If you were to see this card and like it, you might ask where the stamp could be found, so that you could make one of your own. And the answer would be that it can’t be found - because it doesn’t exist. It is actually a combination of several stamp images.
“So, what’s new about that?” you might ask. Stamp artists have been combining images using “masking” techniques for a long time. And my hat is off to anyone who has mastered the masking technique. It is exacting and demanding, and you must be an expert at wielding scissors. My attempts have been unmitigated disasters.
No matter how skilled you may be at masking, certain obstacles are difficult to overcome. But, we are going to overcome them here. We will combine outline and solid and a hand-carved stamp - and make them all look like they belong together. We are going to turn solid stamps to outline so we can paint them. We will reverse images and move the parts around or leave parts out altogether.When the art of tracing is added to the procedure, all of this becomes not only possible, but easy!
Stamps of your choice
A permanent Black Sharpie marker with the Ultra Fine point (or any permanent black marker pen that will draw a fine line)
White paper, black ink, tape
Inexpensive vellum or tracing paper and
Sheer Heaven (for the final)
Color (we used Silk Colors by Jacquard)
Choose a group of stamps you think might look good together. Pay attention to relative size, but that is all you have to be concerned with. They may be outline or solid, wrong facing or right facing, foam or hard rubber, and they may have parts you don’t necessarily want.
Our Stamps:
Butterfly - Stampabilities
3 Butterflies and Flowers - foam fabric stamps by Cool Girl and/or Anita’s Fabric Stamps
(I remove the tabs upon purchase and use them to fold lampshades, so it is hard to re-identify those stamps)
Dragonfly - Angi-B&Co (we didn’t use it in the end, but we thought we might)
Flower Pot - very badly hand-carved stamp by yours truly (but it doesn’t matter because I can “fix” it while tracing)
The first rule of tracing is that you must not obsess over how perfect your line is. The more hand drawn the line looks, the more “artistic” the piece. The second rule is that your line must be somewhere in the vicinity of the one you’re tracing - if you expect the image to be somewhat the same. So, you need some control, and the third rule is that you will always draw a better, smoother, more controlled line if you are drawing away from your body. Don’t know if this is our reptilian brain remnants reacting to the old adage that the “pen is mightier than the sword” or what, but you feel more comfortable when the pen is moving away from your body. Therefore, the line you draw is more steady. (Please note that this is one of those priceless, universally useful tidbits that I am likely to throw into an article you might not have chosen to “click” to).
Because Rule #3 is true, you need to be able to freely turn your work so you are always drawing away from your body. In tracing, this means that you should tape the tracing paper in place with removable tape, so you don’t have to keep realigning it with the image.
Figure 1. Stamp all the images on a sheet of white paper, using a dense black ink that will be easily visible through your tracing paper. If the stamped images aren’t perfect, it doesn’t matter. They are just “working art”.
Then, tape an inexpesive piece of tracing paper or vellum in place over the first image to be traced. Since this will be the preliminary version, placement on the page doesn’t matter as long as there will be room to add all the parts (i.e. stay away from the edges).
Figure 2. I first traced the flower pot making it look better than my awful carving.
I am also learning as I trace this image that I don’t care for the leaves which look like little “blobs”, so I will be changing them, moving them, and removing some of them in the final.
If seeing the extra images showing through confuses you, you can eliminate the problem by stamping your images on separate pages instead of all on one. I find it helps me put them together to see them together, but, I am already very confused and not in much danger of becoming more so.
But I don’t like it.
Something about the composition bothers me and I “feel” that the butterfly should be up and to the right a little, so I will plan for that move in the final tracing.
I also feel the need for “something” in the bottom left area of the image - probably to balance the strong directional pull to the upper right that is exerted by the curve of the first flowers and the butterfly’s flight pattern. I will add a second, small butterfly there in the final.
By untaping the Sheer Heaven and moving it around, I choose a new place for the butterfly (see Figure 7) and trace it into place. Then, I realign the flower pot, retape the Sheer Heaven and trace only the parts of the second flower stem that you can see behind the butterfly. As a final touch, I go back to my original stamp image sheet and trace a small butterfly into place lower left.
I just “feel” that I want brilliance in this piece, so I choose Silk Colors by Jacquard - adding colors wet-into-wet to avoid a flat color look (see the final version at the top of this page).
This piece is ready to be matted and framed, affixed to a card front (Xyron) or used as a page in an altered book or journal.
Now, let’s try some other exciting ideas. . .
