 Hi everyone, it's Vicky here and today I'm back creating 4 cards. This time I will be using a background stamp and I will show you 3 different techniques to create different cards using the same stamp. Now this is a background stamp from the latest Stamp Tempo Release by Simon Says Stamp and it features those beautiful poinsettias so I'm going for Christmas cards today. For the first card I'm going to use the simplest of all the techniques so I'm just going to do some stamping. For that I'm using my stamping platform and I have some double-sided tape on the main platform so the paper sticks nicely there and I'm going to use some black ink and stamp my image. I am going to do that a couple of times since this is quite of a big area and I'm using a black ink which is alcohol marker friendly since I'm planning to use my markers to color everything. And here I'm using my Altenew markers to add some color. So for this first technique all I'm doing is stamping the background image, coloring in all the different areas and then you have something to place your sentiment on top and you are done. Of course depending on the background image this can be quite time consuming if you have to color a lot, if you want to add a lot of shading for example like I'm doing here, it took me about 20 minutes to color all those poinsettias. You can of course use your favorite coloring medium like water coloring or your pencils but of course this is not a card that you can easily must produce. So this has to be a card for someone special since you will be spending lots of time coloring your background. So after coloring with my red shades now I'm adding some yellow at the center of my flowers and a little bit of orange just for some shading. And since this is going to be a Christmas card I want to add some shine on it so I'm using my Wink of Stella and this is the golden one which I'm going to add at the center of the flowers just for some extra shine. Now I'm going to put my card together so I'm going to stick this panel on top of a piece that I have which is gold cardstock and I'm going to just cut out a border all around. I'm not measuring anything here, I'm just eyeballing everything just to make sure that I have a lovely shine all around as a border. Now I'm going to stick that on my card base and I'm just using tape at the back. You can of course use foam squares if you want to pop it. And to finish off my card I'm adding the sentiment. This is a cutout using one of the ties from the latest September release and it says let's celebrate, I'm going to stick that with my Nouveau Deluxe Glue and I find that this sentiment is really versatile, you can use it again and again on so many different occasions from Christmas like I'm doing here to even birthdays or anniversaries or celebrating a graduation. And I'm going to finish off my card with a few dots using my Nouveau Drops and this is in gold. Just like always you will find everything I'm using, the link down below in the description area and here are some close-up photos of this card. Now let's move on to the second technique using a background stamp. This time I'm going to just do some embossing, heat embossing. This is not as time consuming as the first technique and you can pull together cards really quickly. So here I used embossing ink and stamped this design on top of white card stock. And I did that twice just to make sure that I got a good impression. And now on top I'm going to apply my embossing powder. Now this is golden embossing powder by Altenew and you can find it linked down below. So you can see here I am creating a lovely embossed background which I'm going to put aside for now and I will work on another piece of card stock using the exact same technique and that's just because I want to demonstrate how with the same technique you can create completely different looking cards. So here I'm stamping the same design on a red card stock and I will apply again the same embossing powder. And of course I used my heat gun on both those panels to set the powder. And of course you can mass produce cards if you create many of those panels and you can even use different colors of card stock as well as different colors of embossing powder. Now I'm going to show you how easy it is to pull together two cards using these panels. The first one, the red one, is going to look quite vintage so for that I'm using a Distress Oxide ink all around the edges and for that I combined fire brick as well as vintage photo. Now I'm going to create a little window for that I'm using just a rectangle die that I hide in my stash. I'm going to secure it down with some prep tape and run it through my die cutting machine. And don't throw the leftover you can always use it on another card. I'm going to stamp the sentiment on the inside for that I will be using my stamping platform and I get a lot of questions on why I switch from platform to platform. I do have them both on the side of my table and I just grab anyone that is on top. So since the teamhold stamping platform has the big background stamp inside I'm going to use my Mini Misti for doing the sentiment stamping. I'm using embossing ink to stamp my sentiment. Just make sure that you stamp something that fits inside that window and then I'm going to apply the same embossing powder so everything comes together. Again I'm using my heat gun to melt the embossing powder and now I can stick on top the panel that I created and I use some foam tape at the back so that I can pop it and add some dimension. And if you want you can embellish it a little bit more. I am using one of the cutouts that I had from a previous release by Teamholds but of course you can leave it simple as it was. You can also tie a little bow and stick it on top of the frame. It is a simple design and you can embellish it in so many different ways. Now with the other background I'm going to do something even simpler so I'm just adding that on a piece of cardstock which was gold and from the same gold cardstock I cut out the words merry and bright which I'm going to stick on top with my Nouveau Deluxe. This is a card that you can easily must produce especially if you are working on a production line. So first do all the embossing then do all the die cutting and then pull everything together. Now for the last card for today I'm going to use this technique where you stamp just a part of the whole design especially in this background design where you get those big flowers you can easily do that. So here I just stamped one of the poinsettias. I'm going to color it in and just for variation instead of using my alcohol markers like I did for the first card here I stamped the poinsettia on watercolor paper and I'm going over it with my Artisa markers. For the petals I'm using three different colors of my markers and I go from darker to lighter and at the end I'm just using my water brush to just help those colors blend together. The paper that I'm using is watercolor paper by Winsor and Newton which you will find linked down below. And you can make this process even quicker if you don't want to spend too much time coloring. You can just use one color and then blend it out with water towards the end of the petal. This way you will get color variation and shading and at the same time you don't spend too much time on each of the petals. Once I colored my flower I used my scissors to cut it out carefully. This way you can create a focal point just by using a background stamp. Once you cut out the image use a black marker and go all around the white edges to get rid of them. At the same time this is going to give the effect as you cut out the flower perfectly. For my background again I will be using the same background stamp. This time I'm working with white ink and I'm going to stamp that a couple of times on craft cardstock. I'm going to stick this panel on top of my card base, poke the embellishment on top and then I'm going to add a little sentiment. For that I'm using this ribbon die. I'm going to cut out a little strip of paper and stamp the sentiment on top. And since I love dimension I do have formed squares at the back of the points area as well as at the back of the sentiment. And I'm going to finish it all with a few nouveau drops. And notice that my focal point matches perfectly the design of my background. So here is a quick look on all the 4 cards that I created for today using the Poinsettia background stamp by the Stamptember release from Simon Says Stamp. I hope you had fun that you got inspired. Don't forget to like and subscribe if you haven't done so already. As always you will find the full list of all the supplies that I used down below the description area. Thank you all so much for visiting today and I'll see you all next time.