Hello friend! I hope you're doing well! Did you catch the Tim Holtz 2023 Stampers Anonymous LIVE launch?! Tim shared all of the new stamps and stencils along with some amazing inspiration from the makers. If you missed the party, you can watch the replay and see all the maker inspiration over on Tim’s blog.
I used the new Bold Botanicals to create a set of notecards that can be used for any occasion. I think they would make the perfect gift and I plan to create a larger set to gift to my Mom for Mother's Day!
I have to admit that when I first saw this set, I wasn't so sure about it. They are quite bold and modern looking. But after some stewing on ideas of what to create, an idea popped into my head and I had to give it a try. This set is the end result! I went with a slightly rainbow color theme and you could repeat the flowers to add even more colors, pick your favorite colors or go more neutral and create some in shades of brown and gray! The color options are limited only by your imagination.
I'm going to share a photo tutorial with you on how I created each note card. To get started, I stamped the image onto a piece of Distress Watercolor Paper cut to 3.25 x 4 inches using Distress Oxide Ink in Picked Raspberry.
As I've already mentioned these images are quite bold...hence the name Bold Botanicals! And since they were a little too bold for me, I choose to use the stamp and smudge technique. For this technique you simply stamp the image using Distress Oxide Ink and then smudge the ink to create a distressed effect. Distress Oxide is the ink of choice for this technique since it stays wet for a bit after stamping.
Before you begin smudging though, I suggest dabbing off some of the excess ink in the more solid areas. If you don't do this, the ink will smudge so much that you will lose all of the details from the image.
After I dabbed off some of the excess ink, I used a paper towel to smudge the ink.
Take a look at this photo to see the effect this creates. On the right hand side you can see how it looks before the smudging and on the left side how it looks with the smudging.
Once the smudging was completed and the ink dry, I went a little old school and used my Deckle Edge Scissors to cut around the outer edge of the image leaving a small white border. If you're lucky enough to have Tim's Deckle Edge Trimmer, you could use that to get the same look. The final touch for this layer was to take the Register stamp from The Inspector stamp set and stamp it in the bottom left hand corner with Hickory Smoke Archival Ink.
Now for the background. For this step, I adhered a piece of Distress Watercolor Paper cut to 3.5 x 4.25 inches onto the center of my stamping platform using temporary adhesive. Because the paper is smaller than the stamp, you can't use the magnets to hold the paper in place.
I then took one of the stamps from the Tiny Prints Stamp Set, centered it over the paper in my stamping platform, pushed down and picked it up with the lid.
I then inked it Picked Raspberry Distress Oxide and stamped it onto the paper. The tiny floral prints on these stamps are some of my favorites and I know they'll be getting a lot of use in my future projects.
Once the ink was dry, I then took the Strictly Hand Made stamp from The Inspector stamp set. I used a stamping block to repeatedly stamp it across the paper using Distress Archival Ink in Picked Raspberry.
I love the finished look of this, but you could certainly skip this step if you are wanting to mass produce these as a gift for someone.
After I finished stamping the background, I layered it onto a piece of Distress White Heavystock cut to 3.75 x 4.5 inches to complete the card.
Here's a look at the other cards I created. For this card I used Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide for the Bold Botanical and Scattered Straw Distress Oxide for the Tiny Prints and Fossilized Amber Archival Ink for Strictly Hand Made.
For this card I used Peeled Paint Distress Oxide for the Bold Botanical and for the Tiny Prints and Peeled Paint Archival Ink for Strictly Hand Made. Even though I had done some test stamping, afterwards I felt like the Strictly Hand Made image didn't stand out as much as I would have liked. Another option to help it stand out more might be to use Bundled Sage when stamping with the Tiny Prints.
On this one I used Mermaid Lagoon Distress Oxide for the Bold Botanical and for the Tiny Prints and Mermaid Lagoon Archival Ink for Strictly Hand Made. Here, Tumbled Glass might be an option to help the Strictly Hand Made stamping stand out more.
All in all, I'm quite pleased with the completed set and I'm pretty sure I'll be making a larger set of these to gift to my mother for Mother's Day! I hope you enjoyed this bit of inspiration and tutorial using some of the new stamps from the Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous 2023 release including Bold Botanicals, Tiny Prints and The Inspector.
SUPPLIES
Below you can find the products I used to create this notecard set along with compensated affiliate links to Scrapbook.com. These links are at absolutely no cost to you. When you shop through the links below, I receive a small commission from Scrapbook.com. These links are at absolutely no cost to you and the commission I receive helps me cover the costs of my blog and other expenses, which allows me to continue to provide you with FREE inspiration and tutorials. If you want to learn more about what an affiliate link is, you can see my full affiliate and product disclosure statement here. Thank you so much for your love and support!
.png
)
