Stamping and Coloring Combos That Look Impressive Fast

Stamping is just the beginning. Add color to a stamped image and you take it from pretty to truly breathtaking. Here’s how to start coloring with confidence — no art degree required.

Simple stamping and coloring combos are one of the fastest ways to take your cards from lovely to genuinely impressive — and you don’t need years of artistic training to get there. There’s a moment that happens for almost every card maker somewhere in their first few months. You’ve been making clean, lovely cards — beautiful stamp impressions, coordinating colors, crisp folds. And then you see someone’s card where the flowers are colored in lush, blended pinks and the leaves are shaded in deep, rich greens, and you think: I want to do that.

The good news is that you can. You just need to understand a few simple approaches and choose the right tools for each one.

Before You Color: Choosing the Right Ink for the Job

When you plan to color a stamped image, the ink you use to stamp it matters. You want an ink that won’t reactivate or bleed when it comes into contact with your coloring medium.

Watercolor With Ink Pads

You don’t need to buy a set of watercolor paints to achieve a beautiful watercolor effect. Stampin’ Up!’s ink pads can be used as watercolor pigment by picking up ink from the pad with a damp paintbrush — a technique that gives you subtle, luminous color using supplies you already own.

Here’s how it works: dip a clean Water Painter (a water-filled brush pen from Stampin’ Up!) or a regular watercolor brush into clean water. Touch the damp brush tip lightly to the surface of your ink pad to pick up a small amount of color. Apply to your stamped image in gentle, wet-on-wet strokes.

The beauty of this technique is the soft, slightly unpredictable quality of the color — petals that fade at the edges, washes of color that blend naturally at the boundaries. It has a lovely, handmade quality that suits floral and nature-themed stamp sets especially well.

Colored Pencils

Colored pencils are one of the most forgiving coloring tools for beginners because you have complete control over how much color you apply. You can build up color gradually, blend with a colorless blender, and erase mistakes.

Stampin’ Up!’s Watercolor Pencils (two sets to choose from) can be used dry for a soft, sketch-like look, or activated with a damp brush to create a watercolor effect. They’re gentle, precise, and perfect for anyone who wants to take their time with coloring. Find a quality pencil sharpener to use exclusively with the watercolor pencils.

For the smoothest results with colored pencils, stamp your image on smooth white cardstock. Textured paper can make pencil strokes look rough and uneven.

Alcohol Markers (Stampin’ Blends)

Alcohol-based markers are the tool of choice for rich, blended color on stamped images. Stampin’ Up!’s Stampin’ Blends markers are designed to coordinate perfectly with their ink pads and cardstock colors — so if you love the color Real Red, you can get it in an ink pad, a cardstock, and a pair of Blends markers that all match beautifully.

Stampin’ Blends come in pairs — a light marker and a dark marker of the same color — which makes blending much easier. You will also need a Color Lifter pen which removed accidental boo-boos of going outside the lines.

Which Method Should You Start With?

Which Stamp Styles Suit Which Coloring Methods

Not every stamp design is meant to be colored. Part of building your card making eye is learning which stamps call for color and which look best left clean.

Practice on a Panel, Not the Card

Here’s a tip that will save you many moments of frustration: always color your stamped image on a separate piece of cardstock (called a panel or layer) before adhering it to your card base. If the coloring doesn’t go quite as you hoped, you simply stamp another panel and try again — without losing the card base, the layers you’ve already assembled, or any embellishments.

It also means you can hold your colored panel up against different colored backgrounds to see what looks best before committing. This little habit makes your finished cards look more considered and polished, and removes a huge amount of pressure from the coloring process.