13 Ways to Personalize your Page Kits. #2: Inking!

Our birthday month is off to a great start! You've been showing us the LOVE on Facebook with your comments, likes, and shares, and our orders are piling in! Thank You!! There's so much more to come this month. Stay tuned!

Since we turn THIRTEEN this year (man, time flies!), we're releasing 13 new kits this month and for each kit we release, I'm blogging about another way to take that page kit and make it your own. Like I mentioned in post #1 (which you can find here), we love the versatility of our page kits! They are great on their own for the scrapper who is in a time crunch, or they are a great starter kit for those who want to use their creativity to take them to the next level. So we're on #2: Inking! So grab your ink pads and sponges and let's see how Joanne used them on our newest page kit, Family Winter.

Personalizing Option #2: Inking

Our newest page kit is Family Winter. I forgot to take a fully assembled original picture - dang - but here's a look at the original pieces. It's unassembled, so it's not placed perfectly, but you get the picture. ;)

Original Winter Family Page Kit

Man, that snowman gets me. Isn't it just so cute? And I absolutely love the colors in this layout. It's got a wintery feel, but it's still warm and cozy. It's perfect. 

Inking is the simple act of placing ink on items in your layout. Most often, it's around the edges of the die cuts, mats, and pattern paper. I love this option because it's an incredibly inexpensive, easy, and quick way to add dimension and design to something. You can create depth by adding edging to your die cuts so they pop out more or you can create an antique or rustic look to your pages by rubbing ink along the edges and into the piece a little bit. The best part? All you need is an ink pad, a sponge, and a little elbow grease. 

All you need is a page kit, an ink pad, and a sponge!

It's important to use the ink before you adhere your pieces. Sometimes when you adhere things, it can make it difficult to get into all of the spaces. If you're trying to add dimension or antique to your look, you'll want to use black or dark brown ink. Black can be a little stark on lightest colors, but when brown would look strange (for example: in a layout full of neons and brights), black is a good choice. These colors in our layout lend themselves perfectly to brown, so we chose a dark coffee brown color.

We grabbed our trusty DML ink pad and a sponge and got to it!

Do you ink the edges of everything? Well, you can! There's really no wrong way to do this. You'll have to try a few things to see what your personal aesthetic is. Joanne uses ink in a lot of her page kits, and she often only inks the lighter colored paper to make it stand out and skips the dark colors. Let's look at a couple photos and talk about areas Joanne avoided.

Closeup of upper left corner of Family Winter layout.

 This is a good close up of some of the stark differences in the darkest and lightest colors of this layout. The maroon and dark brown colors shown in the title and it's colors underneath are very dark. You could ink the maroon with a very dark brown and a bit of a heavy hand and it would make that line more defined, but we decided it didn't really need it. The whites are very light and so were inked with a light to medium hand. This patterned paper is a great example of an opportunity to amp up the vintage feel with some ink. These colors and the style have a vintage vibe, so inking the edges and a little extra in from the sides can make this patterned paper look antiqued and warm.

All of the main colors on the Family Winter layout

 This photo shows all of the main colors in Family Winter. There are some fairly dark colors (dark green, maroon, and brown). We decided to leave those colors in their original form because they stand out enough on their own. The lighter colors and the pattern paper would be our main inking targets. 

There are a couple different inking techniques that Joanne uses on a regular basis. We'll look at those two options next.

The first option is to use a sponge. Dab your ink pad and get a good amount of ink across the bottom of the sponge. Then, holding the sponge nearly perpendicular to the paper, brush the sponge along the edge of the paper. You can press inward as much as desired to spread the ink in toward the center. The further in your press, the deeper the effect of the inking. You can see this first technique in the photos below:

The second option is to forego the sponge and just use the ink pad. To use this option, you can take the paper and scrape the edges directly against the ink pad. It can result in a little deeper color and can allow you to get further into the paper than some sponges may allow.  This is a bit of an easier method, but if your ink pad is juicy, you may was to use the sponge method. It can be challenging to control the ink if it's very wet. Joanne shows us how to do this in the next photos:

Joanne lightly inked the edges of the patterned paper to give it a little depth and pop. You can see the difference it makes.

On the left, is the patterned paper without ink. On the right, is the patterned paper after applying ink to the edges.

Here are a few other areas that were emboldened by the sponge inking method:

You can really see the difference with the edging on this snowbank.

 The strip of snow and snowflake are not inked, while the snowbank is. It really makes it pop!

The inking around the edges of the snowflake really bring the rustic aspect out in the title.

The snowflake on the left is heavily inked, and the one on the right is lightly inked.

Look how much this snowman stands out with just a little shadow inking along the bottom! So cute!

A closeup of the snowman ink.

Inking is a great way to add a personal twist to your page kits! It's so simple, quick, and inexpensive! We love how easy it is to add dimension and a vintage look with this technique!

Completed left page of Family Winter with inking technique.

Completed right page of Family Winter layout with inking technique.

Family Winter page kit with inking technique.

This was #2 in our series of 13 Ways to Personalize your Page Kits! You can find #1 here. Stay tuned for more this month as we continue to celebrate our 13th birthday!