Paper-Piecing Using Stamps

Hi everyone! I'm on the La-La Land Crafts blog with a simple but really beautiful technique to share with you today, for all the paper lovers out there!

We mostly think of coloring stamps. But did you know it's often fun to change things up a bit and paper-piece part of your stamped image? This adds texture, dimension, and pizzazz!

 For my tutorial, I've brought Barefoot Luka with me to show you all about it.

 

 Paper-piecing is simple, and involves your stamp, some scissors, and a black marker. Oh, and a stencil if you are feeling creative and want to make your own pattern. For this design, the stencil I used was the Daisies on my Mind layering stencils.

First, stamp your image as usual for coloring. You only need to color the parts that you are NOT going to paper-piece. I cut my image out at this step. It helps me keep straight which is the original!

Next, stamp your image again, once for every different pattern you intend to paper-piece.

As you can see, you can stamp your image onto patterned paper OR onto white cardstock. I plan on using the patterned paper for Luka's pants, and the white paper for his shirt. I added some shading to the shirt, so that when I create my pattern over top, it will have some depth to it.

Next, if you're using white paper, create your pattern by stenciling over. As you can see from my image below, it's not important to stay "in the lines" with your stenciling!

Now it's time to cut! For those of you who, like me, love fussy-cutting, you will really love this! You need to cut out the parts you are paper-piecing - the pants and the shirt. You see that the shirt gets cut out in 3 pieces (2 sides, and 1 tiny flap behind Luka's hand). 

Something important to note is where you do your cutting. You want to cut ON the black line of the image, not inside and not outside. The reason? Cutting inside or outside will change the width of the lines, possibly prevent pieces from fitting together well at the end, or maybe distort your image a bit.

Above, you can see all of the parts cut out and ready to glue to my base image. Don't forget the most important step - run the edge of a black brush  marker along the cut edges of your pieces! Why, you ask? It will make the pieces blend in with your base image, and no one will be able to tell where you cut! (That's another reason why you gotta cut ON the line!)  ;)

Thanks for popping by today!