First quick impression
This set looks quite fun to use. I do like the look of layer flowers and if they are easy to use so much the better. The magazine shows some great ideas to do with the stamps but I can also think of my own ideas to do which is always a bonus. I am quite excited to see if my flowers will look as good as the ones in the magazine.
Testing the Peonies and Orchids Stamps
First of all, I want to point out, that I am a fairly experienced card maker and digital crafter but I am not as experienced with stamping techniques. Stamping and outline and colouring it in is nothing for me to worry about but I am very much describing the experience of quite a new crafter for techniques like this.
As usual, I used my Stamp platform with these stamps, you can read about it and why I need to use it in this post. The outline images were stamped in my archival ink which was spot on. I then chose some pairs of colours that seemed to work together to do the layers. The whole silhouette stamp was easy to line up with the outline but when it came to adding the second layer of colour the stamp did not line up as easily as it seemed. You can see the results of what I did here.
Analysing the Stamping
I’ll be honest I spent a long time lining these stamps up on my stamping platform. I took time and effort to stand directly above each one and they looked spot on at the point I attached the platform lid and inked them up to stamp. Looking at the images the top and bottom two are not too bad but the ones in the middle do not look right at all. Some of them were done in Distress Ink and others in Memento if you look at the blog header image it may give you a clue which was which.
Stamping and Colouring Comparison
This time I have added a third column. In this column, I used the outline stamp and then used Dreamees Dinky Inkies and Blending Fluid Pens to colour the image with two contrasting shades each. Looking at the images I think these coloured ones look much more natural than the stamped ones. What do you think?
Creating a Card
I decided to make a really simple clean card with the flowers I was happy with. This is quite a different style for me… I cut out the flowers on my ScanNCut leaving a 1mm border around each. I decided to use a 4″ square card blank to make quite a cute card. I stamped a suitable greeting from the Hunkydory Rose Bouquet Stamp Set into the corner of the card. The central flower was glued down and then I fastened the others around it with two different thicknesses of sticky pads. There you have it a really simple card. Do you like this sort of clean card or do you prefer the fancier ones? Let me know in the comments below or come and join the Facebook Group.
The Verdict
This is a bit of a tricky one, I very much like the outline images and I really wish I found the layered stamp easier to use. I have an awful lot of floral stamps, especially my Dreamees ones, but I don’t think at this moment I have any Peonies or Orchids. However, one of the reasons for doing my big craft de-clutter and organisation project (if you are new to the blog check out the post about it) is that I don’t actually know all that I have in my craft stash so there potentially could be other similar stamps in my stash already. Therefore for the first time, I am not going to make an instant “Kon Marie” decision but put this set in a temporary pending collection. If I do not have any similar outline stamps (either rubber or digital) I will be adding this collection to my stash but if I have some similar then I will sadly let these go to a new home. Later on in my project I’ll make sure I come back and update you with my decision.
Until next time,
Gentle Hugs,
Susan
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Hi Susan, I think you did okay with the overall alignment of the layers…one thing, I also prefer to see is when a layer or outline is slightly offset, it gives it a screen printed effect! Your hand coloured versions are very nice…making the stamp set even more versatile! Happy crafting, Richard x