How to Use Multiple Stamp Sets for One Card: Craftroom Mashup

Hello Altenew friends and Happy 2020! Norine here, joining you today with a card that is a complete mash-up of stamp sets, techniques, and styles. Sounds messy, right? Well, not if you unify a few of the elements! I also have a couple of little tips to share that you may not have thought of before now, that will be useful in your general card-making and paper crafting! Let us jump in!

The “Happy Birthday” card I'm showing you today was created with the Dot Botanicals Stamp and Die Set, Leaf Clusters Stamp and Die Set, Birthday Builder Stamp Set, Vintage Flowers Stamp Set and Vintage Roses Stamp and Die Set. I used the new Tranquility Ink to stamp the rose, and Rock Collection Inks to stamp the small leaves. Then I used Embossing Ink and Platinum Embossing Powder to stamp one of the background leaves.

To begin, I wanted striped patterned paper on my card panel and I found a couple of pieces in my stash that I thought could work well together. To give the overall design more energy, I decided to position the stripes at an angle which can be a tricky thing to accomplish and still keep the stripes running perfectly evenly. In order to achieve this, I taped two clean edges of the patterned paper together (see photo above) and flipped them over, placing the card base onto the paper where it would fit and have a pleasing tilt. I drew a pencil line around the card and used that to trim the excess paper off with my paper trimmer.

Once I had my background panel assembled and trimmed, I began stamping a variety of elements to combine on the card front. I'd like to say there is a magic formula for choosing the perfect combination of different elements, but truthfully it comes best by creating a wide variety of leaves and flowers, or other elements, and seeing which arrangement is most pleasing.

Even though the Dot Botanicals and the Leaf Clusters images are a little more modern, and the Vintage Flowers and Vintage Roses have, well, more of a “vintage feeling”, they can work together because I'm uniting them with a color scheme as well as the Birthday Builder sentiment font choices. I stamped all the leaves in combinations of the Rock Collection colors, and the Dot Botanicals (the Dot Botanicals leaf is stamped onto vellum paper, heat embossed and then die cut) and sentiment are each stamped with Embossing Ink and heat embossed with Platinum Embossing Powder, which is a very good color match with the Rock Collection colors. Those muted tones pair well with the broad wood grain stripe of the paper. Then I chose the Tranquility ink color family to stamp the rose with, that would coordinate with the blue striped paper on top.  Then, I've also united the elements by picking the more modern font for the “happy” and pairing it with a very different, script-y font for the “birthday”.

The next tip I want to share with you is one I learned from watching the best!

I've seen Jennifer McGuire do this to make sure that those pesky narrow stem ends of a stamped image align with the die for cutting it out. It's no criticism of photopolymer stamps that they sometimes stamp differently from the rigid outlines of a die; in fact, that's what we love about them, that they can be manipulated and arranged to suit our changing needs and still go back to their original form. So to ensure that the stem lined up perfectly with the die, I die cut the shape first, placed the negative portion of the paper in my stamping tool and fixed it in place with a strong magnet. Then I positioned the stamp into the opening left by the die-cut and closed the lid of the stamping tool to pick up the stamp and hold it perfectly positioned. Then I re-inserted the die cut back into its opening. You could have a piece of tape on the backside of the cardstock to hold the die-cut perfectly in place but I had some temporary adhesive on the back that worked just as well for me. Now you can stamp and everything is aligned on the die-cut just as it should be!

Once all my pieces were stamped and I was happy with the arrangement, I stamped the sentiment where it could peek out from behind the flower and leaves. Then I adhered all the other elements into place on the card panel and glued that to the card base.

I apologize for the lighting in the photos that don't capture the gleam of the platinum embossing powder because it really looks sharp and elegant in real life!

Below you will find links for all of the products I've used for this card. I hope I have encouraged you to pull out your stamp sets, old and new, elaborate and plain, and to see how they can work together! Thank you so much for visiting today and enjoy the rest of your day!

~SUPPLY LIST~

Dot Botanicals Stamp & Die Bundle [ ALTN ] Dot Botanicals Stamp Set [ ALTN ] Leaf Clusters Stamp Set [ ALTN ] Leaf Clusters Die Set [ ALTN ] Embossing Ink [ ALTN ] Birthday Builder Stamp Set [ ALTN ] Tranquility Oval Set [ ALTN ] Tranquility Mini Cube Set [ ALTN ] Misty Morning Crisp Dye Ink — Altenew [ ALTN ] Cloudy Sky Crisp Dye Ink — Altenew [ ALTN ] Nimbus Crisp Dye Ink — Altenew [ ALTN ] Dark Night Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ] Vellum Translucent Paper (25 sheets/set) [ ALTN ] Dot Botanicals Die Set [ ALTN ] Vintage Flowers Stamp Set [ ALTN ] Vintage Flowers Die Set [ ALTN ] Vintage Roses Add-On Stamp Set [ ALTN ] Vintage Roses Stamp Set – Altenew [ ALTN ] Rock Collection Oval Set [ ALTN ] Rock Collection Mini Cube Set [ ALTN ] Limestone Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ] Silver Stone Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ] Industrial Diamond Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ] Pure Graphite Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ] Platinum Crisp Embossing Powder [ ALTN ]