Welcome to Scrapgirl Designs

Hello, Scrapgirl here.

Welcome to my blog. I am a long time Scrapbooker, Stamper, Book Maker, Card Designer and Photographer. There are other titles I can give myself but we shall start with these.

I have been playing with the idea recently of creating a blog to share what I have learned with others. I love to share my stamping knowledge. Hope you stay awhile and gather some tips and tricks along the way. Oh and by the way, shameless plug here, I am a StampinUp! Demonstrator. If you see any StampinUp! products on my site you are interested in you are welcome to jump right over to my store scrapgirl263@stampinup.net. Once you spend $50 I will send you a catalog on me. Oh, and if you are interested in getting a 10% discount on all you purchase from StampinUp! you can sign up as a demonstrator. You can make it a business or just for the product discount it is all up to you.

Onto the reason for this post. I have been watching a ton of videos lately talking about ink swatching and how important it is especially when choosing colors. I recently purchased some new inks (Gina K Designs Electro Pop and Hero Arts Hues Reactive), while I had already had my ink colors swatched I did not have it very organized. I decided to give it a try. It is a tedious process I think it well worth it. Some tips about swatching your colors.

1. Use the style that works best for your creative needs. I am choosing to put them on a tag on a metal ring for easy access when I need them.
2. Choose the grouping that make sense to you, or makes it easy for you to find what you are looking for. I am grouping my colors by company then in rainbow order. It may make more sense to you to not worry about the company but just to put them in a color order. Do it however works best for how you craft.
3. Make all of your swatches the same size and shape. Mine were very unorganized because they were all different sizes and shapes. I started out cutting a 2×3 inch rectangle then putting it in my tag topper punch. This proved to be way too labor intensive. I decided to cut out my tag with my Cricut machine. This way I can cut out 18 from a 12×12 sheet of paper and they will all be exactly the same. When I need to create new ones I can just cut the same shape out and they will all be uniform. Whatever style you decide to use keep to it for future colors you add to your collection. Likewise use the same image or at least the same style of image on each swatch. This makes it easier to compare apples to apples when choosing a color.
4. Use the same kind of paper you mostly use for stamping. It is easy to go with a cheaper paper for your swatches but the inks will not react the same way. You are using this for a color comparison. You want the ink to look the same on your project that it does on your swatch.
5. Keep it up. Before you put new ink away stamp them out on swatches. It will help you love them again and know how true the color on the outside of the container is to the actual ink color.
6. I like to use a stamp that is a basic shape and goes edge to edge on my swatch shape. This way I can see it next to the project or other colors to see if I like them.
7. I also add a layer of Blending with the same ink so I can see what that looks like as well, you can see what i mean in the picture below.
8. I label with the company and the ink color for an easy way to find the color once I have decided which one I prefer to use.
9. If you have a lot of ink in your collection and you need help finding the color once you have chosen the color you can make a note on the swatch where you have the ink stored.
10. Once you find a color combination you like, make a note on the back of the swatch so you can find it again, you could even take a smaller stamp and stamp the coordinating color on the back.
11. Lastly, and most importantly, put your swatches in a place that is close to where your work for easy access. This way you will actually use them.

Happy Creating.