Are you someone who purchases a stamp set with a million ideas of how to use it, but once you have it, it sits in a pile with the rest of your good intentioned craft supplies? 

Well I hope I’m not the only one…

Because in this post, I’m going to share a fun and quick way to get the most out of those adorable stamp sets we just can’t live without!! 

And the super cute set I’ll be using on the blog today is Sweetie Jars from Sticker Kitten. 

Since I start by having my stamp set picked out, I’m going to gather up some additional supplies from my stash.  

The goal is to mass produce a set of cards using one stamp set, so I find by sticking to a theme and color scheme, things go a lot quicker.

Once I have an idea of what I’m going for, I can choose a paper pad and some coordinating colored cardstock to go with it.  For my cards today, I’m also going to be using the Sweet Pastels paper pad from Sticker Kitten.

Depending on the coloring medium, you can choose the correct ink and stamp out a bunch of the images from the set.  In my case, I’m using alcohol markers and colored pencils, so I stamped out my images with Gina K. black amalgam ink onto some 80 lb. white Neenah card stock.

After I have all my items picked, it takes any guess work out of the coloring because I can just choose coordinating colors that match my paper selection.

While I have my ink and stamps out, I’m also going to heat emboss a bunch of sentiments onto a sheet of black cardstock with white embossing powder.  Of course you could use any combination of colors, embossed or not; you could also bring in some sentiment dies as well. 

After your coloring is complete, you can go ahead and fussy cut or die cut all of your images and set them aside.  Because I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to use my sentiments yet, I’m just going to set them aside. 

Now, depending on how detailed you want your cards to be, you can pull in some ovals, rectangles, circles or other basic shape dies from your stash (plain, scalloped, or fancy borders).  If you don’t have dies or would just prefer not to use them, you can use a paper trimmer instead to create layering rectangles and squares.

Prior to coloring or before trimming any paper, you can sketch out some simple card layouts or use websites like Pinterest to gather some card sketch ideas.

Based on the sketches you’ve found or created, you can start pairing up your images, sentiments, and cardstock to create each card front.  This is one of my favorite parts because this is where everything really starts to come together.

Next, you can start die cutting or trimming down the cardstock and swapping things around until you are happy with your final design.

Finally, you can go ahead and glue everything down and bring in any additional embellishments like sequins, twine, or enamel dots.  It’s also fun to add a little sparkle with a Wink of Stella or Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen. 

Finish off your cards by attaching the card fronts to some bases, and now you have a coordinating set of adorable cards using one stamp set!! 

Jennifer Branny