Diamond shapes, to be specific. The gemstones are a little too expensive for this blog, and well, baseball is not anywhere within my wheelhouse. I’m actually not a fan, if you can believe that! I blame my little brother’s Little League games.

So, how about creating diamond shapes for our scrapbook pages? That’s something we can do, right? Certainly!

Our inspiration piece was this gorgeous illustration:

Illustration for magazine Revue XXI no. 23 by Cruschiform (Fukushima)

The primary part I liked was the overlapping diamonds. To create diamonds on my layout, I started with a scrap piece of copy paper. I freehanded the diamond, and fiddled with the drawing to try to get even sides and angles. Don’t do that!

This method just occurred to me last week, and it’s a much better way to get an even diamond. Fold the paper in half lengthwise, and make small creases at the top and bottom. (You don’t need to crease the whole page, just the edges.) Fold it in half widthwise and make two more small creases, one on each side. Or, if you have a centering ruler, use it to mark the center of each side.

The next part will require a decision on your part. Do you want your diamond to be long and thin or short and squat?

You are going to make a dot a specific distance from the top edge of your paper, and the same distance from the bottom of your paper. You will also make dots from each edge of the paper. Those will need to be the same distance from the sides, but they can be different from the top and bottom distances.

You will need to decide on the distances yourself, based on how you want your diamond to look. If you want it to be short and squat, make the top and bottom distances bigger, and the side distance smaller. Reverse that for a long and thin diamond.

Next, connect the dots to draw your diamond, and cut out along the line. An exacto knife, metal edged ruler, and cutting mat are better tools to use for this than scissors, since you want to be able to use both parts. Ta-da! You’ve now made two masks!

We’re going to start by making the diamonds. I used distress inks, but if you have an ink you like better, feel free to use it. Distress inks are nice for this sort of project since they are dye inks that are formulated to take a little longer to dry, which gives you more time to work with them.

Start by taping (I used washi tape) the open diamond over the background paper. Start adding color with a sponge in a circular motion to prevent a lot of overlap marks. Use darker colors and more layers towards the edges, and lighter colors in the middle. Do the two end diamonds first, then the center diamond.

Next, it’s time to add the stamped images. Use the same inks you used to color the diamonds. Use the open diamond to protect the background, and the center piece to cover the center diamond when you work on the two end diamonds.  You’ll only need the open piece to protect the edges of the center shape.

To stamp the background edges, use an ink similar in color to your paper, or if you want a more subtle pattern, use Versamark, which will give you a watermark look. I had scraps of the background paper, so I experimented with various inks I had on hand before settling on using a silvery Encore ink. Use the center piece of the mask you created to protect the colored diamonds. If there’s a chance you might get ink on a second diamond, just use the edge of the background mask to protect it.

After you’ve inked and stamped to your heart’s desire, use it to create a page. I kept this very simple, with a title, some journaling, and a few hearts punched out of washi covered scrap paper.

When you’ve got a technique as interesting as this one, you don’t really want to overdo it with embellishments!

What do you think? Do you think you could use this technique on a page? What other shapes do you think would work with this idea? Go make something and show me what you’ve got!

I’ve got to go clean off my desk now.