What is Stamping Off? – Creativity Abounds Blog Hop Mar ’23…

The Creativity Abounds crew are focusing on the amazing Fancy Flora suite this month and I wanted to show you how to make this Two-Tone Flora card, focusing on answering that common question, what is stamping off? In short, it is a really super technique which will give you so many more options with your ink pads.

I must say I absolutely love the Two-Tone Flora stamp set and love how easy it is to get real dimensional looking flowers using just one colour of ink, by ‘stamping off’. You absolutely can use these stamps with different coloured inks, too, but here I focus on stamping off to create a lighter tone for the underneath section and full strength ink for the detailed bits.

The colours that I used for my flowers are Blackberry Bliss, Fresh Freesia and So Saffron, and for the leaves I went for Old Olive. Whenever I am teaching new people to stamp, I often get asked the question ‘what is stamping off?’ You might have also heard it called ‘First and Second Generation Stamping’.

Basically it is where you ink the stamp with your chosen colour, then stamp the image onto some scrap paper before stamping it onto your chosen cardstock. This process removes some of the ink, but not all of it, meaning that when you stamp for the second time (hence second generation) you get a much lighter image but in exactly the same colour!

So, to make these flowers using the Two-Tone Flora stamp set, I first chose the stamp for each flower that has the largest surface area, leaving the detailed stamp to one side for a moment. I inked up my stamps in each of my chosen colours, then stamped each one onto some scrap paper. Without re-inking the stamp, I then stamped each one again onto my cardstock, giving me three light coloured backgrounds for my flowers.

Next up, I took the corresponding detailed stamp for each flower background that I have just created and inked those up in the corresponding colour, lining them up and stamping them straight down on top of the lighter backgrounds. This gives a wonderful effect and really brings these flowers to life.

I also used the stamping off technique on the leaves, using just one colour of ink to create different shades of green, essentially. I hope you will agree that it is very effective. If ever you have asked the question ‘what is stamping off?’ I hope that I have helped to answer it for you, and to show you a really great way of utilising this technique in your cardmaking.

Thank you so much for stopping by today, I really do appreciate your visit. To see what other inspiration the Creativity Abounds team have got lined up for you, why not click the links below to hop around, and until next time, Happy Stamping! xx

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