Getting Creative With Stamps & Pencils

Hi, Marlene here, taking a break from Christmas preparations to do a non-holiday scrapbook page. I am showing a technique that I learned from a Close to My Heart rep.  It's a great way to put your acrylic stamps to good use for layouts and cards.   So far, I cannot bring myself to spend $6 on a marker and have been learning to use Prisma Color pencils.  At around $1.50, Prisma pencils are soft and blend together well, I love the colors.  Markers or pencils will make no difference, I will say "pencil" because that's what I used.  I admit to not being the best at shading but the good news is that it gets better with practice.  The main point of this tutorial, while I will attempt to explain shading some, is really about stamping on the image twice to create a crisp edge over colors.
For this project you will need:
white cardstock
acrylic stamp (s) with block (a non see through stamp would be very difficult - read impossible - to use for this)
3 shades of the same color - markers or pencils     if using pencils - odorless paint thinner   
Qtips
light colored stamp pad ( I used Brilliance Platinum Planet pigment ink)
dark colored stamp pad ( I used Staz On Jet Black solvent ink)

With the light colored ink pad, stamp the image onto white cardstock.  Since I knew that I would be cutting the image from the larger page, I outlined the block.  It's a good idea to leave the stamp on the block for the time being, that will make it easier to line up later, especially with the outline.  Firstly, with the lightest color pencil fill in the image.  Try to imagine your image as 3D, so the high points will be lighter than edges.   With the medium color begin shading in your low spots and with the darkest color shade even more.  Go over the whole image again with the lightest color pencil.  If you are using pencils, applying paint thinner with a Qtip will blend the colors together without taking away the shading.  Allow to dry.  For the final step, apply the dark ink pad to your stamp then align the stamp back over the original stamped image and lightly apply the ink.  The second stamping is tricky, check that all sides of the stamp are lined up with the original print.   You can color in small areas to finish if you were slightly off.

I really like the effect of the double stamping, I think the 3 little monsters created with stamps are almost as cute as the one in the photo.

Something I learned unintentionally while creating this page: the title was slightly too large so I put pop dots under 3 letters so I could squeeze the other letters together, add dimension and keep with my "messy" look.