THREE WAY | STAMP SAVVY

Hi again! I'm back with another edition of the Three Way series, where we show you how to stretch your stash in creative ways. Today we are going to get Stamp Savvy and have a little fun with stamps, digi-style, so no mess involved!

I don't know about you, but I am guilty of just grabbing a stamp (or brush set) from a kit and using it as is. I am big on adding a little painty stamp or splatter under or near my photo area sort of as a foundation and to draw the eye into the photo. I know a lot of digi scrappers also like to do this because I see so many gorgeous pages in the galleries with stamps used in such a way. So I thought it might be fun to take a look at our stamps in a new light.

The photo I will be working with today is a little snapshot, taken during the intermission, of the very cool stage for the broadway play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (which I loved by the way!). The stage was ultra modern, minimal and just so sleek with a grid design and done in all black and white.

1.) The first stamp, in my stash, that caught my eye was a round scruffy brush from the Dreams | Elements kit.  I thought the scruffy circle shape might be a nice contrast to all those squares in the photo so I made a grid of circles with that round stamp. My page needed some color though, so I added another round scruffy stamp, from Mark the Date | Elements and layered these on top. I also varied the colors. My favorite method for changing the color of a solid stamp is to use the Styles panel and select a new Color Overlay. Quick and Easy!

Here's how my page turned out ... just from taking 2 little round stamps, creating a grid pattern in playful colors, and I end up with a bold foundation for my photo.

2.) The next trick I wanted to try was to use two different stamps to create a "relief" look on my page. You probably already have a method of how you go about this in your program, but just in case, I'll share my method in Photoshop CC with you.

I took chunky dry brush stroke stamp from the Stamp It No. 2 kit, made some duplicates, and layered them up to create a base for photo. I used my quick and easy Styles > Color Overlay trick to get the stamp the same color as the stage grid in the photo. I merged all the layers of the dry brush stamp together. Now I want to create the "relief effect". I added a layer mask to get ready for the next step.  Then I took a sweet little heart scatter stamp from All Eyes on You | Elements and placed it over the base/ dry brush stroke stamp. If you hover over the little image of your stamp (in your Layers Palette) and CMD click on a Mac or Ctrl Click on a PC, you will have a selection around that item, in my case the cute heart scatters. Then I hid the heart scatter layer. I went back to my merged dry brush stroke layer and made sure I clicked on the mask in my layers palette. I used my brush tool (paint bucket works too) and filled it in with black. The selection keeps the paint strokes inside the heart area so there are no worries about painting perfectly here! (Note: Black conceals when using layers masks.) CMD D or Ctrl D gets rid of the selection and I now have a whole or "relief" in the original dry brush stamp whereever a heart had been. I can see my background paper through the stamp. I repeated this a few times on my page and I love the look it creates.

Here's how my page turned out with this "relief stamp" technique. Fun and fresh, in a subtle way. This would be gorgeous with some pretty floral stamps (but that just did not match my photo!). I'll try that next time!

3.) The last little bit of stamp savvy I want to share with you is to use a stamp to fill in a shape. Instead of just dropping that stamp as is on your page ... let's rework it somehow. Some ideas are to fill in a big bold geometric shape ... like a chevron or stripes. Or a big circle. Depending on your page, the stamp you chose ... the container or shape you decide on can take your page in million different directions! For mine I chose to play on those grid shapes in the photo! I loved the contrast of the rounded edge frame against the squares of the stage in the photo. So my container or shape was a rounded rectangle. I used my shape tool to create a rectangle to size and picked a radius of 40 (I believe). I chose a brick/black stamp from the Heimili |Elements kit and smushed it so the shape resembled a square more than a brick. I made multiple copies of my stamp and placed them over the rectangle to fill it in (not worrying about the stamp falling off the edges ... that actually makes it look really good! Once you have all your stamps in place, merge them together. Then I just made a selection around my rounded rectangle by using CMD click on a Mac or Ctrl Click on a PC. Go to Select and Inverse (so you have everything outside the rounded rectangle selected now). Then I went back to my blocks stamp layer, and hit delete. Everything outside the rounded rectangle container disappeared and I had a fun grid-like messy stamp ready for my page.

This is how my page turned out creating a container or shape and filling it with my chosen stamp.

So ... don't settle for the same old "drop a stamp and go" look on your next page ... get Stamp Savvy and turn up your digi stamping skills on your next page!