Guest Author - Carol Taller

Now that you know how to make a quality, clean stamped image, it is time to start adding color to your stamp. There are several ways that this can be done, and they are all simple, so relax and enjoy!

You have probably learned to stamp using a black inkpad. The simplest way to add color to your stamp is to buy a colored inkpad! It’s that easy.

Another simple method is to buy water-soluble colored markers. Be sure that the markers are water-soluble so that you can clean your stamp afterward. You do not want to use permanent markers on your stamp! Now, turn your stamp upside down so that the image is facing you, and color the raised areas of the stamp. You can use as many colors as you want. For example, if you were coloring a heart with an arrow through it, you would color the heart red, and the arrow brown. You might want to breathe heavily, or huff, to give the stamp some moisture just before you stamp the image.

And of course, you can always fill your stamped image with color. The trick with this method is to make sure that your stamped image is completely dry before you begin and know how your ink will react to what you are coloring with.

Dry color, such as crayons or gel pens, will probably not interfere with your inked image. When in doubt, you can still try it on scrap paper. Don’t risk your original work!

If you are not using permanent ink, your image may smear or bleed if water is added. For example, if you add markers to non-permanent ink, your image may bleed into your colors and may get messy. If you are not sure, do a test run to see how your ink and markers react together.

If you are using permanent ink, such as Staz On or Black Classic Ink from Stampin’ Up, you can try a variety of coloring agents. Markers will color the image with bright vibrant colors, or watercolors will create soft transparent colors. Water pens or Aqua Painters are available. These are pens filled with water that have brush tips. You can pick up the colors from your inkpads and brush them onto your stamped image.

Sakura makes a Opaque Puffy Ink 10 pack of pens called Soufflé that produces a raised 3-D image, and colors with a unique look. It almost resembles heat embossing without using the powder or heat, and it writes on acetate.

And of course, you may also add color by embossing your image with embossing powder.

Coloring will take experimentation and practice, but the final product will be a polished look that is a lot of fun to make.