Seeing stamps in a different way

Hello Everyone! I hope you had a fantastic week so far. Today I wanted to show you how you can use your stamps in a different way. When I am trying to figure out how to use a stamp  in an unexpected way I like to do a couple things, first I use my fingers to mask off different parts of the stamp to see if it starts to look like something else. I also like to turn in upside down or on its side because sometimes this helps me imagine it as something else.

To make the flowers I used the Christmas tree in this stamp set. When I turned it upside down it started to look like a flower to me. Now obviously you cant do this with all your stamps like the bunnies really cant be anything other then bunnies. The other two trees in this set would be fun banners or maybe party hats. I love being able to use my Christmas stamps all year long.

I selectively ink up the parts of the trees I wanted to use but you could mask it off too. I first stamped in a light color and then inked just the bottom of my stamp in a darker color to get a nice ombre affect. The stems of the flowers are from Lawn Fawn's "Love you S'more" set.

To create this card I used my masking method to come up with the idea of the shark fin.

I stamped on watercolor paper and used copics to color the fin in. I stamped the ocean in different distress inks then sprayed with water so i would get soft looking waves.

This card I have shared before but still wanted to show it to you. This idea was not mine to use the flowers as apples but I thought it was brilliant so I had to create my own version of it. The apples I made are actually the base to flowers but if you don't stamp the top piece of the flower they are just blobs that you can use for lots of other projects. I made them into apples but they could also be pears, cookies or stacked to make a snowman.

So I encourage you to pull out your stamps and stretch them a little further to create something unexpected. There is no right or wrong way to do this technique. Just start creating!

Happy Crafting

~Tori