shared from CTMH's blog
Three Beautiful Cards, No Stamping Required!
Sometimes creativity strikes, but our creative juices don’t want to flow in the direction of stamping. It’s an inexplicable phenomenon that happens to the best of us from time-to-time 
. While we love the beauty and versatility that comes from creating with stamps, we also know that great results can be achieved without them. In fact, we are taking an in-depth look at the three cards from the cover of our April–June catalog today. You’ll see just how much artistic technique went into creating these cards using the Hey Handsome collection, no stamping required!
This first card is chock full of techniques. The most prominent is the white texture paste pattern that was stenciled on. Pairing texture paste with stencils is a simple and effective way to add a layer of flair. In this case, the line design of the stenciled paste complements the vertical, less noticeable pattern of the paper it rests on, causing your eye to regard it just enough without taking away from other elements of the card design.
A more subtle, possibly obscure, part of this “Awesome” card is the circle and its coloring. First, we need to point out that this circle is cut out of the grey striped pattern paper, using the large Circle Shaker Window Thin Cuts die, it’s not a paper circle that sits on top. We attached a piece of colored White Daisy cardstock to the back of the opening to create the effect, completing the rectangle for the front of the card.
We used quite a few inks to create the colorful pattern in the circle, starting off with Speckled Egg Distress Oxide™ ink. Distress Oxide inks are water reactive. When they are sprayed or splattered with water, the ink repels from the droplets, resulting in an “oxidized” appearance. Take a closer look and see if you can spot the effects of the water on our card.
After the Distress Oxide ink, with the White Daisy cardstock still unattached to the card, we sponged on some Seabrook, Mist, and Charcoal ink. First, we gently rubbed the Seabrook and Mist inks onto the sponge and then onto the paper in a circular motion. This circular motion causes the ink to spread softly and without many breaks, if any. The Charcoal ink was then sponged on top. This time, rather than in a circular motion, we just pressed the inked sponge onto the cardstock. This approach allows us to see the texture of the sponge.
The final color we added to this background piece was Harbour. Using ink from a Harbour shimmer brush, we splattered the inked cardstock. To do this, just squeeze enough ink into the bristles of the brush and then tap the barrel of the brush on your index finger, above where you’d like splatters to land.
As we allowed our colorful cardstock to dry from the splattered water and shimmer ink, we distressed the edges of the grey striped pattern paper by rubbing a fine grit sandpaper along its edges.
We carried this distressed look over to our next card, where we applied the same sandpaper technique on the resulting circle cutout from our first card.
We’ve said this many times before—and will continue to forever and always—keep your scraps! All three of these cards we are showing you today made use of small strips of paper and scraps. Two of them, that is all that they are made up of.
Our patterned papers and cardstock are intentionally grouped into collections, where the colors, themes, and designs of each paper included in the collection is intended to work seamlessly together. Today’s cards were made using the new Hey Handsome suite. As you scrapbook or make cards, keep your scraps together by collection. This way, when you’re feeling the urge to get creative, or maybe you’re experiencing a creative rut, you can have the option of these scraps to easily create accents or backgrounds.
One final technique that we’ll touch on, as you contemplate making cards that don’t require stamping, is to use stickers for those card front sentiments. Sticker sheets are a resourceful part of our paper collections. They are 12″ x 12″ and full, from top to bottom, of beautiful, heavy-weight paper stickers that coordinate beautifully with their corresponding patterned papers. Like for all our collections, the Hey Handsome sticker sheet has a large variety of images, icons, and sentiments, making them easy to use in place of stamping, without compromising appearance.
Whatever your reasoning may be to create artwork that doesn’t require stamping, we hope you feel encouraged by the cards we shared with you today. Beautiful cards and scrapbook pages come in all shapes and sizes and don’t require stamping (regardless of how much we do love it!) to be pieces of art.
