When I create designs for my yearly 24 tags of Christmas series, I often make more than gets used – and I pick out the ideas with the most teachability in them, or a good bit of advice for design or color or something. This year the one that got cut was pyrography (wood burning!) – mostly due to the cost of the tools! But – after finishing the class, I also realized there was a way to create the look but with just stamping. So that’s what you’ll see today!
Tutorial: How to Stamp a Faux Pyrography Christmas Tag
If you have an uncle with a kit in his garage, it’s well worth borrowing it and having a go at burning a piece of wood. Just stamp an image and draw over it with the tool. But if not….you can just stamp!
Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!
Pyrography (the art of wood burning)
While it requires specialized tools, this is a fun process that smells so yummy! I created a tag using a Sunny Studios stamp called Seasons Greetings – and added my own wood burned distressing to make a more rustic wood texture.
Stamped Faux Pyrography
Stamping in Vintage Photo Distress Ink, and adding water to make it bleed just a little, will help it look like it’s been burned in – stamp on top with Versafine Onyx Black too, which serves 2 purposes:
Darkens the lettering and lets the brown stick out past it.
If the tag gets damp, the black will stay put.
Distress using a blending tool of any kind, and the ink pad itself. Tap the edges with the black pad to add more contrast!
Go contact your uncle!
Have you got a family FB group or text thread where you can ask if anyone has a wood burning kit? You might find an uncle with one in the wood shop somewhere. Borrow it and make a few ornaments and tags this Christmas! And let that uncle or grandpa tell you stories and share what he’s made too.
To celebrate (mourn?) Endangered Species Day – let’s make a tiger. Out of itty bitty teeny weeny stamps!
Psst a project for you
On Monday I posted some easy ways you can use your tiny stamps – one of which is a nod to tomorrow’s Endangered Species Day holiday. Download them HERE and color them up to post on your social media!
The stamps are by a company called SniggleSloth that I found by accident on Amazon – but they have an online store with a gazillion images, you can get them in many sizes, plus they have different wood shapes for the tops. Kind of fun! They do roll around though, so there’s that.
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If you’ve collected rubber stamps at all, you have a lot of tiny images. Some are just small ones within big sets, others are planner stamps or full sets of intentionally little ones. You can use them with others in their sets – or turn them into projects of their own! Any brand works – and any coloring media! Let’s explore some ways in today’s tutorial to translate these beyond what we normally might think up.
The first project is one you can make large if you like – this one is on a sheet of A4 drawing paper, lightweight….I traced the basic shape of a whale, then used frisket film to mask the OUTside parts – then I was only stamping on the INside. I used an xacto knife to cut away the areas for the densest parts of the florals, stamped by applying Tombow water-based markers onto the stamp, then pressing to the paper. (Art Impressions stamps need to be attached to an acrylic block, and AI has some great tiny blocks for that.) For the lighter areas, I stamped those sections last, with only light colors and less dense.
Project 2 is a little complex – a viewer made me this accordion sketchbook a lonnnnng time ago and it sat around here wanting desperately to be used! I had been so busy making card videos for years that it just never made it to the top of the pile – until now. Yay! Thank you to whoever made it! (Some of you send me things from time to time and I really do try to use them!)
I drew out the critters on each page, using a sharpie and some waterproof black ink and a brush. Then I used the frisket film to mask the animals, white tape for the outside edges, and stamped various background tiny stamps— some from Art Impressions, some from Lawn Fawn sets. The backgrounds were colored in with a new set of Zig Clean Color pens.
The third project is a little lighter on the masking! Only the nose has a sharp edge on my panda, I let the rest just be floating hearts for ears and eye patches – stamps are from the All Inside Bear set, layered with stamping inks, and only the nose and mouth and eyes were masked with the frisket film this time.
Which one might you try out this week? Endangered Species Day is Saturday so see if you can get a project ready to post on your social media to raise awareness and encourage charitable donations!
Join the Peace Love & Art challenge
Last week I announced the Peace Love & Art challenge – I’m excited to see what everyone creates over the next few months! Whether you’re a stamper, a painter, a doodler, journalist – whatever you make….let’s keep going and not let summer take us away from it! Challenges will be adaptable – you’ll be able to create quick small projects (and get ideas for them like today’s video) or start something indepth. Some challenges might send you out to summer activities for inspiration! New classes and bonus content, lots of fun is coming. Oh and don’t forget to get the Artventure App, since a bunch of the bonus content will be in the Tiny Tutorials class! A few challenges will require uploading to the community board there; you don’t have to pay the $3 for the TT class, you can get to the board after registering for the free class. Anyhow – go get the app here. And sign up for the Peace Love & Art email list here!
