I found these birch wood coasters at Michael’s a few weeks back and thought they would make a great base for Christmas ornaments, so I broke out my Silhouette stamping kit and some pigment inks and here’s the first finished one:
The deer and tree are part of the same cut file (found here) and despite being so small and intricate, they still cut beautifully out of the stamping material. I used Espresso Truffle Memento Luxe ink to stamp the tree first and then placed my deer underneath using Colorbox Pigment Ink in Stucco. The snow was dotted on using a white gel pen.
I wanted the year on the back to be more subtle so that if it got turned around on the tree a little you didn’t just see a big “2013” peering at you. Because of that subtlety, though, I couldn’t get a very good picture of this pretty and sparkly Brilliance Galaxy Gold ink. I hope you can tell how crisp the edges are at least!
I tried out a few more ink brands with the stamping material this time and thought it might be helpful to post another comparison chart showing these (you can see my initial attempt with the stamping material and my first ink comparison chart in this post). Pigment inks perform better than dye inks when using the Silhouette stamping material, so I concentrated on three common brands here:
In all fairness to the Silhouette ink, I have used this ink pad A LOT since I got it, and the other three ink pads are brand new…so that may explain why the impression is not as dark as the others or as it used to be when I first posted my results. I still love the smooth vintage-y feel it has. If I had to choose a favorite among the other three pigment inks, I suppose it would be Memento Luxe because it has very smooth coverage like the Colorbox Ink but still retains the details of the image like the Studio G ink (notice the ridges in the body of the dragonfly which are almost absent in the Colorbox). Really, I think you could get great results with any pigment ink though (and you can’t beat $1 for a Studio G ink pad).
I have seen it suggested that you can get better impressions with dye inks on acrylic stamps (vs. photopolymer) if you apply Versamark before your dye ink to the stamp. This does seem to help on the stamping material as well as shown here with Memento dye ink in Tuxedo Black (not to be confused with the Memento Luxe ink above). Though I’d still recommend pigment over dye, this method can get you decent results if you don’t have any pigments inks or want to use a specific color of dye ink.
Thanks for stopping by and I’d love to hear your comments!
Thanks, Annie! I’m pinning this one, too. 🙂
Where do you find the Studio G pigment ink? Thank you so much for sharing your results. I am looking forward to getting the stamping kit which should be on its way.
You’re welcome Debbie! I’ve seen the Studio G pigment pads at Walmart in their scrapbooking section (usually on the lower shelves in bins) or at both Michaels and Joanns (usually up front near the registers in a bin that has both the little pads and some $1 stamps. They’re circular pads that are about 1.5″ in diameter and the colors are changed out seasonally I think.