Promises, Promises . . .

I have been TRYING to get this post put together for DAYS! Every time I have a few minutes to get to it, there is NO ONE around to help me by taking some pictures . . . so that is why this has taken so long! It seems that life gets REALLY busy at the end of the school year.

So . . . AS PROMISED . . . here is the tutorial doing "reverse stenciling" with a Spellbinders die . . . (and I also PROMISE, that you are going to love this technique!)!!

STEP ONE: Ink up your die. I have found that small ink pads work the best, as they are the easiest to manipulate. For example, a Stampin' Up "spot" pad, or a Color Box "cat eye" shaped chalk ink pad work really great. In any case, you will need a slow-drying ink (SU craft ink and chalk inks work splendidly!). You can see that after giving you all this great advice, I used a regular-sized ink pad . . . mostly because it was the only one I had in the color I wanted to use!! (In this case, SU Chocolate Chip craft ink!)

Here is a picture of what the die looks like after it has been all "inked up" . . . make sure that the ink makes it into all the "nooks and crannies" on the die. (And YES, I AM holding this poor die upside-down! I didn't realize that I was doing that until I had finished going through the whole process, and my photographer had already left for school!!! What's a girl to do?? I just ran with the photos I had!)

STEP TWO: Once the die has been properly inked, run it through your die cut machine to cut; switch the "sandwich" and run it through again to emboss it. (Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . the poor wheelbarrow is STILL upside-down . . . directionally-challenged, I guess!) As you can see from my inky fingers, it does kinda get all over ya, but luckily it cleans easily. I have also noticed that I wish I had lovely, long fingers with beautifully-manicured fingernails . . . sigh . . . guess ya can't have EVERYTHING!!

That's pretty much it. So you can see, there is hardly anything to it, yet the results are AWESOME. (Did ya notice that I finally got the little wheelbarrow right side up?? Hooray for me!!)

I have included this extra picture to show you what the die looks like, cut and embossed, without and WITH the ink. The details just POP right off of it. This technique is worthy the sticky, inky fingers. It's one of my new favorite things!