Experimenting with Inchies

Back in July I bought some of the Darkroom Door Garden Inchie stamps and up until last weekend I had only made bookmarks with them.

Inchies are exactly what they say they are - stamps which measure 1 inch square and can have any design in them. This particular set has 24 different stamps which feature butterflies, birds, plants and flowers.

The bookmarks I made are below and are really simple to make:

I took a piece of white card and a craft brush (an old fashioned shaving brush can be used for this as well). I took some co-ordinating distress inks and using the brush, swiped the colour over the card, starting with the lightest colour first.

Then I took the stamp I wanted and inked it up well with a black memento ink pad, making sure the stamp is well covered with the ink. Then stamp onto the coloured card and cut out the image. They were then mounted onto coloured, then black, then coloured card, with a piece of ribbon added under the black card.

There are so many co-ordinating designs in this set that the combinations are endless.

Then, last weekend I realised I hadn't done much with these stamps so had some inspiration to make some cards with them. The first one I made is below, which builds on the bookmark idea:

First of all, I took a piece of white card and swiped over pine needles, broken china and dusty concord distress stains, starting with the broken china as the base. I then spritzed the card with water and dried it. Then, on one half of the card I swiped over picket fence distress stain to lighten the colour. Then I spritzed with water again and dried it with the heat tool.

I chose 9 stamps that went well together and stamped them as above with the memento ink onto the side that hadn't been lightened. I then cut them out and arranged them onto a piece of purple card. I then mounted this onto a piece of black card.

Before sticking to the coloured card I used gold perfect pearls and painted a thin border round the edge of the card. This could also be done with a gold gel pen, but I didn't have one so used the next best thing!

I cut a piece of black card to cover a 6x6 card blank and stuck the whole piece onto it. I stamped the sentiment onto some spare coloured card and mounted it onto black and again edged it with the gold.

Perfect pearls are one of my favourite mediums to use in crafting but I normally use them wet as a paint, so I thought I would experiment with using them dry on the next card:

Again, I cut a piece of black card to fit a 6x6 card blank. I took some bubble wrap, cut it to size and stuck it onto an acrylic block with pritt stick. I then covered the bubble wrap with versamark embossing ink and stamped it onto the black card.

I then brushed over the perfect pearl powder so it stuck to the ink. I did this randomly to create the rainbow effect. I removed any excess powder by rubbing the image with a tissue and sprayed it with hairspray.

Yes you heard right - hairspray acts as a very thin glue covering which stops the powder being rubbed off. Just spray it lightly over the image and leave to dry.

I then took this one step further and swiped the versamark to cover a piece of black card. I then brushed the pearl powder over the stamped area. I did this diagonally, again to create a rainbow.

Using Stayzon ink this time, I stamped 3 of the inchie images over the dusted card. Before cutting out, I sprayed with the hairspray again. This technique is quiet effective because the pearl sheen of the powders shows through the black ink so the whole image shines.

I painted round the edge of the images with the gold perfect pearls, mounted them onto a black card strip and painted round this as well.

For the sentiment, I stamped it onto the brushed card and die cut the shape round it and painted the edge again. This card took a bit longer to make as it was more fiddly but it is worth the extra effort because the effect looks brilliant after it's finished.

I decided I was a bit bored of black by now so the next card is much more colourful and again, fairly simple to make:

I chose 4 co-ordinating distress inks: broken china, tattered rose, victorian velvet and milled lavender. I then chose 8 different inchie stamps and stamped them round in a pattern on a white piece of card, varying the colours. I then cut them out and arranged them round a 6x6 card blank. I made sure that no same design or colour was next to each other.

The butterfly and the sentiment in the middle were stamped using blue pearlescent ink.

I am quite pleased with the three cards and now plan to use the inchie stamps to create some co-ordinating notebooks. The stamps are very versatile and can be used for a large variety of crafting projects.