Every month, Cocoa Daisy offers you great stamps, but sometimes you don’t know quite how to use them. I’ve got a quick tutorial for you today showing a fun way to stamp with our April offerings, well actually, any of our stamps! We have sold out of the stamps that I used for today’s post (Get Foxy), so be sure to sign up for a Stamp Subscription and you’ll never miss out on our awesome stamps!

Meet Foxy.

Meet my layout about my foxy husband.

I wanted to use the fox stamp on this layout. I wanted to use the glassine bag on this layout. I knew dye inks don’t dry too well on glassine. They do eventually dry, but I wasn’t in a place where I could wait and not smudge the ink. Then I remembered this technique I’d learned while doing an assignment for Scrapbook and Cards Today CardMaps 3 (FYI: CardMaps4 is now available to pre order, it will start shipping the end of this month… hint hint)

I got out my old old old chalk tray (yes it’s good to save everything. I thought I’d passed it on to a new home, but found it recently in the very back of a drawer), my Versamark, my stamp, and the envelope.

I inked up my stamp really well.

I stamped it carefully on the glassine envelope.

I then got my Q-tip all nice and chalky and started to softly rub it over the image. Start with a soft touch so you can find your image and not get chalk all over your paper.

I went over a second time with a bit more pressure. That’s the fun thing about this technique, you can add dimension by changing the pressure you use in applying the chalk.

Any errant chalk comes of quite well with an eraser.

And that is how I got Foxy on my glassine envelope. It works equally well on vellum and regular cardstock. P.S. When I started the process, I wasn’t sure it would work out. That’s often the story of my scrapping. Just try things, if they work out, great, if not, you’ll be the wiser!

Another thing that is fun about this technique is you can color different parts of the stamp. I used the chevron strip stamp on this card and used chalk to make the same image multiple colors.

You can see the errant chalk doesn’t come off as well on the paper, but it’s not that big of a deal to me.

It helps to know where things are in your stamped image, so I recommend stamping on a scrap paper the same image with a visible ink and using that as a guide when you are applying the chalks.

Oh, and the orange cloud in my layout? I used the same orange chalk to color that as well. I was really impressed at how well the wood veneer took the chalk!

Now, on to the DT and what they did with the stamps this month!

Lisa did a couple of different techniques.

I decided to go with a yellow, green & red colour combo for this LO. The red due to that being their school colour, but there wasn’t even one tiniest piece of red in this kit. So I used one the the stamps and also the Red Prima Chalk Ladybug Ink to add the red to my page (see the arrows from the mask and the wood veneer arrows using the red ink). 

I added quite alot of Tattered Angels Glimmer Glam and let it ‘puddle’ a little on the cardstock. (this can be done with mists and watered down paints too). Then taking the stamp, I dipped it in the puddles and stamped over and over on the page.

Ashley made her own background with a stamp.

I made a template using the Cocoa Daisy cloud background cut file and stamped the clouds onto plain cardstock. Then I kept the template in place and added matte gel over the clouds to act as a resist. I pulled up the template, and added messy watercolours, gesso, and some book pages.

And Patricia did a lot of stamping this month, here are a few of her examples.

The stamp from the main kit inspired this entire layout. So I had to use it, it brought the layout and theme together for me. I stamped onto vellum using Prima Chalk ink (blasted it a little with the heat gun to set and make permanent), trimmed around it and lightly adhered it to my layout.

And I always use stamps in my Project Life to help re-iterate the stories, add embellishing without bulk. I used the stamps as is and also did partial inking to do partial stampings to fit the cards. A Great way to get more out out of very usable stamps from the Day in the Life.

See the two ways she used the “Details” stamp in the DITL: April kit?

Our design team amazes me with the ideas they generate from the same products. I hope you’ve added some ideas and techniques to your tool box of stamping.

Thanks for joining me today.