
Greetings friends. Today I want to share a couple of ornament ideas with you. I find that I often start too late to make ornaments, so this year I am starting earlier. Memory Box dies make really beautiful ornaments, but they are a bit easier to use. All you need to do is cut out your dies, adhere them to an ornament blank and add some Mod Podge to the top to seal them. Stamping can be a bit more difficult, so I wanted to walk you through my thought process. Perhaps that will save you some trial and error time.
For both samples, I am using the Limited Edition between Memory Box and Simon Says Stamp. It was released for the Simon Says Stamp Stamptember event. When it is gone, it will be gone. I would give it a look because it has lots of cute holiday characters to color.
For the first ornament with Santa, I used a metal blank I got at Michaels. Because the ornament is metal, my stamping didn't really show up well on top of it. It is also not porous, so it is hard to get a good look with it. You could emboss on top of the blank, but you need to be very careful. It will heat up very fast, and there is a chance you could burn yourself.
To avoid all of this, I stamped my Santa and trees onto Copic XPress It paper with black Memento ink and then colored them with Copic markers. Next, I cut out the images and glued them onto the blank. I let the metal of the ornament blank show through in the background to act as a sky.
What about stamping on an ornament blank? Let's look at the second sample:

For the second ornament, I stamped directly on top of a ceramic blank ornament. I had to be a bit of trial and error. My first thought was to stamp my penguin in Memento ink and use Copic markers for coloring. However, the ink really didn't show. Instead, I needed to stamp it in black Versafine ink and then emboss it in black embossing powder. I made to use a talc anti-static pad under the Versamark ink so that my embossing powder didn't the ornament. The powder stuck only to the ink. The ceramic disc got very hot when embossing so I made sure to hold it with some heat-resistant tongs. I then set it down on a heat-resistant mat to completely cool.
Next, I colored the penguin with Copic markers. I found it worked best to dab the color onto the surface rather than draw along the surface. I learned that with a big, open area such as the sky, the marker looked really streaky. I avoided that look by first laying down some B02 marker and then dabbing on top of it with a B00 marker. It gave the sky a mottled look, much like an alcohol ink background. To finish the ornament, I added some fake snow and Stickles to the ground.
Do you have some tips for stamping on different surfaces? I would love to hear them.
