By: Linda Selymes,  Artistic Guide

I love beautiful pictures,  paintings, and photographs, especially those of landscapes.  I love mountains, water, skies, fields of wild flowers....I love it all!  That is probably why I was so drawn to scenic stamping when I first saw it.  And since I don't draw very well, I was thrilled by the prospect that I could take a few stamps and make a beautiful scene.  I now teach these techniques, and find it especially rewarding.  Sometimes, though, a person will look at a lovely scene and say "I wish I could do that, but I don't have an artistic bone in my body," or they might say, "That would just take too long to do, I don't have the time."  Well, this week, I'm going to dispel both of those myths by showing you how, with just a few stamps, a photograph and a little bit of instruction, you can turn out a beautiful scene in about five minutes.  Don't believe me?  Well stick around, and I'll prove it.

Let's talk about the photographs first.  You may say, I am not a photographer, I don't even have a camera.  Well, I DO have a camera, but I am most definitely NOT a photographer.  None of the original photos I will use in this series of scenes were taken by me.  A couple were taken by stamping friends who kindly let me use them, but most of them were found on the web by doing  public domain searches on sunset photos, sky photos, northern lights, etc.   There are many photos available for your private and/or commercial use. 

For all the scenes I will show you today, I used a total of five stamps, all from Stampscapes, and all five are used on each of the photographic scenes. I stamped everything with Memento Tuxedo Black ink by Tsukineko.   Make sure your ink is nice and juicy.  Here is a snapshot of my well used very much loved stamps, and the ink.  From top to bottom, left to right they are: Lakeside Cabin-147F, Pines & Rocks-195G, Reeds Lg-068D, Flock in H20-225D and Gulls-302A.  All of these stamps are available at many local stamp stores and at www.stampscapes.com; one of our sponsors.

The next photo is a reduced scan of the three photos I used for the scenes I am showing today.

I did a draft in black and white so you can see the general layout of the scenes which are very similar.  All the scenes are roughly 4" x 6"; perfect to frame, or mount and put on a 5" x 7" card.   I taped the 4" x 6" cardstock to a blue piece of paper so you can see how I go off the paper when I stamp scenes, to simulate realism.  This took about one minute to stamp, with no masking required.

The only other thing you need to know to get started is that I prefer to print my photos on glossy photo paper.  I use Staples Photo Plus photo paper.

For the first two scenes I used the same photo, and they are the same scene.  They look totally different for two reasons.  The colors in the first picture are the colors in the original photograph.  In the second picture (the pinker one) I manually adjusted the color balance in my photo software.  You don't need to be a techie to do that....you just play with it until you get something you like.  You can "undo" as many times as you need to.  The second reason is that the top of the first scene  is the bottom of the second scene.  I just turned it upside down and stamped it the other way; can you see that?  You can often do that with sky scenes.  If you don't like the way it looks, rotate it 90 degrees and see if you like that better.  Sometimes, you can also switch from landscape to portrait when you print.  Notice that on the pines and rocks on the lower right, I didn't stamp the rocks in, only the trees.

The next two scenes started with a photo of the northern lights.  Again, the first picture is the colors in the original photograph, and the second one is one I tweaked and added violet to and it totally changed the look.  The only other thing I did was to add a little light brown marker to the roof, cabin and rocks to tone down the color in both scenes.  On these two, I stamped most of the pines and rocks into the scene, because I liked the colors in the lower right corner, and thought it would be pretty if the aurora borealis reflected off the rocks.

On the last scene, I found a rainbow picture online, actually a double rainbow, and stamped the same scene as on the other photos.  I like it, but it's got a boo boo in it.  Up in the top left corner, there is a tiny blotch of black ink, can you see it?  It's not very big but it mars the scene.    That's because I handled the scene before the ink was dry (drats).  Remember, I said to make sure your ink is nice and juicy?  Well, that's true, because you want a crisp, clear image, and some of these stamps are quite detailed.  The caveat to that is make sure your ink is dry before you touch it.  If necessary, you can hit it with a heat gun if you aren't long on patience.  (It's certainly not my long suit!)  However, I know how to fix that, and I'll tell you how next time. 

If you're willing to spend 15 minutes on a scene, instead of 5 minutes, there's  a couple of  tips I 'd like to to share with you.  In addition, I will display completed scenes mattted on 5"x7" cards.  I hope you liked this enough to come back and see what else I have in my trick bag. 

See you soon.  Happy stamping!