Free as a Bird on a Tile

Greetings my stamping friends. I have been bouncing around between various tasks and projects not getting much accomplished. I have been staining crates to create a display unit for my booth at High Street which will look like this:

I finished drilling all the holes and attaching the hardware to keep the crates attached to each other (if you don’t try to move it too much that is). Tomorrow I will make a trip out to Plano and unload and reassemble the crates, rearrange some of my products, add new stuff, including my card racks and hand-made cards (finally)!

One of the projects I was working on during my pinging back and forth between things is what I am sharing with you today. It is proof to you “I’m not that creative” naysayers out there that “yes you can do this”. The project is not a card, it is also not a scrapbook page. Rather I stamped on a 4″ x 4″ tile I bought at my local hardware store for a mere .08 cents (each).

Because the tile surface is glossy (slippery), it is best to use a stamp positioning tool such as the Stamparatus. This way the stamp will not slide on the tile when it is pressed onto the tile. I placed the tile on the base on the Stamparatus in a corner and used my magnets on the other two sides to anchor the tile into place.

My resulting project is a four-piece coaster set! I will box them up into one of the Baker’s Boxes (Item # 147899, $7.00) as a gift.

Here are the Stampin’ Up! products that I used in the design of this project which can be added to your shopping cart by clicking on the thumbnails below:

Product List

Note: The colors I used from the Subtles and Neutrals families of markers are as follows: Balmy Blue, Blushing Bride, Crumb Cake, Early Espresso and Mossy Meadow.

Due to the non-porous nature of the tiles, I used StazOn Black ink for my line image. StazOn is a permanent ink and is intended for use with watercolor techniques and with the Stampin’ Write markers (water-based inks). You cannot use the Stampin’ Blends with StazOn because they are alcohol-based markers and with lift or bleed the StazOn ink.

Since the Stampin’ Write markers are really intended for use on porous materials such as paper, once I colored in my image I sprinkled clear embossing powder over the tile, knocked off as much excess from the non-stamped areas as possible (using the Embossing Buddy around the stamped image, but not over it, before you add the embossing powder will help reduce random powder in unwanted areas). Heat the areas with the stamped image and embossing powder until they become shiny just like they would when heat embossing on paper. Note: This will take much longer than normal. Tile will get hot so I would recommend laying the tile on a flat heat resistant surface rather than holding it in your hands.

If you have any other questions regarding this technique or project, do not hesitate to ask. If you would like to join me for a class to create this project, let me know and I will schedule a date and time that is convenient for you.

Thank you for stopping by today. I hope you leave here inspired to put stamps to ink to paper or tile. Until next time, stamp on my friends.

Linda