Running With Scissors…

Perhaps you know from previous posts how much I love my Kitchen Sink Stamps.  I have a new set called Lilies, and today I’ve made a card with it.

You can go many different directions in size, style, and color with the stamps in this set, as with all KSS sets.  Today, I felt like making Stargazer lilies in a pretty and feminine pink, but with a somewhat earthy, vintage, tucked away in the attic for a long time sort of feel to the finished product.  I used some brown tones in the image background, and stained and distressed the edges.  I also used my Dark Brown Prismacolor marker to stain the ribbon a little bit.

While I was at it, I thought it might be fun to photograph the step by step process.  It’s a fascinating process for me, as the image develops, and perhaps you’ll enjoy it, too, and maybe find something useful here.

When I sit down with a KSS set for the first time, I’ll always do a few test runs with a mult-step image, just to get a feel of the results.  This will help me determine the effect of each layer, or step.  I’ll try to do all steps with an image, but depending upon my color palette, I may occasionally leave out a step.  Once I’ve decided upon my colors, I’m ready to begin the image for my card.  In this case, I’ll list the colors as I go along.  All inks are Stampin’ Up!, unless otherwise noted.

Step 1:  Pink Pirouette

• Cut a piece of Whisper White with plenty of room for building the image.  It can be cut down later.
• Using a freshly cleaned acrylic block, stamp two of the first-step image as shown.
• Create two masks of the image, to be used later.  I use Eclipse Masking Tape from Flourishes (love that stuff!).   It’s very thin and has a peel off back and repositionable adhesive.

Step 2:  Pretty in Pink 

Step 3:  Rose Red

Step 4:  Bravo Burgundy

Step 5:  Palette Noir (black)

• It doesn’t show well in the photo, but in real life, you can see the darker shading of the Noir ink.  This step, in black, also adds a few extra speckles to the petals.
• I must confess, I cheated on this step.  The Step 5 stamp has stamens and pistols, very delicate, and I couldn’t for the life of me stamp them over the previous image without creating a blurred effect.  So…forgive me Maria, but I cut those off the stamp.  I’m sorry!  I had to ‘fess up, though, because I didn’t want to be misleading.  I’d feel bad if any of you tried to stamp this image and wondered how in the world I managed to get those itty bitty parts to line up so perfectly.

Step 6:  Mask flowers and stamp leaves in Garden Green.

• When applying the masks, it’s best to let a little edge of the flower it’s covering to peek out in the area where you will overstamp it to avoid a white halo when the mask is removed.
• Stamp a first step stem and leaf (the one facing left), and two additional leaves (on the right).  Make sure the stem goes up into the flower mask, and be sure to take advantage of those masks by overlapping the leaves on the mask a little bit.
• See the one short stem that goes into the flower which is lower in the composition?  Ink just part of one of the stems and stamp it there.

Step 7:  Handsome Hunter, and create a leaf mask.

• The second step on the skinny stem is a little difficult to line up properly, so you can leave it out, if desired.  Mine didn’t line up exactly right, but it was close enough and I appreciated it in the finished product.  I inked just the stem, not the leaf, for that step.
• Stamp the next leaf step in Handsome Hunter.  There’s an additional step, which I would do in black, but I left that step out this time.
• That extra leaf that’s floating in space is a mask waiting to be used.

Step 8:  Stamp a third lily.

• Leave the flower masks in place and add the leaf mask to the uppermost leaf.
• Stamp all steps of the lily as shown.

Step 9:  Remove masks

I think this is my favorite part — when I remove the masks and reveal what I’ve created.  It’s like unwrapping a present.

A recap on the masking:

• The image is created from front to back.  I wanted the first two lilies in the foreground, so I stamped them first.
• Next came the leaves over the first two masked lilies, so the leaves appear to be behind the first two lilies.
• Now, to make the last lily appear to be behind everything, I masked everything in the foreground.  I already had masks on the first two lilies.  I only needed to add a mask to the one leaf.
• It looks complex in the finished image, but it’s really quite elementary.  Sure, it won’t be finished in two minutes, but it’s infinitely satisfying when you have some stamping time to spare.  The process gets easier and quicker as you become more practiced at it. 

Step 10:  Shade background with chalks

• This is my method of choice when stamping with KSS.  I like the way the images look so much like a painting when completed.  I can’t make a watercolor background because it would cause my water based SU! inks to run.  For more information about using the chalks, you may find my other tutorials helpful here and here.
• In this case, I shaded with Caramel and Cocoa chalks, using the Cocoa closer to the image for more shadowing.  In the smaller spaces I picked up a little chalk from a corner of the chalk pad with a blender pen and blended it on my background, being careful not to blend into the stamped image.  A blender pen will wear out your paper if you go over an area too many times, so that’s another thing to be careful about.
• I added a little pink around the edges.
• The last step is to spray with a matte sealer, as described in the tutorials I linked.  The spray not only seals the chalk, but it enhances the color of the entire image.  It doesn’t alter the color, just makes it better.

I hope this was good information for someone.  If you’ve never masked before, you can certainly start simple with a less detailed image — make one mask and stamp something slightly behind it — then work your way up to a more complex composition.  Way back in the beginning I’d get mixed up when I was making multiple masks like this, so don’t feel bad if you goof it up a few times.  The first time I ever masked anything I thought it was so cool!

I already listed the inks in the description, so I’ll summarize the other ingredients in the recipe, below.  Have a great day, everyone, and thank you so much for visiting!

ps:  Thank you, also, for your encouraging remarks yesterday about my use of older images.  I’m really glad you don’t mind seeing them, because so many of my favorite stamps are old.  I appreciate you all very much!

Stamps:  KSS Multi-Step Lilies, retired Stampin’ Up! Linen background  Paper:  Naturals Ivory, Whisper White, My Mind’s Eye Tres Jolie designer paper  Accessories:  Ribbon, brads, Scotch brand foam mounting tape

Trackback URI | Comments RSS