I love walking into a coffee shop or cafe and perusing the hand decorated chalkboard menus. I admire the artist’s calligraphy and hand drawn pictures. They are fabulous when used for menus, on sidewalk signage, at weddings, baby showers, etc., but I do not possess the skill to create a decent one. While I have taken many calligraphy courses, and have minimal drawing skills, the thought of attempting to letter one is daunting. I can, however, fake my way through a card with the help of a beautifully lettered stamp set…and so can you!
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There are many ways to achieve this look. I find this method to be the fastest and easiest. To start, you will need a piece of black cardstock for your chalkboard background.

You could use Distress Oxide inks to ink each line, but that would require a lot of masking. Regular inks are transparent and will not show up on a dark background. To make the inks work I stamped the image, from the Truly Great Friends Stamp Set, using Hero Arts Unicorn White pigment ink. Do NOT remove the stamp from the stamping tool. Clean the pigment ink from the stamp. A Lawn Fawn Shammy works well for this. The pigment ink on the card must be dry before proceeding. You can either let it dry overnight or use a heat gun. 

I used Tombow Markers to ink each line a different color. I have used Distress Ink markers in the past, and they work well too. The lines on the stamp are far enough apart that I didn’t find it necessary to do any masking. A stamping tool, such as the MISTI, is perfect for aligning the stamp properly each time.

I added the small butterfly, from the Feelin’ Foxy Stamp Set. I inked it with the white pigment ink, dried it, and colored in the image with Prismacolor colored pencils.

To create the chalkboard effect, I taped off a 1/4” border using Purple Tape. Using a finger dauber, and Hero Art Unicorn White pigment ink, I blended the white ink onto the background. This really gives the illusion of a chalky board.

Carefully remove the tape and add an outline using a ruler and a White Gelly Roll Pen. For even more contrast, I lightly penciled a little more white around the edges, using a white Prismacolor colored pencil. To finish the card, I added the panel to a #110 Neenah Classic cardstock folded cardbase, using a Kokuyo Tape Runner.

This one layer card took me less than an hour to make, even stopping to take pictures. Look through your stamp sets. There are so many sentiment sets that would work. The Small Gang Stamp Set and Adore Him Stamp Set would both work beautifully as well.

As always, thank you for sharing a bit of your time with me today on another creative journey.

Joyfully, Jo Ann

Supplies used:
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