Hello there! Today’s tutorial is using only one type of ink, the Memento. It is one of the most versatile and secure ink that you can use. Memento Ink is ideal to use with alcohol markers or simply to stamp, with solid or lineal stamps. It is also available in markers and liquid, like Fireworks! Shimmery Craft Sprays.
Skill Level: Beginning
Time to Complete: 45 minutes
Directions:
Step 1:
Take a piece of white smooth cardstock and ink well your solid stamp with Memento Ink. In my sample, I am using the Dandelion color. If you want you can use a stamping tool to have a better result or obtain a crispy image.
Step 2:
Select a lineal stamp and place it covering partially the image previously stamped. You can use a different color of Memento Ink to create a contrast. I am using the Rose Bud Memento Ink.
Step 3:
Stamp your sentiment with Memento Tuxedo Black.
Step 4:
To enhance special details of your stamped image you can use Memento Markers. I used the same Dandelion color just in a small spaces on the floral image to enhance the details.
Step 5:
As final step, you can embellish your card using Diamonds on different colors. To paste it, I used On Point Glue.
Step 6:
Resize the decorative layer and paste it over a card base using Tear It! Tape.
We are so excited to announce our 2023 Design Team!
We look forward to sharing all of the creative inspiration that flows from this group of talented designers.
Let’s learn a little bit about them…
Alison Heikkila
Hello! My name is Alison Heikkila and I have been a crafter my entire life. My mom started me off with coloring and stringing beads from a very young age, and I never stopped. I have an art degree with a specialization in jewelry and sculpture, but I love working in many mediums and styles. Getting inky is absolutely one of my favorite things!
I have an amazing husband who loves to see what I create each day (and even crafts along with me sometimes!) and two very creative kids. Sometimes the four of us craft together, which is so much fun. We’ve also got a cat and two dogs, and we reside on Long Island.
I love to create, as I feel it truly feeds my soul. Getting a little “playtime” in my craft room each day is really important to me. I look forward to sharing projects with you.
Hi friends, I am Martha Lucia Gomez. I was born in Colombia, but I live in a paradise called Miami, FL USA. I’ve loved crafts forever. I used to work with metal jewelry, but one day I discovered stamps, ink and paper, and now it is my passion. I’ve realized that working with paper crafts is the best therapy.
I live with my husband and our two daughters. I divide my time between my family, my work in a Public Relations Company and my passions: my blog and crafting on various design teams. I find my inspiration in simple things. My style is clean and simple but don’t misunderstand me – I love the simple things plus the techniques and work involved in it. Experimenting new things is my passion and mixing products is my therapy. I love stamps, die cuts, stencils and of course all type of inks. I can tell you that I work on my crafts every single day and this is one of the ways that I found to give thanks to God for all that He gives me every day.
I love to share my creations, so you will always find me easily on Social Media outlets as Stampartpapel.
Hello Crafty Friends! My name is Katy Ingram. I am a wife and mama to 1 son and 6 kitties. I live in southeastern North Carolina and I LOVE making handmade cards. I started card making back in 2016 and in 2019 I started my youtube channel and blog Eastwicks Paper and Ink. I wanted an outlet to share and hopefully inspire your creativity with my card making as well as give some tips and tricks along the way. I am excited to be back with Imagine’s 2023 Design Team and I look forward to meeting and crafting with you!
I’m a cat-loving card maker who also creates tags, art journals, and home décor pieces. I love stamping, mixed media, and experimenting with different supplies and techniques. I love to paper craft because there’s something so oddly calming about focusing on a project. My favorite part is when a project comes out the way I had envisioned it in my mind’s eye. I also like to share my creations online and always include full supply lists and detailed instructions on my blog posts.
Hello crafty friends! My name is Kathy Pisupati. I have always loved art and crafting. I think my love for arts & crafts started the day someone gave me a “how to draw” book when I was 7 or 8. I have tried it all but cardmaking is my true happy place. I majored in Fine Arts & Communications in college. I love designing and blogging. I love all art mediums and cardmaking allows me to create mini masterpieces of all sorts!
I live in Arizona with my husband but grew up in the Midwest. I have been blessed to have traveled all over the globe with my family and live overseas. I also love dogs!
I love sharing my creations with you and can be found in the following sites and would love for you to follow me on my creative journey.
Hi! I’m Linh – or LV Handcrafted on social media. I live in Seattle, WA with my husband and our two dogs. I started crafting in high school as a scrapbooker but these days I also make cards, mini-albums, notebooks and all sorts of crafts. I’m excited to join such a talented team of artists here at Imagine Crafts, which I absolutely love. It’s such an honor to join this team. There’s always so much to learn in paper crafting and I find these challenges are always an inspiration. I look forward to sharing and interacting with you on all the socials!
Hi there friends and fellow crafters, my name is LeeAnn McKinney and I live with my wonderful crafty enabling husband, our 2 pups JJ and Chase, along with our kitty Kit Kat.
We have our “swimmers” as well… Koopa is our turtle, Silver and Apricot our goldfish, Cory and Cody are our cory fish, Gilligan the minnow and Picasso the plecko.
I have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and so far my 6 yo granddaughter loves stamping/crafting when I visit.
I am so excited to bring my clean and simple projects and tutorials to you throughout 2023.
I can be found all over social media as LeeAnnGetsCrafty!!!
