Creations from the Garden ...

Summer is slowly but surely on its way and with it comes a burst of colour in the garden.

Have you ever used some of your favourite flowers on your projects instead of rubber/clear stamps?  You can create lovely little notelets, cards, gift tags or writing paper etc.

For best results flowers with a good outline/definition work best.  Lavender (used in the project above) works very well and is plentiful in the garden during the Summer.

Start by giving your flower a good press down on a table top with your hand to flatten it.  This will help to spread the petals out and create more of a flat stamping surface.  

Look at the flower from the angle that you will use for stamping e.g. lavender from the side, gerbera - top down.  If you need to remove a couple of the petals to create more open space and a better result then this is fine.

Use a good strong pigment ink (so that it dries slower) and start to press the flower head into the ink pad.  Once you have inked the flower stamp it onto some scrap card to see how the impression looks when stamped.  You can go back and remove a few more petals to create a better stamped image if you want to.

I tend to stamp the image by using my finger to press the flower onto the page.  If you have a particularly thin flower (like the lavender stem) you can use an acrylic block to press the flower so that you can keep your fingers out of the way).

You will be able to use the flower as a stamp several times before it will become too 'soggy' and damaged to use.  This is one advantage of using a pigment ink pad to ink your flower as it will have a sponge pad (rather than felt) and will be flooded with ink so you will not have to press as hard on the flower when inking, thus minimizing the damage to the flower.  

You may find that you get a better effect when you ink the flower, stamp onto scrap card and then stamp again without re-inking.  This can give a slightly drier effect which can show more detail of the flower (this technique works very well with gerberas).

It is just a case of trial and error, finding the best flowers, inks and number of stampings that you can get out of each inking that works for you.  Each stamped image will be completely unique!

The girls and I can have a lovely afternoon stamping as many flowers as we can onto scrap pieces of card which we can then use to create all sorts of projects at a later date.  It really is a lovely way to use flowers that have been blown over in the garden or buds that have broken off those flowers from the supermarket on the journey home.

Have a go, it is simple, cheap and a great way to keep the children happy!