Notecards Bulk Stamping Part 1 – The Butterfly Cards – Making 48 Notecards Using My Tim Holtz Stamp Platform And Two Lids

So here’s the thing, for some time now I’ve been using my Tim Holtz Stamp Platform and I love it btw, but sometimes I wish it had two lids because I might have something set up perfectly in there, and want to use it again, but in the meantime, I need to do some other kind of stamping, so I have to take off my perfectly set up stamps.  So what I really needed was a spare lid – they sell spare magnets so why not spare lids, right – unless they think that might suggest that it needs to be replaced because it broke, which is not the case because those lids are super sturdy – but if you had a spare lid you could set up TWO LAYERS of stamps for those gorgeous Altenew flowers and then really go to town with your bulk stamping.  Plus you could do what I was doing today and not have to change ink as often or clean the stamps as often. They do not sell spare lids, so I bought a second Stamp Platform a few weeks ago, just so I could use the lid from it.  (Because I have two platforms, I could just use both of them but due to space issues etc, I only wanted to use one platform with both lids).

I needed to make some notecards as a gift.  I was thinking of making a little packet of them – say 8 or so – but then I decided to keep going and make a ton of them for myself to use because they will always come in handy, plus I was really enjoying making them and got really into the process. And because I made so many of them, I am going to split this into four posts so they are not overly long.  So this post is about the start of the process and the butterfly stamping.

 

Firstly, I was using A4 watercolour paper so I could cut it into 4 x A6 size notecards when I was done.  I wanted to be able to stamp the A4 paper in such a way that I could get 4 stampings done (one for each notecard) by simply rotating the paper without having to reposition the stamps on the Stamp Platform. This is what we are going to end up with.

 

 

I drew pencil lines on the watercolour paper to divide the card into four sections, then worked out where to position the stamps so that they would be in the right position to stamp in all four sections when they were rotated. I’m using this gorgeous stamp set by Concord & 9th.  I love this one and it’s designed to make watercolour butterflies so it would perfectly on the paper. It is an older stamp set – a geriatric 2017 set, so not really old but of course probably discontinued by now which is a pity because it really is beautiful.

I used the top butterfly which has all the outlines and veins of the wings.  Then I will use the bottom butterfly for the watercolour effect, and the three little butterflies.

Here we are in the process of stamping and rotating the paper, at this point I have already stamped in three sections and about to stamp the fourth and final section, all without moving the stamps. At this point if I only had one Stamp Platform, I would have had to either clean my stamp in order to stamp the other butterflies in different colours, or remove the outline stamps from the platform and replace them with the second layer stamps, but there is no guarantee that I would have been able to position the outline stamps in exactly the same place again.  Since I have two platforms and therefore two lids, I didn’t have to remove the first layer stamps.  I just got out the second lid and lined up the second layer stamps.

So now I can go back and forth with both butterfly layers as much as I want without having to reposition any stamps. Since I wanted to use dye inks and spray the stamps with water to create a watercolour effect, I actually moved the small butterflies onto the second lid along with the second layer butterfly. I stamped three pieces of A4 watercolour paper with different coloured butterflies and then used the little Hello stamp from the Hello Lovely stamp set from Concord & 9th. Not only is this a lovely stamp set, but it also has some very useful little sentiments that I will be using here.

Once they were all dry, I decided to highlight some of the veins and other areas with my Polychromos pencils and drew in some little bodies on the tiny butterflies. Then using the pencil lines I drew earlier, I cut the A4 pieces into four x A6 notecard size pieces.

These are the yellow butterflies after adding the Polychromos highlights

Pink and purple butterflies – I particularly like how these tiny pink and purple butterflies turned out on these ones.

The pink butterflies highlighted with more pink pencil.

The blue butterflies – I particularly love the one on the right with the purple bottom half.

Green and teal butterflies.

I now have 12 butterfly watercolour pieces ready to be made into notecards.  For now though, it was time to work on the next set which you can see in the next post.

PROJECT RECIPE:
Tim Holtz Stamp Platform x 2
Butterfly Beauty – Concord & 9th
Hello Lovely – Concord & 9th
A4 Watercolour Paper – hot press
Versafine Clair Inks
Gina K Inks
Distress Inks
Distress water bottle
Polychromos pencils