Church Christmas in Black & White

Look at all that snow! It looks just like Toronto! Hopefully not for too much longer!

This Hero Arts stamp arrived in the mail the other day and once I performed a little surgery on it*, it was good to go. I paired it with an old Stampabilities sentiment (also surgically altered). I cranked out 24 of these babies on Tuesday afternoon for my Church Christmas project, using a Soft Stone card base.

These cards were an experiment in black. I started off using my new Memento Luxe black ink. It is extremely rich and black, but it is also slow-drying (like over night!) and (in my humble opinion) messy to work with. I have never loved pigment inks -  I use Whisper White cardstock, which is a coated cardstock, and that means that the ink sits on top of it longer. If you use Papertrey or Neenah, which are uncoated cardstocks, I think that the drying time would be shorter since the ink will soak into the card stock more quickly. Anyway, I'm no expert, I just go with what I like. And for this card I ended up liking my Versafine Onyx, stamped and then embossed with clear ep. It is slightly less black than the Luxe, but then my fingers were also less black than when I used the Luxe.

*stamp surgery on woodblock stamps is easy. You put your stamp in the microwave for 15 seconds and then it's easy to peel the stamp and foam away from the wood. Cut out the bits you don't want (mostly frames in these two instances) and if you're quick, the glue on the wood and the foam will still be warm enough to just stick them back together.