Christmas Collage: Stretching Your Christmas Stamps

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This card has been a long time in the making. You know when you have an idea and you start it, but then you become distracted (squirrel), sooooo the project sits there for long time gathering dust. Well this card I started laying out and stamping last fall at a card retreat. At this point I have no clue what distracted me so that the project ended up partially forgotten, sitting waiting to be finished. Until now. One thing I am trying to be good about this year is pulling from that pile of long lost projects and completing them.

 
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Get the look:

  • Start with a cup of coffee or tea, whatever suits your fancy, pull out your bin/box/drawer of Christmas stamps and set yourself up in a comfortable chair. Enjoy looking through all the gorgeous stamps you have curated over the years and pick out some stamp sets with small images that would fit perfectly into a collage. Make sure you find some even smaller filler stamps to fill in the white space between images.

  • Pick your media of choice, in my case I chose copic markers, and suitable paper and ink pad. Start stamping.

  • To get a balance look I start off with stamping an image slightly off centre. It gives me a focal point and also helps me space the other images as I move away from that point. You know, if I started outside and moved inwards I’d end up with a big white spot in the centre.

  • Have no fear, if you do end up with a little bit of trapped white space that’s what the smaller filler stamps are for. I used snowflakes which are a perfect size to fill in any gaps and makes the card look balanced.

  • Now save the project for a year. No, no, no, kidding. Colour away.

  • Because it’s a fairly busy background I like to limit my colour palette. This year I’ve kinda had a thing for non-traditional festive colours.

  • Die cut with a scalloped edge die or any other rectangle die just slightly smaller than 41/4”x51/2”. Mount onto card base. I like some depth so I used crafters foam cut to size.

  • Finally collage backgrounds deserve a big ol’ sentiment in some sparkly or shiny paper. Since I love sentiments to stand off the card I tend to build them with 3 or 4 layers of cardstock.

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Supplies:

Pretty sure when I stamped this card last year all these stamp sets where available to buy, but sadly some of them are not around anymore. However I’m sure you’ll have similar small stamps on another stamp set you own.

  • Mama Elephant - Cool Penguins

  • Simon Says Stamp (SSS) - Party with Ugly Sweater

  • Neat & Tangled/SSS Stamptember - Holiday Helper

  • Waffle Flowers - Stocking

  • Wplus9 Holiday Cheer

  • My Favourite Things - Merry Christmoose

  • Concord & 9th - Merry Die