Yesterday I shared this card which was one of my swap cards at the April 2019 Onstage event.

If you’ve been crafting for any length of time, then you’ll probably have collected a variety of sentiment stamps. Instead of just using them individually, why not combine them to develop your own themed “Designer Series Paper”. Here we’ve used birthday sentiments but you could just as easily combine thank you sentiments, or Christmas words.

The technique outlined below uses the Stamparatus.

It’s easy to make a single card without the use of the Stamparatus but the tool both helps to keep all the individual sentiments straight and makes multiples super quick.

Of course if you use photopolymer stamps it’s even easier to line them up. As long as you use all the same style, either all photopolymer or all cling/clear mount, the stamps will stamp at the same level and produce clear images.

Step 1 – Lay the size of card front or card front layer on your work surface and place a Stamparatus plate over the top. Arrange your sentiments, starting the largest or key stamped building others around it. It doesn’t matter if some of the less important sentiments hang over the edge as long as the key one is fully placed within the layer.

Step 2 – Line up your card front layer and test stamp to ensure that the stamps are straight. Tip – protect your card by covering it with a sheet of acetate to test stamp and then clean the ink off after use and keep to use again. If making multiples then mark the position of the layer (we used a corner mark on the lower left corner) and note where magnets can be placed.

Step 3 – Ink and stamp, reinking and stamping again, without moving the layer, if you need better coverage.

Step 4 – Decide how much negative space you want to leave and use smaller image stamps to fill it if you prefer. (Here we used flowers and leaves from the Perennial Birthday set to infill). These small images can be stamped using the Stamparatus or with individual blocks.

I’ll be back with other samples that use this technique soon. Please let me know how you get on if you give it a try.

Thanks for stopping by.

If you have any questions then please leave me a comment or email me.

Sara xx