This beautiful stamp from Birch Press Design, “Shining Mandala,” is the first stamp I wanted to try to replicate with the practice I’m calling “Throwback Stamping.” The idea is, as much as I like and lust for new stamps, dies, media, or embellishments, I probably have stuff already in my stash that looks a lot like them already. So I should use those instead. To be more mindful and less consumerist in my crafting.
Specifically, I wanted to try to make something like this card using the Shining Mandala stamp:
I love mandalas as a design element, so I knew for a fact I had things in my stash that would look very similar. Not only stamps, but coloring pages, diecuts, etc. While I was thinking it over, the right thing literally popped out at me as I was shifting some papers around — a thick stack of colorable mandala die cuts from Paper Wishes, called Kaleidoscope. They’re layered mandalas made from thick cardstock that you pop out, color, and layer (or not, as you choose) printed in silver, gold and black.
I thought a silver printed one would imitate the look of the white heat embossing on the card well enough. The cardstock is thick enough to take some watercoloring easily. It was doable.
So here’s what I came up with:
I used my Zig Clean Color brush pens to color it. The silver printing resisted the watercolors well. I wasn’t very careful with it; I wanted it to have the same loosey-goosey look as the original. Once it dried, I mounted it on purple cardstock, as in the original, and added a diecut sentiment in a similar style.
Now obviously, this isn’t an exact CASE of the Birch Press card. But it’s certainly close enough to satisfy the urge to create that project. And it looks good, if I do say so myself. And it used some things I hadn’t used in a while — the Kaleidoscope stack, and my Zig pens.
And it didn’t cost me a penny! Which is the point of “throwback stamping.”
(Note: You’ll see there’s no actual stamps or stamping used in the creation of my card. The main image is a diecut instead. But the image I was trying to replicate was of a stamp, so I think the name is still relevant. I’m sure future throwback projects will involve stamping.)
I hope to create many more “throwback stamping” projects over the course of this half year.
Thanks for stopping by my blog. How well do you think I replicated the original card?