I confess, I love to surf the ‘net! I get tons of inspiration from OPB (Other Peoples’ Blogs) 😉 Probably the most fun is seeing if I can recreate a design, technique or whatever catches my eye with Stampin’ Up products. In this case, I think it came out BETTER than any of the samples that I saw out there in bloggerland.
In the samples that I saw, they used a stamping product that was a dense foam with the foam on one side and then a fabric of some kind covering the foam on the other side. This “fabric” side is the “business” side of the “stamp”, kind of like a scrubbie has a sponge side and an abrasive side. Taking a leap from my most recent card-venture, the bleach technique, I thought, why not a paper towel pad again? Soooo, folding up my towel, I started the process.
First you ink up your stamp with Black Staz-On ink 
(you don’t want a water-based image that will bleed into the colors that follow). Stamp the black image onto the paper pad. Then it is reinker time! I used no less than 11 reinkers: 5 shades of green for the leaves, 2 shades of brown for the stems, 4 shades of pink for the flowers. 
Here’s the fun part! just squeeze the reinker over the area that you want colored. It doesn’t even have to be precise! In fact, there is no way you can keep your ink from spreading out anyway as you can see from the photo here.
The magic happens when you ink your stamp from this paper stamp pad! 
The shading is really life-like!
What I did not expect (DUH!) is the texture from the paper towel. It is interesting in a graphics kind of way and thought provoking (as in “how did you do that???”). You could experiment with different surfaces such as gauze, tissue paper, or a finely woven cotton, either AS a stamping pad or on TOP of your paper pad. (ed. – or several layers of felt.)
The serendipity with this project was the sweet pattern from Attic Boutique Designer Series Paper (2012 Occasions Mini Catalog). The colors were PERFECT!
So find one of your stamps that lends itself to multiple ink colors and try this technique! You should be able to get at least 2 stampings from the “pad”, and even add more ink as it dries out.
Until next time…Keep Calm and Find Yourself a Rubber Stamp!
