Irresistible Inking Techniques

It is amazing what you can do with a stamp pad and this class is a good review of the options available for using your pads for more than just inking a stamp and pressing it to paper. I would encourage anyone who only uses their ink pads to "stamp" images with to take Altenew Academy's Irresistible Inking Techniques class. One method that I chose to use is direct-to-paper.

For this card using Altenew's Enchanted Iris stamp set and matching dies I made a background by blending Dusty Concord and Mowed Lawn Distress inks, applying them very dark with direct-to-paper. Then when it was thoroughly dry I stamped the images with Versamark ink and embossed them with clear embossing powder. I sprayed the cardstock liberally with plain water and layered another piece of cardstock on top and ran it through my die cut machine which removed some of the very dark ink from the background and left the embossed images dark. The other piece of cardstock will take some of the ink off wherever there is  no embossing ink.


The irises were stamped again in a black Copic-safe ink on white cardstock and colored with Altenew's artist markers and then cut out with the matching dies. Some of the leaves I adhered to the card base flat and others I added dimension with craft foam, again using the dies to cut the foam. I die cut the "thanks" five times from black cardstock for dimension and white heat embossed the sentiment on black cardstock. Both the sentiment and "thanks" die are from the same set. The piece was affixed to the front of a light lavender card base. I liked the way I was able to get the Artist marker ink to match the Distress inked background. Thanks for looking!