Let’s try out a background stamp. How about a dog themed one?

This dog themed text background has been sitting in my stamp drawer for ages. (I’ve got a cat themed one as well.) It’s time to use it on a card, don’t you think? A simple band of puppy shadows, a couple strips of handmade paper scraps, and a detailed puppy on a pop dot finishes the card.

A quick word about choosing inks. The background was stamped with a distress ink. If you look closely at some of the letters you’ll notice that some are a bit blotchy. That’s because distress inks are a water based ink, and like water, they have a tendency to bead up on smooth surfaces. This is one great reason to clean your stamps, but not too well. A well used stamp will adhere to dye ink much better than a brand new stamp.

The shadow pups are stamped with a versamagic ink, which is a pigment ink with a chalk finish. What that means when you stamp is that the ink dries slowly, and is thicker than dye inks. The chalk finish means it has a nice matte finish.

In order to get a lot of detail on the popped up pup, he was stamped with archival ink, which dries quickly like most water based inks, but doesn’t move or bleed like a lot of dye inks can.

The little bits of handmade paper are from Skycraft Designs. They used to attend the regional Rubber Stamp expo, so I stocked up on some of their papers. You’ll see a few more bits and pieces of their papers this month. It’s time to get them out of my stash and use them.

So what do you think? Would you like to get a card in the mail? Make sure you’re on my mailing list– just sign up at the top right of the page!

Supplies used: (affiliate links)