By Design: The Rubber Cafe' - Celebrate Napkins Tutorial and Shaker card

Hi Everyone!

Today - I'm going to share with you a technique that Tim Holtz did a few years back and just shared again on his blog this past week. I had to give it a try with my own Framed Flag stamp from The Rubber Cafe' - so I've stamped some napkins and a cute shaker card both using this technique!

You can find Tim's tutorial here. He's had some fun Patriotic ideas this past week, I've wanted to try them all!

First I'll show you how I did my napkins and more specifically how you can create your own custom stamp pad! - I've only tried this with outline type stamps but I'm sure solid stamps will work just as well just be sure to have enough ink on your custom pad.

Let's get started...

Here's my napkins, I have to say this idea is simple but it does take some practice, to get just the right amount of ink on your stamp.

Here's a look at my supplies - my napkins and my felt piece stamped and ready to start inking.

In Tim's Tutorial, he's using the Cut-away felt, I didn't have any but I was able to make my own using a couple layers of regular felt that I stapled together. I've stamped my image first with Memento ink, Archival ink works well for this part also.

Next I pulled together my re-inkers. You don't want distress ink for this- but works best with a regular dye ink, like Archival or in my case I used Stampin'Up! Classic re-inkers, in Baja Breeze, Riding Hood Red and outlined it in Classic Black. Tim Suggests doing the Black ink last so I worked on my image from the inside out, and it worked pretty well. Red, Blue and finally the black.

Using your re-inkers like a pen just start filling in on the lines with the colors you want the finished image to be. You don't have to be perfect with this but I was careful to not mix my colors. This whole process ultimately provides you with a custom stamp pad to apply to your stamp, using multiple colors all in one stamped motion! Pretty clever huh?

Here's another closer look at my finished custom stamp pad-

Now I'm ready to take my stamp and place it onto my custom stamp-pad.

Be careful not to use too much pressure, or you'll get too much ink on your stamp. I definitely suggest stamping off on a piece of paper first to practice! Here's my first stamp-off. Not too bad...

I corrected the left side where it was skipping a bit on the border by getting a larger block - the one pictured above just fit my stamp and on that side I was just a bit off the edge, so I wasn't getting the right pressure applied.

Finally I started stamping my napkins. I used 2 sizes, a small white square napkin as well as long oblong dinner size napkin. I found these in my grocery aisle.

I'm happy with how they turned out- I did find you can repeat stamp from the same prepared custom stamp pad quite a few times before having to re-ink it. I think I re-inked too early - and had a mess in the upper RH corner where the black bled into my blue stars - so I cleaned my stamp up and re-applied more Baja Blue. And these seemed to come out much better.

I had test-stamped another image on cardstock, before I stamped my napkins that turned out great so decided to create this simple shaker card, another technique I've been wanting to try out- using Washi tape. I unfortnuately can't recall where I saw this idea first - I think it was Splitcoast but can't find the link right now.

To make the shaker portion, I layered some clear acetate over my stamped Framed Flag image, and enclosed 3 sides with washi tape. This has a script pattern on it- that I thought worked really well with my flag. I filled the pocket with my stars and sequins, and than closed it up with washi tape just like I did on the other 3 sides.

Here's a closeup of the corner of the shaker-

A simple technique to create a Shaker card w/o the bulk - so perfect for mailing!

My stars at the bottom I made with MS molds, and white modeling clay that I colored with my Baja Breeze dye re-inker. I finished them off with a matte glaz-on by Staz-on, and adhered them to my card with my Scrap Happy Glue. These were really fun, and air dry overnight so your kids can get into the act on these too! Once I got going - I was making all kinds of embellishments and small frames! I loved how coloring the white modeling clay gives you so much more flexibility- and I liked them better than painting them afterwards.

Heres'a side view of my shaker card.

I think this turned out to be a 4 1/2" square card. To finish it off I threaded three rounds of bakers twine, at the top, this was in the dollar bin at Target, it had a little more wt to it than my other so I really liked how it looks. On the outside top layer of my card, I punched 1/2 circles or divets with the smaller punch on my Crop-o'Dile so that the threads would catch and stay in place. On the fold side I just punched 1/2 a punch once and just kept threading my string through the same hole, tieing it off on that side as well.

That's it for today! I hope you'll try these out! I know I'll be making more custom pads in the future, it's a great way to apply multiple color inks at one time.

Have a safe and happy 4th!