A spot of stamping

One technique I've always employed in my scrapping is rubber stamping - it was one of the main features on my original scrapbook pages, and has never really lost its appeal to me. I think it adds fine detail to a page with very little effort. Papermaze has a huge range of rubber and acrylic stamps, from alphabets to embellishments and I thought I'd use a few on this page about my hubby and his inability to pose sensibly for a photo.

Some of my favourite and most versatile stamps are these border stamps by Autumn Leaves. You can use them on the edge of a page if you like, but I often use them to underline titles and sometimes only use a section of a stamp, as I have done in the top corner of this layout. I've also added some sentiments to this page - you can stamp onto a photo if you want to, but make sure you use Stazon ink, or it'll never dry! I tend to always stamp in black, but there are lots of colours to choose from - you could stamp a whole rainbow if you felt like it! Another ink you can stamp with is Distress ink - this gives a more heritage feel but the image isn't as crisp. It depends what look you are going for with your page.

I didn't add too much in the way of extra embellishent to this page - a 6x12 layout can soon get overloaded if you are not careful. My title is a mixture of My Little Shoebox, Making Memories Tiny Alphas and a fantastic letterman style alphabet by American Crafts.

I added some of these paper flowers, with gemstones in the centres, and layered them behind the title letters to give the illusion of dimension without actually having to raise the title letters up.

The layout has quite a modern feel, but the stamps could easily be used on a variety of different style layouts, and have the bonus that they can be reused again and again, so long as you clean them after each use.