Hello everyone! So I am back this week with an IKEA upcycle to share with you all. Not to get too deep, but I've been doing a research project on IKEA for one of my graduate classes and looking at how sustainable the company is. As someone who loves IKEA and whose apartment is about 70% furnished by IKEA, I do think its important to think about how these products are made, what they are made of and how we dispose of them. 

All of that to say, I decided that I wanted to do an upcycle project on two pieces of IKEA furniture that I have to give them some new life. I have two of these IKEA Alex drawer units in my office/craft room and I've had them for several years. They are extremely functional, but a bit bland. 

I recently added some handles to another IKEA piece that I have and it really made the piece seem more personal, so I wanted to do something similar to these drawer units. 

Instead of doing drawer handles on these white units, I decided to get some golden knobs. I also had the idea to get some peel and stick wallpaper that I could use to cover the fronts of the drawers themselves. I got a pretty teal wallpaper with gold flowers to match the knobs. 

To help me with the drilling of holes for the knobs I made myself a template. Using a piece of painter's tape, I measured the drawer front and marked a hole in the middle. I then used this to mark where the hole should go on every drawer. 

I found that the best process was to first cover all of the drawer fronts in the wallpaper. Instead of driving myself insane and trying to get the pattern to line up perfectly from one drawer to the next, I decided to just ensure that each drawer was different enough from the ones near it to look purposeful. I cut a piece of the wallpaper slightly larger than the drawer front and then stuck it on. Once I had squeezed out as many bubbles as possible, I used my X-Acto Knife to slice around the edges of the drawer to make it even. I also used the sharp tip of the knife to pop any bubbles that were left in the wallpaper. I would say that covering all 18 drawer fronts took me about 2 hours total. 

I then used my template to drill holes in each drawer. I will say that because of the particle board-ness of the IKEA pieces, the holes that it makes are a little messy on the back. Every time I have drilled into this kind of IKEA material, the front of the hole is very clean, but the back splinters a bit. As it's the back, I don't really mind and the screwhead covers most of the damage. Beware that this is usually very dusty and messy too so I would recommend drilling the holes over a trashcan. 

Once the holes were drilled, I just screwed in a screw from the back and twisted the knobs on from the front. Even the shorter of the two screws that the knobs came with was too long so I did end up using some shorter screws I already had. And here they are all done!

The cost of the wallpaper and knobs together was about $50, but I do still have at least half of the wallpaper left, as well as two knobs. I'm really happy with how these turned out and I think they look a lot more stylish now. This was my first time using peel and stick wallpaper and I found it very easy. I have used contact paper before and found it somewhat difficult to use as its extremely sticky and hard to reposition. This wallpaper was really easy to pull off and reposition and was thick enough to hide any imperfections in the material of the drawer units themselves. I know that some DIY projects, such as covering a countertop, may require contact paper for the durability factor, but if you're trying to do a craft project and just need some sticky paper that doesn't need to be waterproof, my vote would be for peel and stick all the way. 

Do you all like how the IKEA upcycle turned out? Let me know in the comments below!

 - Rebecca

Hello everyone! I'm back with a little blog about a gift that I made for my parents. My parents are in the process of moving so I wanted to make them a little bit of décor of their current house to hang up in their new home. I wanted to do something a little different and create a kind of picture out of paper. I used a few pictures of the front of their house as a template and did some painful mental math to create a very crude template. I had a 12 by 12 frame to use for the picture so I made sure to draw the template on a 12 by 12 piece of paper to made sure everything matched up. 

I then picked the paper that I was going to use for the project. Not pictured here is a blue/white cloud paper that I ended up using as the background. I went with kraft paper for the base of the house as my parent's house is tan. I thought that the striped tan paper worked well to give the appearance of siding. I also picked the leafy green to make some bushes out of as my parent's house has two bushes in the front. 

From there it was really just doing some mental math and also a lot of winging it. I used my paper cutter to cut out most of the paper pieces and did a few of the smaller, more finicky pieces by hand. As I cut, I just matched everything up to my template to make sure that it was lining up correctly. 

I did also use my Cricut to cut out some circles of the green paper so the bushes were roughly the same size. I then just freehanded some shrub-ish shapes out of the circles. 

