The Deluxe Card Template is one of my latest new stamping toys which I have fallen in love with!!!

The idea behind them is to use them for cutting guides for creating coloured blocks with coloured papers on both hand made cards and scrap book pages. They remind me in a way of those ‘Sampler’ cards you can buy already printed for you to stamp in each of the blocks for easy to use cards.

There are ideas printed on the back of the template packets for card and page layouts, but they are all kinda ‘cutesy’, I don’t mind cute…but I dont DO cute!! Which got me wondering how I could make them look more arty to create collages with, these are the results of my play session!

What You Need

Deluxe Card Template
White or Cream Card Stock
Masking Tape (make sure you de-tack it first!)
Post It Notes
Dye Ink Pads in Various Shades of Browns and Tans
Stippling Brush or Sponges
Rubber Stamps
Double Sided Tape
Water Colour Pencils
Water Brush
Card Blank

How To Create

Traditional Shadow Blocks

This method reminds me of both the traditional Sampler cards and Shadow stamping all rolled into one! Using these templates however makes it so much easier to create perfectly spaced blocks!

1. Take a sheet of white or cream card, and your Deluxe Card Template, decide which area of the template you want to work with and using masking tape stick the template over the card stock.

2. Take your stippling brush or sponges and apply colour to the exposed blocks on your card until the entire area has been coloured.

3. With the help of post it notes, stamp different images in each of the different shadow block areas.

4. Remove masking tape and template, and apply colour using watercolour pencils.

5. Trim card, and layer onto a card blank to finish.

Abstract Shadow Blocks

These cards are created in a similar way to the ones above, but instead of creating a uniform set of blocks, I kept lifting the template off the card and moving it around the card stock to create different areas of colours and shapes using different inks and areas of the template itself.

Once I was happy with the background, I stamped images over the entire background using dark brown memories ink, applied colour with watercolour pencils, trimmed and assembled onto card.