A handmade card with Shady Designs' Celtic Square Stamp Set

June 25, 2024

A handmade card with Shady Designs' Celtic Square Stamp Set

Are you looking for ways to incorporate your art journal techniques into stunning handmade cards? Look no further! Today, we'll explore how to transform an art journal background idea into a handmade card using the Shady Designs Celtic Square stamp set.

Taking an inky art journal background idea, I have created a handmade card. Find out more about my ideas for this collection & how I created the card below.

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Art journaling is a wonderful way to create pieces of work without "rhyme or reason", mixing a whole host of different products which you may not use if making a handmade card. I have taken a background I created, added lots of layered stamping and rather than making into an art journal page, have turned the idea in to a card.

The background was created using Pretty Gets Gritty Explosion Powders: Dragon & Poseidon . Once dry I created a frame using my Shady Designs Celtic Square stamp set. Then came all the other different stamped elements using a mix of Tsukineko Delicata & Versafine Clair inks. If you want to see more of how the background was created, check out my Create & Craft TV show HERE

Next I stamped some of the floral and leaf images from both the Shady Designs Celtic Square & Celtic Circle stamp sets and cut them out. They then had been arranged around a sentiment to work with the previous stamped images on my background.

You could easily extend the background idea in your art journals as you can see in this art journal page using Shady Designs Celtic Circle stamp set. Stamping the frame multiple times, suddenly you have created a much bigger background. Check out that blog post HERE.

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Shady Designs Celtic Whispers Collection

A little back history

A few years back, I cam across some books at my mum's house when visiting her - FYI thing my mum is Irish and still lives near where she was born - and they were about Celtic Knot patterns, their origin, design styles and how they had been changed for modern versions. This got me hooked!

After many attempts at drawing different designs, I really struggled with doing a circle design and took a course. After finding the pattern designed that worked for me, I finally mastered the circle design I wanted.

All the designs for Shady Designs Celtic Whispers are stylised designs and if you look carefully, you may find that some of the "under & over" parts are not truly that!

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The Celtic Whispers Collection

In the collection, there are 2 A5 stamp sets and I wanted to design them with a soft, romantic feel. They are split in to 2 parts so you can then create the frame you want to design. The stamps came first as I always draw my ideas out and then see where that takes me.

Shady Designs Celtic Whispers stamp sets designed by Lou Sims

Once I had the Celtic Frames sorted out, it was then much easier to convert them in to die sets. Now these die sets haven't been designed to work perfectly with the stamp sets, but to be stand alone items themselves. This way, you can combine with the stamps or alternatively, create your own layered designs.

Shady Designs Celtic Whispers die cuttingShady Designs Celtic Whispers die cutting sets designed by Lou Sims sets designed by Lou Sims

The "frou frou" elements were designed to help create more backgrounds for both the stamped images and also work with the different die set elements. As I am a big art journal person, they then help me create quick, simple layered backgrounds. The sentiment selection are all based upon the stamp designs with a mix of card making sentiments & art journal quotes