The Kissing Technique

I'll talk about making a card here but you can adapt this idea for use on paper or stampable surfaces anywhere! Try it on your scrapbook pages to make special embellishments and borders (Note: be sure to use archival, acid free ink in your scrapbooks, especially if you are using the ink near your photos so the chemicals in the ink do not harm your photos)

You will need:

• A card blank and mounting paper
• One solid shaped plus one line stamp (such as a rectangle and a flower image)
• Adhesive of your choice
• A stamp-a-ma-jig can help here to get your images lined up on your project where you want them (see the Papercraft Tools page for how to use this)
• Other card embellishments of your choice

What to do:

• Choose your mounting paper. Now ink up the solid shaped stamp
• Before making your image with just this one colour on it, use the uninked line stamp to make images on the solid image (hence the kissing technique!)so that the lined shape appears on the solid image. (Or you can ink the line stamp up in a different colour to create a contrasting coloured image
• Now you can press your image on to the mounting paper, using the stamp-a-ma-jig if you like to line it up
• Trim, mount and use your image to finish your card

More ideas:

• Try different stamp combinations and colours to get different effects
• Try a metallic ink with the line stamp image
• Use more than one line image on your solid image, or more colours of ink (metallics are nice!)
• You can get a softer effect if you spritz your doubly inked stamp with a fine mist of water before impressing it on your surface
• Twist your line stamp as you impress it on the solid stamp for an interesting effect
• Try loading your line stamp with bleach instead of another colour of ink before impressing it on the solid stamp

Whatever you decide to do, enjoy playing with the Kissing Technique!