Backporch: Technique of the Week: Create Stamps With Your Dies

I made this card out of stamps I created using a die and Fun Foam! No, this will never replace my beloved rubber stamps, but it was a fun project to do, and I love how it turned out.

For this technique, you will need to obtain some Fun Foam (also known as craft foam). This product is a flexible porous material that comes in thin sheets, and is sold at large supermart type craft stores, very inexpensively. I like to get the large sheets of white and cut them down to use in my projects.

To make a craft foam stamp from a die, find a die with either a nice detailed pattern, or one that will cut and emboss a pattern. For this project, I chose Memory Box Bloomington Border 99008.

With your selected die, make a die cut out of the craft foam. I have not had any trouble cutting out of this product, and in this case, I used a metal shim to ensure that it would cut and emboss in one pass. I stuck the die cut down to an acrylic block with temporary, removable adhesive.

You can use ink for your stamping at this point, but I thought I would pull out my Silks acrylic glazes this time. I wanted to use two colors - one for the blossoms and one for the stems and leaves. I chose Plumeria, and Pretty Peridot respectively.

I painted the glazes onto the foam die cut, and stamped several times onto a neenah solar white card stock base card.

I love how this turned out! The stamped images are not super crisp, mostly because I used the glazes. I think the images would have been more crisp if I had used ink, but I like the almost water color look that these have.

For the initial card, I stamped several times with the die cut, and then added a sentiment from Magenta, 07.869.D "Thinking of You". I got a piece of So Silk Beauty Pink cardstock, and embossed the die onto it. Did you know that you can emboss your dies also? Oh yes you can, and I will show you how in the next Technique of the Week! I popped up the panel with the stamping, and adhered it over the embossed piece. I sprinkled some pearls and gems from Hero Arts Mixed Accents "Blush".

I decided to use these foam "stamps" as embellishments, so I did take the time to paint the edges

Since I still had my foam "stamp", I thought it would make a lovely embellishment on another card, so I adhered it to a piece of white cardstock, and matted that with So Silk Beauty Pink. This was adhered to a pink shimmer base card. I diecut a birthday sentiment with a Memory Box die "Birthday Script" 98582, out of more of the Beauty Pink card stock and mounted it on the card sideways. I needed a "Happy" sentiment, so I got the Magenta Multilingual Happy Birthday stamp and taped off everything around the word "Happy", inked it with Versafine Onyx Black ink, removed the tape, and stamped it above the Birthday sentiment.

I created a third card by cutting the Bloomington Border again out of a new piece of fun foam and cutting off just one blossom. I used Snap Dragon Silks Acrylic Glaze for this single blossom and stamped it around on a white base card.

I added the Magenta sentiment "Imagine" 07.901.F, stamped in Versafine Onyx Black ink. I dipped my brush into the Snapdragon glaze, then then into water, and used that to flick dots onto the card. I adhered the fun foam "stamp" onto the card as an embellishment, and sprinkled on some pearls. Since I didn't have pearls to match, I colored some white ones with Copic BV08.