Stamp Week | Backgrounds/Patterns

Today for  #aestampweek I played with creating backgrounds and patterns. 

I'm a big fan of creating backgrounds that become homes for my story. You'll see that happen below where I use a large tag stamp to create journaling blocks for my content. I'm also a fan of playing around to see what happens if I do this or do that and I did a bunch of that in today's video to create the projects below. 

A few things to keep in mind related to pattern/background stamps that came to me as I was working on these projects:

• I love creating backgrounds that are built with shapes. Might be circles or squares or rectangles (if you don't have the tag stamp you can totally create something similar by literally just placing the entire ink pad down on cardstock). Repeated shapes are high on my list of tools to use for storytelling. 
• Don't discard the "extra" stuff. In one of my projects today I'm using a background that was essentially a "rolling off" piece of paper when I was playing around with some art journaling tools a few weeks ago. You also saw me use the paper I used to "stamp off" onto in a project earlier this week. I don't keep everything like this, but having a few things like this in your stash can be a fun thing to add to your projects. 
• Stamps can be curved! This is something that I love that Laura Wonsik does pretty regularly - taking a sentiment stamp and curving it to fit a variety of different things. I used that technique today with a sentiment stamp and a world stamp. 
• Don't be afraid to go off the edges with your stamping. In fact, do it on purpose. 

STAMP WEEK SHOP PROMOTIONS

• Try the Story Stamp Subscription for just $5. Use the code TRYSTORYSTAMP. Offer ends 3/9/2020 at 11:59pm EST.
• Sale on stamps in the shop (up to 60% off) - including some past Story Stamp + Stories By The Month designs!
• Giveaways on the @aliedwardsdesigninc Instagram account. 

Here's a look at how I played with some number stamps today: 

And here's a closer look at those projects via images: 

First up I continued adding pages to my  Art Of Noticing notebook telling the story of a recent Las Vegas adventure. 

The first idea I wanted to play with here was using all the stamps on a 3x4 travel icon stamp set at the same time. As you'll see in the video above, what I ended up doing was using tape to adhere the entire stamp to a stamp block. I had originally tried to stamp the entire stamp without a block and it did work, but it seemed to work better when I taped the whole set to the block. 

I stamped onto white cardstock and used the three colors that I've used in previous days in this notebook:  Tillamook, Willamette, and Olympia. I varied the placement just a bit on purpose so that everything wasn't all lined up in specific rows. 

On top of a couple of the stamps I added small circle stickers from the  Travel Collection Sticker Bundle. I liked how those added just a little something to the overall background pattern and is a great reminder that simple is awesome. 

My goal for this second page was to platy with taking a sentiment stamp and curving it around another stamp and repeating those two together to create an asymmetrical pattern background. I considered a couple sheets of pattern paper before finding this painted background on my table from some recent art journaling experimentation. 

I curved the "long live experiences" stamp around the world circle stamp and repeated that seven times on top of my painted cardstock. 

SUPPLIES

• Art Of Noticing Notebook
• Past Travel Collection Stamp Sets
• Travel Collection Sticker Bundle 
• Stamp Block
• StazOn Ink
• Inks: Tillamook, Willamette, Olympia
• 1/2 Inch Corner Rounder
• One Little Word Mini Kit (small star stamp)

A couple days ago Audrey + Anna were playing around with my camera and taking selfies. Audrey took this one and a few others that were really, really great and I used that photo here as a jumping off point as an opportunity to create a "Dear Audrey" layout. I wrote "Dear Audrey" with my iPad, added it to my photo in Photoshop, and printed out the photo (6x8) on my  Epson XP15000 printer. 

I also knew that I wanted to use a stamp to create a background/home for the story I wanted to tell. A past  Travel Collection stamp included this large tag and I chose to add it onto a pattern paper from Heidi Swapp. I started my stamping at the bottom and then created three rows using a variety of colors (linked below). 

For my storytelling I chose to use stamps from the  Believe Stamp Set and some numbers from a past December Daily® stamp set that includes numbers 1-31. The Believe Stamp Set is a really good one for telling stories of encouragement and support. 

On top of four of the stamped tags I added "yes you can" + "I totally believe in you" + "what I know to be true" (I used that last one on #3 because the other sentiment was too long). I stamped the numbers in red as a nice contrast to the black ink. Red is almost always my go-to as a supplemental color. After stamping I hand wrote my journaling using a Precision Pen. 

To finish off the page I added three chipboard asterisks. One above the title and two on top of the partial tags on the second page. 

SUPPLIES

• Believe Stamp Set
• Past Travel Collection Stamp Sets
• December Daily® Number Stamp Set
• Chipboard Asterisks
• Inks: Rose Garden, Honeyman, Pendleton, Olympia, St. Helens
• Memento Black Ink
• Heidi Swapp Color Fresh Fine Line Pattern Paper
• Epson XP 15000 Printer
• Precision Pen