Multiple Colors on a Single Stamp

If you've been playing around with rubber stamps for several years, you probably already know how to do this, especially if you used to watch Sandy Genovese when she would have Dee Gruening on the show. That's where I learned this technique. For those of you who are still new to stamping, you may be wondering how people are getting more than one color on a single stamp. That's what our tutorial today is about.

To begin, you need your rubber stamps, markers and white cardstock. You can use both wood mounted stamps or clear mount stamps with clear blocks. For this part, I am using an image from the Just Believe(#120453) stamp set. The stamps I'm using today are all the clear mount style.

The markers I'm using for this image is Old Olive and Daffodil Delight Stampin' Write Markers.

You must use the markers that have a brush tip for this technique. All of SU! markers have both the brush tip and the 0.5mm point tip that is usually used for writing.

It is helpful if you can look at the picture of your image as you are coloring but not required.

Using the brush tip of the Old Olive marker, color the leaves and stems of the image.

In this picture you can see that all the stems and leaves are colored now.

Now you are ready for the next color, the Daffodil Delight, to color your flowers. Being able to color look at the picture or your image will help you see where each part is easier than just looking directly at the rubber stamp. Also, remember, when you are coloring the stamp, this will be in reverse of what your stamped image will look like.

By now, your Old Olive color is probably looking a bit dry. To refreshen the color, you will have to "huff" on to your stamp. If you are using a large stamp, be sure to huff over the entire image. You may need to huff several time. (Huffing is the same as breathing on it with a bit of force. Remember the big, bad wolf who "huffed and puffed" to blow down the little pigs house? That's what you are doing. lol)

Now stamp firmly on your cardstock and you will have an image with 2 colors.











After you have tried this a few times, you might want to start doing a bit more shading and using other colors. You can use as many colors as you dare. The most that I've tried at one time is 4. So here we go with 4 colors.

This time I'm using a little more complicated stamp. This is the floral image from Elements of Style (#120045). The markers I'm using are Melon Mambo, Pink Pirouette, Old Olive and Certainly Celery. The Pink and the Celery are lighter colors.

The way that I do it, is to do go from dark to light but it really doesn't matter which order you use as long as you can remember which parts you've colored.

I colored my roses in Melon Mambo, then the smaller flowers in the Pink Pirouette. Then I did the stems in Old Olive and most of the leaves in Certainly Celery. Again, being able to look at the picture while you color the image is very helpful.

After you have the entire image inked up, then huff again to refreshen the color. Then stamp on your cardstock.

Now you are ready to cut out the images and use them in your cardmaking or scrapbooking. You can do this directly onto your project but I really don't recomend it. If you mess up on this, then the whole project is ruined. If you mess up on a different sheet of cardstock, you can always try it again without ruining the parts you've already finished.