Supplies
Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. If you choose to shop using my EH (Ellen Hutson) links, please accept cookies on that site in order to retain the link to my blog, or that compensation does not happen for me. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art
Have you thought about stamping and doodling to make Christmas gifts out of office supplies? I have had one of these “cubes” for years and years, bought at a now-closed stamp store with the intent to stamp on it. Never did, but….this was the year to tackle it. And I bought a bunch of others to alter as well, and tried a bunch of techniques to do it.
Thanks much to Derwent for accidentally sending me some paint pens! They’re pretty cool (and there’s a pen with MY yellow!)….they work on both black and white, mostly, as you can see in the swatches.Just the paler of the yellows is hard to see on white. I need to get out a black sketchbook soon….
This one is made for ME! I loved the graph paper, it’s already been fun and helpful for doodling stuff – and the cube was partly inspiration for a new class coming on Friday. (You’re gonna love it.)
This cube has a hole in it for a pen; you might find this in your local office supply store if you need the place for the pen. These aren’t sticky notes, they’re tear-off pages.
I found this one on Amazon after picking one up in a local shop here – white plastic case to color up with easy alcohol ink pouncing, then stamping the pages with my AI watercolor flower stamps. I bought this one a while back at the dollar store – couldn’t find a link for it, sorry! Alcohol ink colors Sunshine Yellow, Fiesta.
This one I bought on Amazon – multicolored loose papers, stamped in light ink with Colorado Craft Company critters….and the clear plastic case was colored with alcohol inks too. (Didn’t need to do the inside like I did with the previous.) Both were treated with talcum powder sprinkled on and then buffed with a tissue. (Video HERE on that.) Alcohol Ink Colors: Glacier, Villainous Pearl.
Next up some simple stamping! You don’t have to press really hard to get it to stamp, so just hold it closed with one hand….or make a paper “band” to hold it together. Kinda wished I’d kept doing that, but…live n learn! This pad has tear-off pages, everything’s adhered down one side.
For the earth-friendly person in your life – Earth Notes! It comes in a cardstock box with a bellyband around it, and loose sheets inside. I stamped trees in two greens, and also did the same on the box.
Supplies
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I had such positive feedback to the Tiny Tutorial on Instagram, then reposting it here, that I decided to create a short version for YouTube as well; I know lots of folks follow on one or another, but when I find something really helpful, I’m trying to cover all the bases. This time you get to see the “group photo” analogy with actual stamps!
Start by “stacking” your stamps in order — the ones in the back, or behind, first….then the ones in front, on the top. Close the MISTI and pick up the stamps on top, and stamp them. (Might doublecheck alignment with the grid to be sure they don’t go down crooked.)
Get a masking paper ready – I like Eclipse tape, it’s basically stickynote level stickiness so you can use it, and move it, and reuse it til it loses its stickiness. I tear off a piece of a size that I need for the stamp. Stamp the image to be masked on it. If using pigment ink give it a sec to dry so you don’t get it all over your fingers. And if using a stickynote, be sure the sticky part is going to be part of the mask. Nothing like doing the cutting only to find that the adhesive is on the part you cut off!
Cut around the image – in the area it will NEED to be cut. If only the front paw has the next stamp layered behind it, no need to cut out the whole thing. And if there are tiny hard-to-cut-out parts, I cut the mask a little BIGGER than that area, and you’ll see why in a sec.
See those antlers? I didn’t trim them close. No problemo…..
Stamp the 2nd image and then peel off the mask – voila! The cat is in front of the dog! (The Xs are so no one is tempted to try to print from even my fuzzyish image.)
Here’s the magic: in any area that the stamping isn’t perfect — because the mask was trimmed a little big — just use a pen to fill in those tiny lines! It’s a lot easier than all that fussy trimming.
Head over to the MFT blog to check out the coloring of the final card in Prismacolor!
Supplies
Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. If you choose to shop using my EH (Ellen Hutson) links, please accept cookies on that site in order to retain the link to my blog, or that compensation does not happen for me. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art
Flying mice taking rides in bubbles? Why not? I wanted to do this the minute I saw the Lawn Fawn stamp set! It worked best on colored paper, since the bubbles then can add white; if you do this on white paper you need to add soft light colors, so this is a little easier.
Video
Check out the tutorial and tell me what stamps you might like to try floating inside bubbles! Watch below or click HERE to see it on YouTube.
Before starting, I laid out circles and other round items so I could create the “flow” I wanted for the bubbles – then I knew where to stamp the mice.
Isn’t this fun? You can make a whimsical bubble land for any stamp you have! The images don’t even have to be straight since they’re floating and rolling around in the air!
Supplies
Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. If you choose to shop using my EH (Ellen Hutson) links, please accept cookies on that site in order to retain the link to my blog, or that compensation does not happen for me. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art