Hi, I’m Nancy May, mother, sister, friend, licensed clinical social worker, creative, but you might know me as Handi Scandi. I have been crafting for many years – since my adult children were littles. It started as an inexpensive way to decorate my home to make it cozy for my family, and when my children loved to get messy with me in the process it became so much more. All of my children are creatives and creativity manifests itself differently in each of us. Stamping became my safe space, if you will, shortly after my youngest daughter passed away. I needed something to focus on rather than grief, and I remembered how much I loved stamping and card making. This crafty life has taken on a life of its own and I have been introduced to the wonderful world of card making on a much grander scale. As I learn more and more about art and the creative process I find myself drawn to mixed media, art journaling, grunge, stencils, sprays, pastes, and inks…glorious inks! I am an intuitive crafter who rarely has a plan, loves to get messy and inky and shows myself grace throughout the process. I reframe mistakes as opportunities and almost never throw things away. Through all of this I am developing my own style that I have coined grungy elegance. I am so excited to be a part of the Imagine Crafts team as it opens another door of exploration, creativity and discovery.
Hello! Sometimes you need a card for a special event, holiday or occasion and you may not have the right stamps for it. That’s one reason why I love having abstract stamps and solid image stamps. You can easily make a very cool card for any occasion and just add an appropriate sentiment to it to make it work for you. Let me show you how to make a Hanukkah card using abstract shapes and lots of blue inks from Imagine.
*Some affiliate links are used in this post. That means that if you shop through these links, I may receive a small compensation, at no cost to you. For more information, please see my Affiliates page.
Here are some of the supplies we will be using today. The top stamp set is specifically abstract shapes. The one underneath is actually fruits. but if you just look at the solid images of the set, they just look like funky blobs that are perfect for this technique.
Directions:
Step 1:
Start stamping the shapes across the middle of the card. Use different shades of blue and be sure to overlap the images. You can see my first image started off of the card front also.
*Pro Tip: Using some type of stamp positioning tool or platform is key for this technique, as you will probably want to re-stamp and image a couple of times to get a solid, crisp image. You can do it using a stamping block, but it is much easier with a positioning tool.
Step 2:
Continue to stamp the abstract shapes, varying the direction, size, shape, and color. You can absolutely repeat your shapes, but try turning them so that they appear different. I wound up repeating a couple of shapes and colors, but I kept them apart from each other.
Step 3:
Add some small elements. You can easily add interest to your abstract design by adding in some small embossed designs. Here, I repeated this dot pattern a few times by stamping it with VersaMark and then heat embossing it with gold. You can see that I also stamped my sentiment with VersaMark, and I am about to emboss it.
*Pro Tip: Be sure that all of your stamped images are completely dry before using embossing powder. Some inks, like VersaFine Clair take a long time to dry because they are pigment inks. Heat set your inks, add some anti-static powder, and sprinkle on embossing powder over your complete design to see if it’s dry. If the powder sticks, brush it off and repeat the process. Once the inks are dry, you can start stamping with VersaMark.
This is my finished card front. You can see that I added an additional cluster of dots and a couple of shapes to fill in the lower portion of the design. The panel is 4” x 5 1/4.”
Step 4:
Shake up some Fireworks! Spray and brush it on to your card base around the perimeter. Let dry.
Step 5:
Adhere your card front to the base.
The concept of this card isn’t difficult, nor is the technique, but sometimes we need to be reminded that we don’t have to have a specific stamp for every occasion. Having a couple of abstract sets, or sets with solid stamp like these make perfect cards for any occasion. You can even stamp out a bunch of these panels at once, and omit a sentiment until you need a card. Then you can add something that works for the situation. I hope this gave you some good ideas. Thanks for stopping by. Have an inspiring day!
Vertigo is a beautiful translucent material to use in creating projects, in today’s tutorial, I am sharing tips and hints to make your project shine! The perfect ink for this box is StazOn, as it is the only ink that will dry on Vertigo and other plastics.
Skill: Intermediate
Time: 1 hour
Directions:
Step1:
Vertigo can be cut with scissors OR with a simple die. Complex dies do not work well with most plastics, Vertigo included. This particular box needed 8.5” by 5” section of Vertigo, 12” x 12” sheets can be purchased directly from Imagine Crafts website. Recycled packaging may be substituted for Vertigo, however the results will not have the stunning effect the the patterns that Vertigo provides. The Pebbles pattern of Vertigo was used for my box.
Step 2:
Place a few drops ink from StazOn Blazing Red inker on a plastic surface to use as a palette. On the INSIDE of the box use a cotton swab to color each of the pebbles from the center out. A little goes a long way with the translucent colors.
Step 3:
Metallic StazOn ink is slightly less translucent than the other colors. To capture more shimmer, apply a drop or two of StazOn Metallic Gold on the INSIDE of the box and move the ink with a cotton swab to color around the pebbles.
Step 4:
Continue to add StazOn Metallic Gold ink to cover the remaining areas of the inside of the box. Set aside to dry, as the Metallic ink is a bit thicker and takes a longer to dry.
Step 5:
Using StazOn Jet Black, stamp the “Merry Christmas” sentiment on the OUTSIDE of the box. This keeps the interior of the box ink from lifting and to have the correct orientation.
Step 6:
Tear It! tape is perfect to hold the bottom of this gift box together. Assemble box and determine the best placement for the Tear It! tape. Unfold box and add Tear It! tape, my project called for five sections to hold the box in shape.
Remove Tear It! Tape liner and assemble gift box.
Decorate with matching ribbon and fibers to close the top and keep your gift secure.
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