Stamping Large Sentiments

Greetings friends.  Today I want to talk about stamping with large sentiments.  It is a topic I have addressed before, but I thought it would be a good time to revisit it.

I absolutely love the large sentiments by Impression Obsession.  There are inspirational ones, funny ones, practical all-occasion ones, and my absolute favorite....quirky.  One of the things I have noticed though when I want to make a large sentiment the focal point of a card, there isn't a lot of space for dies, embellishments, or stamped images.  Plus, I never want to cover up or take away from the impact of the sentiment.

One way to make a saying stand out is to use a soft background out of stamps or stencils.  For my card today, I started with a kraft notecard, placed a Seth Apter stencil from Stencil Girl on top (Urban Insiders Bar Stencil) and sponged it with Hero Arts Unicorn White ink:

It took a really long time for the ink to dry, but once it was, I sponged the whole thing with yellow and red Pan Pastels.  Having the white ink underneath allowed the pattern to show through the chalk.  I wasn't able to capture it on camera, but I finished the design with some gold shimmer Pan Pastel.  Once I was done blending the chalk, I used a white Prismacolor pencil to highlight elements of the stencil design.  I really wanted what I thought of as the "sun rays" to stand out.

As a last step, I added the You are Capable sentiment onto the card with brown VersaFine ink.  If you wanted the sentiment to stand out even more, you could use black ink instead.

Happy holidays everyone!