Hello everyone! Today I want to show you a bunch of cards I made with one very simple and very versatile technique. Shadow stamping is a super quick way to make your own patterned paper for your projects and can be used for almost any kind of card. I’m going to show you how you can do this with any stamps in your stash!
Shadow stamping is an old technique that uses the back of a stamp to quickly fill in your outline image and stamp a shadow around your outline. Because you’re using the back of your stamp, you need symmetrical images or two stamps that are mirror images of each other. However, if you stick around, I’ll show you two more ways to get the look of shadow stamping with images that aren’t symmetrical.
For these cards I’m mostly using small stamps from a lot of different sets, I’ll list all the stamp sets I used below in the product list. I do want to briefly highlight a few brands that I’ve found have a lot of images suited to this technique:
- Mama Elephant: most of the Mama Elephant stamp sets come with small symmetrical images that are absolutely perfect for this technique.
- My Favorite Things: a lot of MFT stamp sets also come with smaller images that help you set the scene, they’re not always symmetrical, but near symmetry is enough, and any image will work if you use a couple of tricks.
- Lawn Fawn: Lawn Fawn not only has plenty of small images in their stamp sets but they also have a lot of mirror images of critters. I haven’t used Lawn Fawn products in any of the cards this time, but if you have Lawn Fawn stamp sets, you’ll probably find some suitable images.
Now let’s get into the technique!
The first way to achieve the look of shadow stamping is to simply use the back of the stamp. You stick the stamp on an acrylic block like usual except you stick it face down onto the stamping block. It is the back of the stamp we will be inking.
The inking part is where the first problem might arise: the back of the stamp is slightly slicker than the front. It doesn’t take ink as well, especially very wet ink pads might give you some trouble. The good thing about shadow stamping is that it’s not precise at all and that it’s very easy to line the stamp up with what you’ve already stamped before, double stamping is super easy with the back of the stamp. I used Distress Oxide inks for all the cards I’m showing in this blog post cause they’re the only colorful inks I have, however, I don’t think they’re very suited to this technique and I urge you to try different inks if you have them (and please let me know in the comments below which inks you like for this technique, I really really enjoy this technique and would love to find a better ink for it!)
Now if you manage to stamp the shadow, you can easily stamp it in a pattern to create your own cute piece of patterned paper. The next part is turning your stamps back around so you can stamp the outline image onto the shadow you stamped before. Make sure your shadow layer is completely dry first! Especially if you’re going to be doing heat embossing on the outline layer, make sure everything you stamped before won’t hold any embossing powder!
And just… go wild with it!
You can stamp colored shadows and stamp a black outline on top like I did in these cards.
Or you can stamp a white shadow on kraft or colored cardstock and stamp your outline in color or black.
The second way to achieve this look is to make your own shadow stamp by stamping your outline image on some fun foam and cutting it out leaving a small border around the image. There’s three major advantages to doing it this way:
- You control the shadow, some stamps (even symmetrical ones) have a bit of a funky back, the shadow you get from stamping them might be way too wide for your taste or not precise enough. If you cut out your own shadow stamp you are completely free to choose how big and precise your shadow image is.
- You can now do shadow stamping with any asymmetrical stamp too.
- For slightly bigger images (like the sweater I use in the next example) it’s really difficult to get a good inking on the back of the stamp. The surface is so slick and so big that the ink just beads up on it. This does not happen with fun foam. You’ll get a better stamped image with foam than with the back of your stamp.
For the next card examples I didn’t stamp a pattern, I stamped a border and because I used Distress Oxide inks I could overlap my images. I really love these cards.
The third way to do shadow stamping is basically the lazy version of way two. If you have coordinating dies for your stamps, you can diecut your shadow stamps from fun foam. Most coordinating dies leave a little border around your outline, use it to your advantage! Now, you won’t have full control over your shadow if you use coordinating dies to cut your stamp, but not having to fussycut them out makes up for that in my opinion!
For these cards I used some floral images from Altenew. I wanted to do something different for these so I first stamped colored shadows on kraft cardstock (I love the look of Distress Oxide inks on kraft cardstock) and white heat embossed the outline on top (I also love the look of white embossing on kraft cardstock).
The last example I have for you guys today is a very summery card. I stamped a colored shadow on white cardstock and white heat embossed the outline image on top.
As you can see, I couldn’t get enough of this technique. The cards are really easy and quick to make and they have a very fun and different look to them. I absolutely love how they turned out, I hope you like them too and try some shadow stamping of your own.
If you do, please tell me how it went!
- Altenew – Perfectly Perfect stamp set
- Altenew – Perfectly Perfect coordinating dies
- Mama Elephant – Holiday Bitties stamp set
- Mama Elephant – The Cat’s Meow stamp set
- My Favorite Things – Bitty Bears stamp set
- My Favorite Things – Beary Special Birthday stamp set
- Waffleflower – Love You Bunnies stamp set
- Lawn Fawn – Happy Happy Happy stamp set
- Concord & 9th – Fabulous Phrases die set
- Winnie and Walter – Hugs die
- Craft Sensations – Christmas stamp and die set
- Versafine Onyx Black ink
- Hero Hues Unicorn Pigment ink
- Versamark ink
- WOW Bright White Super Fine embossing powder
- Distress Oxide: Wilted Violet, Mermaid Lagoon, Carved Pumpkin, Tattered Rose, Shaded Lilac, Wild Honey, Pine Needles, Twisted Citron, Abandoned Coral, Festive Berries, Rusty Hinge, Mustard Seed, Forest Moss, Worn Lipstick, Cracked Pistachio, Tumbled Glass, Pumice Stone, Peacock Feathers
- Fun foam
- Clairefontaine DCP 200 gsm
- Kraft cardstock
- Black cardstock
- Canson Montval 300gsm
- Temporary adhesive
- Foam tape
- Foam squares
- Double sided tape
- Ranger Multi Medium Matte
- Wink of Stella glitter brush pen
Studio Kato 