Repeat Stamped Background on Kraft by Laura

Hello and welcome, crafty friends! Today I’ll be sharing a fun way to use up all those mini sentiments (those smaller, add-ons that come in most Stamp sets) to create a repeating background pattern. I was trying to keep this as quick and easy as possible, so I didn’t measure anything out beforehand and just freehand stamped them using my acrylic blocks. All the supplies I used today can be found over at The Little Paper Tree, and don’t forget to use discount code TLPTLAURA10 at the checkout to get 10% off your order!

Process

I love the rustic look you get from using white pigment ink (this one is Lawn Fawn Yeti) on Kraft cardstock. And when you stamp a bunch of words across a panel of it, you get a farmhouse, or street market, vibe. The neutral, repetitive design of the background design allows that bright, simple ‘thanks’ sentiment to really pop off the card.

Creating A Card base

First thing I did was to cut a piece of Kraft to be 4.25” x 11”, scored halfway (at 5.5”) on the long side. I’m going to be working directly on the card base so after it was cut and scored, I lined it up on my craft mat so I could use the gridlines to help me eyeball stamping the various sentiments in straight lines (or straight enough!)

Stamping The Background

Next, I got out Altenew Halftone Thanks Stamp Set, and put all those coordinating, smaller sentiments onto several different acrylic blocks. Lawn Fawn has some blocks available with guidelines, and I used these to help keep my lines straight as I stamped them. I didn’t have a set pattern or plan as to what order the stamps were in, but I did lay a few of them out beforehand (as they were slightly different sizes) to get an idea of how it would look. Then I just chose different sentiments that I felt looked “right” and went for it! For this panel I used just about every set of words they included in the stamp set, only leaving out the odd ‘the’ or an ‘a’ that I chopped off one of the words.

This type of casual crafting is a bit out of my comfort zone as I generally like to measure and plan everything out, and let’s face it…I’m aiming for perfection. Since I was going for that rustic look anyway, I felt perfection wasn’t necessary and decided to chance it. I’m so glad I did because it was stress free stamping and I really got to just have fun with it. I was delighted with how the background turned out (even with the few small blemishes!)

I wanted to take the pressure off myself and see where my creativity took me instead of trying to be like a card that’s been mass produced. That’s what’s special about handmade – our uniqueness, and yes, those small imperfections! It’s time to embrace that and give ourselves a break!

Stamping With White Pigment

Do be careful not to get too carefree and smudge your freshly stamped design as pigment ink does need a while to dry completely (or you can just hit it with your heat gun.) Usually I’m impatient and will use the heat gun, but remember my easy-going crafting attitude I’m trying to have? 🙂

I set it aside to dry while I worked on the topper. For that I used the coordinating die from the same Altenew Halftone Thanks set, but before I cut it out, I want to create just the right colour blend for it.

Sentiment Blending

On a piece of Strathmore Bristol Smooth (long enough for three die cuts side-by-side), using Ranger Ink Mini Ink Blenders and Distress Ink Oxides in Warm Honey and Spiced Marmalade to create a creamy orange-to-yellow ombré blend. I love how easy it is to blend with these Oxides… like butter!

The reason I needed such a long, blended panel was because I planned to glue the three die cuts together for instant dimensional greeting. If you want, you can blend enough for just your top piece while cutting out plain, ‘ol white for the bottom two, but I like how you can see the colour blend around the edges once you attach it to the card.

Sentiment Diecutting

I ran the die through my Cuttlebug three times, then glued them all together to create one thick die cut. There are lots of ways to glue the die cuts together, with more delicate dies, it can be troublesome to get glue on all the tiny parts. However, the font they used on this die is bold and fairly thick, so it was easy to dab a bit of Tombow all around to glue them together.

Now I needed something to tie the die cut to the rest of the card. I loved the background so much, I really didn’t want to cover it up too much, so I decided to cut a stitched oval out of vellum, and a second from blue card. The blue card will be used as something to “ground” the dimensional die cut so I trimmed it down to be slightly shorter than the ‘thanks’ die cut. This kept the stitched element along the sides so it layered perfectly on the vellum oval.

Making The Card

Since I used several different stamps saying some form of ‘thanks’ in the background, I took the one that says ‘a million’ and heat embossed it in white on my blue panel so it would sit above my dimensional die cut. Then, I adhered the die cut ‘thanks’ to the (same) panel using Tombow, before finally gluing the entire piece to the vellum. I applied glue to the back of the vellum in all the areas that were covered by either the blue panel or the die cut and attached to the front of the card. This way, the glue wouldn’t show through any of the see-through vellum.

Finishing The Card

To finish, I added a few different sized dots with Gloss White Nuvo Crystal Drops and made sure to let them dry about 45 minutes. Quick tip on knowing when the drops have dried: put a few extra drops (make sure to use similar sizes to those you used on your project!) on your glass mat, plastic backing, etc and place near where you lay your card to dry. That way, when you get eager (as I usually am!) and stick your finger in the dot to test if it’s dry, you won’t get any dents or fingerprints on the dots in your project.

And that’s the finished card for today! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope I was able to provide a bit of inspiration to you today. Happy crafting and see Y’all next time! xo