Card Sketches featuring Altenew's "Believe" Stamp Set

Card sketches. What are they? Sometimes people actually plan out their cards before making them! Do you? Sometimes I have an idea of what I'm doing in my head; sometimes I don't. What I don't do often is create card sketches. Sometimes it can be intimidating looking at a blank card panel on a piece of paper and try to come up with a design to fill it. However, in the past 2 days I’ve learned how useful card sketches can be getting back my creative flow when I’ve lost my mojo.

I started with a blank sketch book. In the book, it’s purely sketches. No nicely printed pages; I just create card designs as I think of them and put them to paper - sometimes with color - sometimes just black and white with labeling. I thought the best way to begin was to start with a stamp set. A single set. See what I could come up with for just that stamp set.

I began with Altenew’s “Believe” stamp set for a few reasons. One, it was first in my entire stamp collection (alphabetically). Two, it’s a Christmas stamp and it’s almost Christmas in July time (ever heard of Christmas in June?)! Three, it was a new stamp that I got a while ago and STILL hadn’t used. There’s a lot more where that came from… Am I the only one who just hoards stamp sets and never uses them?

Below is the stamp set and the first sketch I came up with for a card design. Once I designed the first one, I thought about another stamp set I wanted to incorporate with this one, which was Lawn Fawn’s “Snow Much Fun” - another new Christmas stamp set that I actually recently bought so that’s why it was on my mind to use.

Once I designed the sketches, creating them was the next part. I did each card individually. Used a mixture of techniques: stenciling with a chalk marker for the first card and ink blending and 3D technique for the second card.