Jazz up your stamps!

We all love to use our Banana Frog stamps on our cards and layouts and they stand alone beautifully as they print so crisply and clearly.  But how about having a bit of fun and jazzing them up a bit?  Dig out your embellishment box and have a look through – pretty much anything goes!

On this layout, Swing Low, I wanted a big embellishment but didn’t really have anything that would fit.  I used some papers from the Dream Street Daydreamer collection and cut out a star from the Reveries sheet.  I grunged it up a bit by screwing it up, sanding and inking it and then stamped a star using one of the What a Star stamps.  I stapled these together with some transparency ribbon and some word stickers and it gave me the perfect, messy embellishment for a muddy rugby page!

This technique would work beautifully with any of the BF stamps – cut large flowers from patterned paper and layer them up with stamped images from the Scribble Flowers or Flower Power sets.  Add tiny blossoms on top or how about adding a huge blossom for one of the layers?  It would also be good to use circles of cardstock or patterned paper layered with stamps from the Concentric or Whirligig sets, with buttons added.

I chose to use the Mocha Sky papers from Treehouse Designs to go with my next layout.  I used two sets of stamps for my title – Willing Race and Dominique.  I used my paper piercer to punch holes at regular intervals in one of the words and then hand-stitched over the top to add texture to the title.

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This technique would be lovely on a swirly stamp  - how about Elegant Swirls or Swirls?  Using glittery thread would add a beautiful sparkle.  You could also outline one of the larger fonts, such as Teen, for extra emphasis.  Or how about just a touch of embroidery on the leaves of the Tropical set to add the finishing touch!

I finished off with this card for my Dad’s birthday.  I used Teen to stamp the word and then had fun playing with bits and pieces to embellish the letters!  I used buttons, jewels (try using your Bejeweler!), embroidery silk (ribbon would be good, too!), Stickles and a white paint pen.

 

We would love to see how you jazz up your stamps!