the patterned paper used on this Halloween layout.

This layout was ALL stamped and inked! I am not going to tell you how many times I had to start over for these pages; there were a lot of opportunities to mess up! (And I had to duplicate this layout 4 times for each of my 4 children!!) I really like how it came out, though, so it was worth it!