New Technique

Last weekend when I was participating in the Virtual Stamp Night, I learned a new technique called "thumping." The name alone made me want to investigate further. Basically, you ink up a background stamp and then "thump" the stamp with various water-based markers to add additional spots of color. In this case, I inked a Hero Arts snowflake background with grey ink, thumped it with various blue and purple markers, then stamped it onto some white cardstock. If you want to see the original instructions for this technique, you can check it out here.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind with this technique. First, you want to use the sides of your markers when you thump the background stamp so that you don't hurt the tips of your markers. Second, I found that using a light color for the background stamp works best. The first card I made with these stamps didn't turn out so well. I used a medium blue ink for the snowflakes, and the marker colors I used on top didn't really show up. I switched to the grey ink and liked the results much better.

To finish the card, I added some clear Spica pen to the large snowflake to make it sparkle. There is also a rhinestone in the center of the snowflake. However, it is hard to see either in the photo.