Don’t Forget to Layer Up

The days are getting shorter, and the temperature can rise and fall 30 degrees in a day. So you layer up. But that’s not what this post is about, of course. It’s about stamp layering!

Altenew is the industry leader in layered floral images, and the look you can obtain from a layered image is a big deal if you draw as well as I do. Or if you can’t figure out how to highlight and/or shade an image. They even sell their inks in tonal sets that work perfectly with layered stamps.

Pocket Full of Sunshine is the ink set I used on the card below. Note that the shade of ink deepens as you move from left to right. I used the Green Fields set for the leaves. Below is the stamp set I used, and a little explanation of the process.

This set is called Beautiful Day, and it’s what I used for the flower on the card below. You use the lightest ink color for the large, solid stamp. Then a darker color as you move through other two layers, finishing with the outline in black. The leaf stamps work the same way.

I stamped the outline again on a post-it note and placed it over the the flower I’ve already stamped. This is a way to make the focal element look like it’s in front of the other elements, called “masking”. After placing the mask over the flower, I stamped the smaller images in Silver Lake to fill in the spaces without taking away from the main image, and the greeting in Permanent Black Crisp ink.

Instead of just placing the smaller panel onto the card base, I decided to set it off a little by running the panel along the Forest Glen inkpad. I was really happy with the result! Showing that small things can make a big impact.

I’m sure you can tell I get really passionate about cardmaking, so I hope I didn’t leave any of you behind. For those of you who stayed until the end, thank you and I hope I demystified the process for you a little. And maybe even converted a few of you! I’ll be doing videos in the future, imagine how excited I’ll be about that!?

Take care and be kind,

Sue