Hello fellow crafters! Nancy here with a card and a bit of ink swatching talk.
I am sure I am not alone when I say one of the hardest type of cards to make are sympathy cards. In my humble opinion, a clean and simple design works best. In keeping with the CAS design choice, I used the inlaid die technique for this card, using the mat portion of the More Ash Leaves Dies to cut from a stitched white linen rectangle cardstock piece. This piece was layered over rock candy cardstock. I then cut the top portion of the leaves from off white cardstock and blended iced spruce and bundled sage oxide ink over them using some of the smaller brushes from the Life Changing Blender Brushes. These were then inlaid into the opening spaces. Lastly, I stamped a sentiment from the versatile Fancy Life Events Sentiments set using Versamark ink, white heat embossed and then cut out with the matching die.
Note the ink swatches in the above photo. I was delighted to find the Ink Swatching stamp in my design team box this month.
Since I have so many inks, I needed a quick and easy way to swatch. An 8.5 x 11 cardstock sheet yielded ten 2 x 4.25 inch pieces which fit the stamp perfectly with room to spare. I did my ink swatching assembly style in order to save time. The above photo was my setup. The stamp set includes four hearts to use with different color families and a separate hole stamp to mark where to punch a hole. For my purposes, I snipped off one of the hearts and I used the hole stamp to indicate the type of ink. I worked on a prototype which showed me how to place the stamps in the Misti. I first stamped the main ink swatch image using the PFS Black Hybrid Ink Pad onto my cardstock piece. I then moved the cardstock piece up into the upper right hand corner and stamped the heart twice in my ink color as well as the dot to indicate the type of ink. A baby wipe cleaned off the heart and dot and I was ready to do another.
The Ink Swatching stamp is versatile and can be used in different ways that work for you. For example, check out Bonnie's method. She even included a video.
Nicole Peterson, the owner of Picket Fence Studios took another route by simply swiping the ink pad across the top of the stamped piece. Very easy and quick.
Happy ink organizing!