Did You Notice

How I outlined the alpha stickers in the layout I made yesterday?

You could, of course, use ink but I thought I would show you an easy way to do this using a black sharpie pen
I love to recycle and this is a great way to reuse the backing sheet from stickers, you know the ones with one side that is glossy??
The girls are sticker mad and I kept this sheet for such a time as this ;)

Place your sticker on the glossy side of the sticker sheet, see above that I also outlined the bird sticker so once you start this technique there is no looking back lol

I then used my thickest sharpie pen, I found that the thicker one works better, as you don’t need to hold the nib as close to the sticker as a finer pen, which then gives you a finer edge on the sticker

I run the nib around the outside of the sticker, not on the sticker but on the backing sheet, feeling the edge of the sticker as you go, so that the pen runs around the outside of the sticker
Use the sharpie on it’s side rather than up and down, as it will allow you to have more control over how thick the line left behind is
As you can see below the bottom of this “S” I went onto the sticker more, that’s because I had turned my pen up rather than pointing at the sticker, oops

but it all becomes part of the effect, so don’t worry too much about thicker lines or smudges, it just adds definition and depth to the stickers

You COULD do this technique right on the sheet, that the sticker comes from, rather than removing it and placing it on the reused sheet, but I found this doesn’t have the same result, because you can’t get into the side of the sticker AND/OR you leave a mess on the negative sticker sheet and I love to reuse the left over/negative sticker sheets too :) By doing it this way, placing the sticker onto the reused sheet, you can make as much mess as you like because it doesn’t effect the sticker your working on

I also have found that if I dab the completed sticker with a tissue or paper towel, before lifting, then I won’t get any excess ink on me or the sticker, but just don’t re-dab with the dirty tissue because it will leave ink on your sticker
By using the permanent marker it means that you won’t have many smudges or wet ink but it does happen

Anyway, I love this technique and used it again on this page

 

See how the October Afternoon alpha stickers have more depth because they have the black border?

and likewise the stickers without a border don’t stand out as much

   

and some journaling ;)

and today I made this page using Studio Calico’s October kit, Yearbook

same technique with the Smiggle alphas and the photo

I also used the Maya Road acrylic  butterfly keychain, that can be found in the kit, as a template for the butterflies

and cut them out of some Sassafras Lass paper and stitched them on

Love the Studio Calico stamps, sad they aren’t going to continue making them

So there you go, just thought I would share in hope someone might find this technique useful :)

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