i’m not much of a stamper. or a painter. and i think that’s because i feel like i can ‘mess it up’ easily. so i thought of a plan. to get more stamping & painting going on my work (cause i love looking at yours!). with the clear stamps, it’s easy. just place & see where it lands… but with the mounted stamps… so i figured i wanted to feel ’save’. and maybe you are already doing it, or not, but i thought “what if i had the stamp as a layover/ transparency and i could simply look at it BEFORE i stamped it on my precious work?”. now that sounded as a fabulous idea. so here’s how i work:when i buy a new stamp, i first stamp it on a blank transparency. i bought a box of these a million years ago (actually i stole it from my work, but it’s my own company, so my own money :D. we used it ‘back in the old days’ for Power Point presentations): it was kinda useless so i thought it would be perfect for scrapbooking (now don’t go steel on your bosses, i didn’t set you up to it!)  when i’m creating a layout and feel the need of a stamp… i simply get to my stamped transparency and hold it over where i would love to have it. then i can place and replace it just as long as i want and when i feel happy with it, i get the REAL stuff and stamp. of course i use it a lot for journaling stamps, cause that’s the stamp i use most regular, but also for quotes, symbols, trees, swirls whatever stamp you have you can use this tip for! and if you are like me (hmmm where shall i put this??) it’s a perfect ’saver’.and what if…. you DO make that mistake… on my next layout (published in Scrapbook Magazine in 2008) i dropped my journaling stamp after i had already stamped on the layout. aarggh. do you feel the panic? ha. i simply dropped it again. twice. and just wrote my journaling on it. i loved the effect. problem solved.and if you are planning on buying a box of those blank transparencies, of course you can use them for numerous things. i also use it as a ‘color card’ for my acrylic paints. this way i can view the color better. hold it over my project and decide what color of green is best. and what about creating your own transparencies? you can find lots of cool free patterns you can use to print on the transparency. or maybe you can even create some coolness and print it?! if you do so, please share!

rev