CTMH Product Spotlight Blog Hop: Background Stamping Technique

This month's Close To My Heart product spotlight blog hop is featuring different background stamping techniques. With only seven blogs, it won't take you long to hop but you will sure learn a lot! (If you've arrived from Jen B.'s blog, you're following the path. Head to Toni's blog next!)

My layout uses a few simple techniques. Since the theme was tubing, I used several circular stamp images to mimic the tubes without (hopefully) going overboard. I stamped them in a random pattern (AKA random stamping), overlapping some of them as I stamped. To make it even easier (I'm all about Close To My Heart's motto "faster, simpler, easier!"), I also "cluster stamped," meaning that I placed several stamps on one block to stamp a few images at once. A little Cocoa ink sponged on the edges of the Colonial White card stock softens the edges too.

To random stamp successfully, think about an imaginary triangle. Stamp your first image, reink and stamp it again, thinking about making a triangle with the images. Your third time stamping should be the third point of the imaginary triangle. Now use one of those points as the start of a new triangle, and stamp twice more. Continue stamping in this not-so-random pattern until your background is complete. A good habit while random stamping is to turn your block a bit each time so that your stamp isn't always pointing in the same direction on your project. (What I am trying to explain is not at all easy to see with a bunch of circles!)

Finally, to add more interest to my stamping, I overlapped some of the circles. If you look really closely, I highlighted the centers of the Sweet Leaf "bursts" and the centers of the smallest Crystal Blue circles with dots of Liquid Glass. Also, can you see the Liquid Glass I added to the water photos? It is subtle but effective.

This layout is based on the sketch from the Moon Doggie Workshop on the Go (last fall), but I used the Emporium paper pack and the "gallon-quart-pint" rule for my color scheme. If you look at my layout, what color is used the most? That is the "gallon" color. The "quart" color is used less than the main one, and the "pint" color is used the least of all. (I did use Colonial White as my base too, but I'm not really counting that as a color here.) So can you guess my "gallon-quart-pint" colors?

My "gallon" color is blue, and I used two shades: Twilight and Crystal Blue. Sweet Leaf is my "quart" color, with a "pint" of Cocoa thrown in for good measure.

If you've read this far, you get extra credit for attending my "class.":) Be sure to hop to the head of the class by heading next to Toni's blog to check out her technique. You get an A+ for today's lesson!

Supplies from Close To My Heart: Emporium paper pack; Connections, Chocolate Alphabet Large, and Chocolate Alphabet Small stamp sets; Crystal Blue, Twilight, Sweet Leaf, and Cocoa inks; Winter Cozy Mini Medley accents; Liquid Glass; sponge

Other: McGill 3" file tab punch

{Layout 2010 #38}