Basic Card-io Stamping

Hello, it’s Kirsten with my regular Tuesday post – it’s also a Card-io promotion post, you’ll need to remember that.

 

Card-io stamps were completely new to me when Lisa pointed them out to me at the trade show in February & I have to admit, I struggled with them in the beginning. Not because there's anything wrong with them, it was simply that I didn't know where or how to start building an image. Poor Lisa was demoing at the NEC & she was getting frantic text messages from me, all along the lines of “I don’t know what on earth I’m doing!!” A few weeks down the line & I think I’ve improved somewhat. Today, I’m starting with the very first card I made, see if you can tell how panicked I was!

 

 

The first thing I did was check the colours of the Versacolor inks, using an image from the

 Greenery 1 collection. I really like these inks. The colours are gorgeous, the ink pads very juicy & because they’re pigment inks, they’re suitable for heat embossing.

 

 

A word of caution; because they’re so juicy & slow to dry, it is very easy to get ink where you don’t want it, namely on your project. I lost count of the number of pieces of card I ruined because I got ink on my fingers & transferred it to the card.

 

It’s also important to apply the ink to the stamp, with light tapping. The ink pad is raised quite high off the base & if you’re too forceful you’ll get ink on the acrylic block as well as the stamp.

 

 If you’re not using embossing powder, make sure you dry the image thoroughly with a heat tool, or leave it to one side to dry on its own.

                              I used a Spellbinders die as a template & drew an oval shape on my card.

I started stamping with various stamps from the Greenery I collection, using Versacolor Bamboo & Turquoise inks.

 

Note: these pictures are not the same as the finished card. I tried various stamps & colours, discarding most of them until I was happy & along the way I forgot to take photos.

 

I switched to the large branch stamp & the solid flower from the Majestix Sweet Birdhouse clear stamp set.

 

I added more stamping with Versacolor Atlantic ink & the tiny solid flower from Sweet Birdhouse.

                            Using a craft knife, I cut out the oval & added more stamping.

 

I filled in gaps & over stamped with both of the sketchy flower stamps from Sweet Birdhouse, using Versacolor Neptune ink & stamped the Penny Black sentiment through the oval onto another piece of card.

 

 

Matting & layering onto black card & adding some black organza ribbon & tiny amounts of Stickles glitter glue to finish. Not brilliant, but not too awful either for a first attempt.

 

                    

                                                   


           Thanks for looking. Remember the GIVEAWAY – leave a comment! See you next time.

 

Kirsten