FAUX SHAVING CREAM

There are SO many cool techniques out there in which we can use our beloved papercrafting supplies! I don't think I'll ever get finished experiencing all of the techniques available, but I'm doing my best.

One technique, Shaving Cream, is a longtime favorite of stampers. A pretty messy technique, it always always gives great results, unless you muddy your shaving cream too much. Even then, the results can be quite interesting, and perhaps even satisfactory. 

Recently I came across a tutorial for a technique that yields sort of similar results, but is WAAAAY less mess, and more immediate. This technique by Beate Johns, was presented on Splitcoaststampers.com way back in 2011, and she refers to it as Faux Shaving Cream. In her tutorial, she makes use of something that has since lost favor, the Stamping Wheel. Instead of using this tool, I simply used a stamp with interesting line drawing. I will show you the stamp a little later on in this post.

In the following card, the three balloons are created using the Faux Shaving Cream technique.

To do this fun technique, grab yourself a solid stamp that you will use for your basic shape. In this case, I used a solid balloon stamp. 

Use two contrasting stamp colors. I found the most success when I inked up the solid stamp with the lighter of the two inks. So, ink your solid stamp. Then ink up an interesting line work stamp with the darker of the two inks. (I will show you my line work stamp that I used in a bit.) Once you have that second stamp inked up, put it to your inked solid stamp and give it a twist. You can do this a few times without mucking it up too badly. 

Before you stamp on your good cardstock, be sure to practice so you can see the sort of results you can expect. 

Since it's not a quick ink and stamp, as you do when using markers on stamps, HUFF on it before stamping. If you are trying various color combinations, be sure to clean your stamps well before changing colors. If you don't clean up in between, that is the surest way to get MUD. Yuk. Unless, of course, your solid stamp is a PIG! Then that may be the look you are striving to achieve.

Below is a photo of the lined stamp I used for my balloons, taken from the Falling Flowers stamp set, found on page 168 of the Annual Catalog. It's a lovely set for regular stamping too! 

If you examine my balloons, you will not see any evidence of this stamp. Can you? Nope! It's just a good substitute for the Stamping Wheels Beate had suggested. 

Below you can see more of the balloons I had created in my little experiment. The three I ended up using are not included in this picture. In choosing my balloons, I concentrated on using three that were about the same ink intensity and colors that complemented each other. 

After I had selected which balloons I was going to use, I fussy cut them, and chose a Designer Series Paper that I thought would go well with the balloons without overwhelming them.

The result is a fairly subtle card with three striking balloons as the focal point. I think the staggered word, Celebrate, in a color that works for all the balloons, is a happy finish.

Since it doesn't show up at all in the photos of the entire card, I wanted to show you that I used the Subtle Embossing Folder (page 223, Annual Catalog) to give some interesting texture -- but not TOO much! -- to the strip of Whisper White on which I mounted my balloons with Stampin' Dimensionals. 

I added a little coordinating baker's twine to finish the balloons.

Do you have ANY questions about the Faux Shaving Cream technique? If so, please don't hesitate to reach out! I'd love to help you try this fun technique!

Faux

Smiles.