Christmas Stamps Beyond Christmas: How to Use Seasonal Designs All Year Round

Do you have Christmas stamps sitting in your collection that only come out for a few weeks of the year?

Before you put them away again, take another look.

A stamp that was designed with Christmas in mind doesn't necessarily have to stay a Christmas stamp. Sometimes all it takes is a change of colour, a different layout or simply looking at the individual elements rather than the finished image.

That's the idea behind these art journal pages.

I used Christmas-themed stamps to create pages that have no obvious connection to Christmas at all - and it reminded me just how easy it is to pigeonhole our crafting supplies.

Look beyond the theme

When we see a Christmas wreath, our brain immediately tells us what it is.

A Christmas wreath.

But if you take away the traditional colours and look at the shapes within the design, it becomes something else.

The same applies to lots of seasonal imagery. A snowflake is also a beautiful geometric shape. A bauble is a circle. Holly leaves are simply leaves. A wreath is a circular arrangement of foliage and flowers.

Try looking at your stamps for their shapes, lines and individual elements, rather than only for the subject they were designed to represent.

That small change in perspective can give your existing stamps a whole new life.

Change the colour

One of the easiest ways to remove the Christmas feel from a stamp is to change the colours.

For these pages, I swapped traditional reds, greens and metallics for brighter colours inspired by spring and summer. The effect is immediate.

The stamped design is still there, but your eye no longer reads it as a Christmas image.

I used Personal Impressions woodless watercolour pencils to add colour. Their creamy texture makes them lovely for colouring stamped images, but they can also be used in other ways too - including with stencils and a blending foam to create colour and texture.

And that's another reminder worth keeping in mind:

Our creative supplies don't always have to be used for their most obvious purpose either.

Don't be afraid to change the image

Sometimes you don't even need to hide a seasonal element completely. You can simply incorporate it into the rest of your design.

For example, the wreath stamp I used contains baubles. Rather than letting them announce “Christmas”, I coloured them green so that they became part of the foliage.

The shapes are still there, but they no longer dominate the image.

You can do something similar with your own stamps.

• Could a bauble become part of a flower?
• Could a holly leaf simply become another leaf?
• Could a snowflake be incorporated into a background pattern?
• Could you mask part of a stamp so that only the elements you want remain visible?

It's worth experimenting before deciding that a stamp can only be used for its original purpose.

Think about where you put the design

Changing the layout can make just as much difference as changing the colours.

For one of these pages, I repeated the main wreath design three times to create a strong focal area. Smaller flowers and circles were added to fill the page, while the sentiment was used as part of the background rather than simply being treated as a greeting.

For another page, I kept the stencilling inside the wreath shape, creating a more contained circular design.

The stamped image hasn't changed, but the way it is used has. And that's an important part of creating your own designs.

Don't assume that because a stamp was designed as one complete image, you have to use it as one complete image.

• Try repeating it.
• Crop it.
• Mask part of it.
• Stamp it off the edge of the page.
• Use only one element.
• Or use the same stamp several times to create a completely different pattern.

Colour can change what your eye sees

Another simple trick I use is to think carefully about shadows.

We often reach for black or grey when adding a shadow, but a coloured shadow can be much more interesting.

On these pages, I used a turquoise blue-green rather than a neutral shadow. This helps certain parts of the design come forward while allowing the more obviously Christmas elements to recede.

It's a small detail, but it changes the way the finished image is read.

Look at your stamps differently

The real point of these pages isn't that Christmas stamps can be used in the summer.

It's that we can sometimes get much more from our stamps by looking beyond what they were designed to represent.

Next time you reach for a seasonal stamp, try asking yourself:

• What shapes can I see within the design?
• What happens if I change the colours?
• Can I use only part of the stamp?
• Could I repeat the image to create a pattern?
• Can I mask or disguise one of the seasonal elements?
• Could I use the stamp in an art journal rather than on a card?
• What happens if I use it in a completely different colour palette?

You might be surprised by the answer.

And this is something I try to encourage whenever I teach: don't pigeonhole your creative supplies. We all do it. I do it too.

We see a Christmas stamp and put it in the “Christmas” box in our minds. We see a particular tool and use it only for the job we bought it for.

But crafting becomes much more interesting when we start asking: “What else could I do with this?”

That's often where the most interesting ideas begin.

Until next time, take care,

Lou

xxx