My First Tutorial!

Welcome to my very first stamp tutorial!  I took over 50 pictures during the 2-day process of making this rubber stamp binder, but I narrowed it down to only 29.  lol  Enjoy!

Since Wendy's Studio 490 stamp sets are so large, I found some 20 x 30 sheets of chipboard at Dick's online, and cut one down to two pieces 12-3/4" x 6".  I wanted my colors to show true, so I covered both front & back covers with 2 coats of gesso.

Once completely dry, I used some low tack tape to mark off sections.

I lightly inked on four colors (Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean, Broken China, & Chipped Sapphire), starting with the lightest color.

After adding all four colors, I misted with water (the more you mist, the more the colors will blend & run).

I wanted them to run alot, so I added lots of water.  So much, that I went back and added more colors, re-misted, and dried.

Oops!  Added so much color, that not only did the water misting splatter the ink onto my white area, it also bled through under my tissue tape border.  I added two more coats of gesso and left it all to dry overnight.  I had so much ink on them this morning, that I still had to dry them with my heat gun!  lol

Now to decorating them ... I used some great (apropos) stamps from the Rubber Stamp Art set.  *while creating the link for that set on Simon Says Stamp's website, I put the title in the search bar, and 37 pages of products came up!  haha  Note to self ... search with set numbers from now on.*

I added some dots using Coffee Archival ink and Seriously Art.  I had a tough time finding a link for this set--finally found it on the Stamper's Anonymous site, and it's set #LCS034.

I used Wendy's white embossing past and the Wildflowers & A Bird stencil.  After drying with my heat gun, I flipped the stencil over and made another flower.  *IMPORTANT--when using embossing pastes with your stencils, remember to clean them with warm water & mild soap immediately after use*

I added some black embossing paste with the Everyday Words stencil.

When all the pastes were completely dry, I colored the flowers with Distress markers:  Crushed Olive, Milled Lavender & Dusty Concord.

I thought I needed more in the background, so I added some script text from the Live and Make Art (LCS038) set with Olive Archival ink.

I added some black dots by placing the stencil back over the flower and covering up the openings in the stencil that I didn't want inked.

Now for some fun!  I've been wanting to try this technique of coloring the embossing paste that Wendy had on her blog here.

Since it's for the covers of a book that'll get knocked around a bit, I used Archival ink instead of Distress cause I thought it might be tougher.

Mix it up well ...

tape down the stencil when covering a large area ...

and schmeer away!

Love it!

I added some Scattered Straw and Vintage Photo around the edges and lightly swiped on the surface.

For the insides of the covers, I used much more color on the top sections because I didn't want any stamping, and instead of embossing paste, I just used Crushed Olive Distress ink.

The holes for Wendy's pages are very large, so I punched several times with my Crop-a-dile.

Then I used a thin file to clean up the holes better.

The flowers looked a little lost, so I outlined them heavily with my black journaling pen, and doodled around the edges.

I also used a white Gelly Roll pen over the words and image from this stamp to make them stand out more.

I decided to use some 3" binder rings I found at Office Depot.  They'e huge, but now I can hold 11 pages in each binder instead of only 7 with the 2" rings.  I also put some Wonder Tape between the sections and added a Night of Navy (Stampin' Up!) grosgrain ribbon and knotted.

OK, so it only took me about 45 minutes to write/edit this tutorial, so I think I might do more.  I hope you enjoyed it and try some of these techniques.