Just married/Photo stamping technique

Today's card uses a photo stamp from Stampsmith - they have really lovely photo stamps.

Photo stamping require's a little bit of extra patience to get a really good image. In order to use a photo stamp you will need to use a dye ink pad - I have tried most of them and personally I find that Archival dye ink pads work the best for me. Others that are good include Versafine and Memories.

You will also want to stamp onto glossy cardstock - now I find that the very very glossy cardstocks don't work for me so I use low gloss paper - either a paper called Novatech that I buy locally in SA or alternatively a low gloss paper that I buy from Oxford Impressions. Both work brilliantly.

The first step in photo stamping is to make sure that your stamp is clean and free of any bits of dust/glitter/powder/cats hairs etc. I normally take a bit of double sided tape and tap it onto the stamp all over to make sure that I pick up any stray bits. If you are using an unmounted photo stamp I also find its best to stamp onto a mouse pad so that you have that bit of extra cushion as it were. The next step is to ink up your stamp well. Some people use a brayer but I don't bother. Then its time to stamp your image onto the glossy paper. Press firmly and keep pressing for at least a minute or so - don't rush this bit otherwise you will find that parts of your image have not transferred. Then hold the paper with one hand and carefully lift off the stamp.

If you don't have a perfect image don't despair - vintage photos often arn't perfect as they have spots and scratches on. Also you can easily disguise any imperfections by placing vellum on top of the photo as I did on this card(not that I didn't have lovely image on this occasion)

Photo stamping gives you some really wonderful results but you do need to work slowly and no rush the process. I find if I am slightly tired then that results in less than perfect images so it really is a technique that you must do when you have spare time and plenty of energy. If you like photo stamps but arn't having much luck with the images then I can highly recommend the Toybox photo stamps as they seem to give perfect image nearly every time. I also often find that mounted photo stamps seem to work a bit easier than the unmounted images.

Now on to today's card.

Materials: Black cardstock, Silver cardstock, White glossy cardstock, Vellum, Black and white dot paper, Stampsmith photo stamp, Black Archival dye ink pad, Rhinestones

Method: Stamp wedding image as per above instructions onto white glossy cardstock and allow to dry. Fold black cardstock to create top fold card. Attach silver and then black and white spot papers to cardfront. Then attach layer of silver and layer of black cardstock to cardfront. Attach photo image and then place piece of vellum (i tore the bottom edge) over the photo and secure in place with 2 small glue dots and place rhinestones over the glue dots.

Do give photo stamping a go - it really is a brilliant technique.