A New Twist on Stamping Basics

Stamping is a great way to add an element of design to your scrapbooks.

Stamping is such an old crafting technique, it seems like there's not really much you could do with stamps that would make your pages seem modern.

Wrong!

There are so many uses for stamps, I couldn't possibly list them all in one article.

You can use stamps to create dimension, add colour, fill a space, journal, or even as the focal point of your page.

I know you're remembering the stamps you had as a kid. Once you'd stamped everything you owned with your name, there didn't seem to be much else left to do.

Well, you're much more crafty now, and there are a ton of options to look into.

You can use a basic ink pad for your stamping or you can step it up a notch and colour your stamps with inky felts. This way your image can contain more than one colour... flowers and their stems don't have to be the same colour anymore. You can have red flowers, green stems and leavevs, and a yellow ribbon holding them all together. How nice.

You can also heat emboss your stamped images to give them a raised, smooth look that will make them pop off the page.

You can stamp a pattern all over your backround pages to make your own unique paper. (If you combine this idea with some simple heat embossing, you can make those beautiful pages with the 3-D tecture that are so expensive in craft stores).

However you use your stamps, don't get stuck in an ink pad and rubber stamp rut, there are so many options out there right now, you'd just be limiting yourself.