Inspire Me Monday: Camouflaged Letters

Hello Friends!  It’s Christine here, and I’m back after a bit of a summer break to bring you another Inspire Me Monday Tutorial.  

Words in stamping are still all the rage.  I see dies every day that incorporate a fun scripted word or individual letters to make a really great statement on a card.  Today I’m going to show you a neat technique for creating embedded/stacked letters without the use of dies, in a way that blends right into your stamped design, sort of like hidden letters, or camouflage.  

There is a really easy way to do this technique with dies, and I’ll describe it for you....but I wanted to see if there was another way to accomplish the same idea but using a machine like a Silhouette to get the same effect.  

If you’re using letter or word dies here is the straightforward way to accomplish this technique.  

1.  Stamp your image, colour if desired.  

2.  Place your word or letters die onto your stamped/coloured image with the cutting part of the die facing down.  Place some light tack tape onto the word to hold it in place.  

3.  Run through your die cutting machine so you’ve cut out the stamped word from your main image.  Set aside. You’ll be left with a “negative die cut” in your main image and the separate “positive die cut word”.  

4.  Die cut out three or four more letter/word combinations from plain cardstock.  White cardstock works great because it gives you a little contrast.  Now, using something like a Tombo Mono Multi glue, layer all your words/letter layers together with the stamped image on top.  This will create a thicker stack so that the word stands above your main image.  

5.  Re-attach to your main image in the negative space area that you had cut the original patterned word out.  You will have letters that match your design exactly, but in a raised format (like the example above).  

Now let me show you how I did it with my Silhouette machine.  

I’ll admit it.  I really did this the backwards way.  I often go about things the long way when I’m learning.  Ha ha!  So I’ll help you avoid my mistake!  

First:   I stamped this gorgeous hen and chicks image from our Sassy Succulents set.  I stamped it twice, but honestly you only need to stamp it once.  That’s the part where I wasn’t thinking, and you’ll see that shortly.  I coloured in my images with Copics.  

I stamped and coloured the image twice thinking I’d do my word cut-out on the 2nd image and just pattern match it to the main image...really you don’t need to do that.  You could just cut out the letters of the original image, and then you’d already have a perfect match.  So, let’s just pretend I did it the better way with one image.  

Next:  Place your coloured image onto your sticky cutting mat, I’m using a Silhouette, but I’m sure a Cricut or a cutting machine like it could do the same.  

Next, on my Silhouette I found a font I liked and typed the word “love”, enlarged the font (about 120 in size) and then using the Modify Tab, I welded the letters together to form a cohesive word.  Then I sent it to the machine to cut it out, and it's a beautiful “love” word on my stamped and coloured cardstock.  

Next I copied several more of the words in exactly the same size so that I’d create a several layers of the word that I could stack and glue together.  

Once these were all cut out, I stacked each one together, adhering with Tombo Mono Multi glue, with the stamped image on top and added into my design.  If I would have been smart, I just would have atached it into the coloured image in the negative space where I had first had the Silhouette cut it out (if I had thought of that sooner :) )

Here is how it looks layered and glued onto the image.  Doesn’t that create a neat effect with the raised letters?  

Here is the finished card above.  I chose to added a little more colouring to the letters (BG11) to make them stand out a little from the design. 

I think it looks sweet and dreamy :)  Of all the cards I’m showing you today, this one above definitely has the most “camouflaged" effect.  

I have a couple of other ways you can achieve this same look, this time with stamps.  

On this style of camouflaged letters, you do have to stamp two of the same image with the stamped images located in the same area of your papers.  This is where a tool like the MISTI would work really well because you get exact placement of your stamps.  I just eyeballed it :)  The image on the right will be part of the main card design.  The image on the left is where I’ll stamp my sentiment.  I chose our Big Scripts set for this one. 

I took my stamp and with VersaMark ink stamped the word onto the second image.  This is where clear stamps are fantastic because you can see exactly where you’re stamping.  

Next,  I embossed the image with clear embossing powder and with some good little scissors, I trimmed it out with a bit of a border.  

Then I attached foam dimensionals onto the back of the “hello”  and matched it to the main image.  

Here is how the finished card looks.  I love the tone on tone feel to the design and the soft subtle effect.  

The only thing this doesn’t show well is how the word shines because it was clear embossed.  

Now I’ll show you one final card with this technique using watercolor and embossing.  

I cut out the letters for “you” with my Silhouette first for this design because I knew I would be heat embossing my images.  A cutting machine like a Silhouette might just crack or damage the embossing if you did the embossing step first.  I used the same method for cutting as in the first card above.  

Next, I stamped the hen and chicks succulents with White Embossing Powder onto watercolour paper and then added some soft sage, blue-green and purple watercolouring to the design, with lots of water and spritzing to really give it a muted washy effect.  I matched the letters to where I would want them on the design then stamped, embossed and watercoloured them as well, finally layering 3 other “you” layers of cut out letters underneath once they were dry.

And here is this final card.   

I’ve kept all the cards really clean looking so the camouflaged letters are really the showstopper.  

Thanks for joining me today, I hope you’re inspired to try this idea, either with word dies, or in some of the other ways I’ve shown today!