Do you love to color? I’ve been addicted to coloring since I was old enough to hold a crayon! I came from a family with four kids so my mom was pretty thrifty when buying school supplies. We were lucky if we got the 24 pack of assorted colors, but my dream was to own the big box with the sharpener!! Coloring is my great escape. It’s therapeutic and so popular that you can find adult coloring books almost anywhere. Have you ever thought about making some of your own pages to color? It’s easy to do with a stamp set.
I used a stamping tool that allowed me to arrange several stamps and ink them all at the same time, but you don’t have to. You can use a simple acrylic block and ink. Another benefit of a stamping tool is that you can stamp several sheets quickly.
I stamped several background panels as well as individual butterfly images from the Close To The Heart set. I colored lots of the butterflies to experiment with shading and to decide what colors to use for my background panel. I’ll die cut all the single stamped butterflies and use them on a different project.
This is what my finished card looks like. I started with a white A2 card base (4.25 x 5.5″) and cut a slightly smaller panel from black card stock. Next I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment with white embossing powder.
I trimmed the stamped background to allow the sentiment to peek through. This panel is attached with adhesive foam tape so it’s slightly raised.
If you’re new to coloring stamped images you need to be careful selecting the appropriate ink for your coloring media. I colored these butterflies with Copic (alcohol based) markers so I stamped the images with Memento (dye based) ink. If you color with water based markers you should stamp with a solvent based ink like Versafine. You can also stamp in watercolor paper and paint these pretty butterflies from Birch Press Design.
The butterfly bodies and antennae are separate stamp images in the Close to the Heart clear stamp set. I stamped them after I colored all the butterflies using a Stamp A Ma Jig for perfect alignment.
Maybe you know someone who loves to color too! I bet they’d be thrilled with a few uncolored panels of their own to play with!
What will you make today?
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