Having Fun with Kitchen Sink Stamps

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Reported by Heather Strenzwilk

Don't forget to head on over to THIS POST at the Kitchen Sink News to enter a contest to win some FREE stamps! (See Monday's post for all the contest details.)

Kitchen Sink Stamps are just plain fun! These new acrylic stamp sets are designed by company owner, Maria Colosimo, are very versatile and perfect for stampers of all levels. The stamps are thick, high quality acrylic and stamp clean, crisp images. I really like the colored indexing and stamping guide . Despite multiple washings, the stamps remain sticky and easily adhere to acrylic blocks. The clear images make it easy to stamp your image exactly where you want it. The stamps are easy to clean and are stored easily on their indexing sheet.

I chose 2 sets: Pretty Petals and 3 Step Daisy because I love flowers but I also saw the possibilities of using the images in different ways. I was so excited the day that they arrived that I opened them and started stamping immediately and I haven't stopped since!

3 Step Daisy features elements to create daisies in 3 sizes, leaves, a ladybug and several sentiments. Despite a placement guide on the index, it took me a bit of practice to align the layers properly on the largest daisy and several bloggers described this short learning curve as well. I also combined various elements to change the look of the flowers and one of my hybrids appears on my faux postage card. The solid blossom images from the set became turtles, ice cream scoops and icing for a cupcake. Other experiments included creating a spider and a pumpkin.



Pretty Petals is a fun set and helped me use a lot of cardstock and patterned paper scraps to create flowers and more. I used some of the petals from the Pretty Petals set to create palm trees. Various artists have used the leaves to create ocean waves and have turned petals into surfboards. The petals can also be used to make bats, butterflies or dragonflies by simply stamping, trimming and layering in various ways. One afternoon I sat with a pile of cut out petals and created a Christmas tree and a wreath. All it takes is imagination.



For the Thank You card, I created backgrounds with the Pretty Petals set and stamped the petals on scrap paper. You can build flowers in a flash!


I had the best results with ColorBox Fluid chalk ink but it did cause the stamps to stain (which doesn't affect stamped images in any way). I also used ColorBox pigment ink and Brilliance ink with favorable results. The chalk inks worked especially well with the 3 Step Daisy layered flowers because the inks layered so well.


For my red, white and black card I used the "flower parts" as design elements. I noticed that the lines in the flower form a rectangle. I can't wait to try this on a scrapbook page.

Kitchen Sink Stamps are well made acrylic stamps that lend themselves well to traditional stamping as well as more creative pursuits. Please excuse me so I can return to my stamp room!