As I mentioned earlier, I used a cloud paper as the background to look like the sky and then just started gluing on all of the pieces. I used a combination of double sided tape made for paper for the larger pieces and some liquid glue for the smaller pieces. the gluing was a bit painstaking, but much easier since I had a template to work with. And here is the finished product! The little blacked out part is my parent's house number. 

From start to finish, this project took me maybe 3 or 4 hours on a Saturday. Much like the floorplan frame I made in my last blog, I had a lot of fun doing it and would be more than willing to make one for anything interested. If so, feel free to email me at rebecca96@comcast.net. What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below. Happy Sunday everyone!

​ - Rebecca

Happy August friends! Today I am here with the first bit of crafting that I did in my new apartment. I had hand-drawn a floorplan of our previous apartment (see below) and wanted to do something similar for our new place. If you're wondering what the black smudges are on several pictures throughout the blog, I just blacked out any identifying info of our old or new address. I don't particularly think anyone on the internet is trying to find me, but better safe than sorry :)

I wanted to do something similar for this apartment, but thought it would be nice to try a different style of art. I started by downloading a picture of our apartment's floorplan which I got from the building's website. I then picked out some paper to use for the project.

I then used the floorplan template to cut the shape of the apartment out of the green leaf paper. 

I glued the shape onto the white brick paper which I was merely using as a background. I then cut very thin strips of black paper to use as the outlines of each room. Was it extremely tedious to glue each piece down? Of course. But I love how it looked!

Then it was time to label each room. For this, I used my Cricut. I used the writing feature and picked a pretty cursive font. I wrote each word in black and then traced over it with a shiny gel pen to give it a little sparkle. 

I also did some cursive writing of our address and once I stuck all of the labels on there, here is what it looked like.

I felt like it needed a little something else, so I cut out some small footprints with black paper using my Cricut as well. And then she was done!

I bought an 8 1/2 by 11 frame to put the floorplan in and then added it to a small gallery wall we have near our dining room table.

What do you guys think? I'm really happy with how this turned out and really loved making it! If anyone is interested in having a floorplan like this made for their house or apartment, please let me know by sending me an email to rebecca96@comcast.net and we can work out the pricing and style. Have a great week everyone!

  - Rebecca 

Hello crafty friends! It's been a while. As I mentioned in my Instagram post a few weeks ago, my husband and I recently moved which meant packing up the craftiness and setting it up again in a new space. Since we have been here a few days and the craft room/office is mostly settled, I figured that I would show you all how it looks at the moment. If you've been following the blog for a while, you'll know that I change the craft room up often, but here's where it stands right now! This is the view from the door looking in:

As you'll see, this room also holds my work desk and the exercise equipment. This room wears many hats! On the wall next to the exercise bike is also my husband's desk. He has not had the time yet to organize his wall décor and desk things so excuse the mess!

Under the window is a desk you might have seen in previous iterations of the craft room. It was made for me by my Pepere and is currently being used to hold my Cricut and our printer. I am so happy with how this little area looks and love the plants and glass jars on the windowsill.  Don't mind Ginger on the floor!

The corner to the left of the desk is definitely more in process. I had a grey bookcase in my last iteration of the craft room and decided for the time being to not take it with me. This means some things on the floor which I don't hate, but I'm not sure it will stay like that forever. 

Next is my two IKEA drawer units that I love very much and a little gallery wall above. I can't say enough good things about these drawers. They are a great size and are very good quality for being from IKEA. These two units hold almost all of my craft supplies. 

And finally, we have my work desk. I currently work from home 100% of the time and will likely only end up going into the office once a week with four days at home starting in the fall. This area is a little more plain so as not to be busy behind me in meetings. I may add a bit of décor, but haven't settled yet on what I would like there. 

All décor hung in this room was done with Command hooks or Command velcro strips. As someone who used to make holes in walls with reckless abandon, I have fully converted to the Command life and I love them dearly. Aside from wanting our security deposit back someday, the Command products also make it so easy to reposition when I want to change things up. This is not sponsored or anything but I just love them!

So that's the craft room in its first iteration here. What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below! I'm sure there will be many changes and adjustments as we settle in more :)

 - Rebecca

Hello friends! This is Suzanne, Rebecca's Momma, and I'm happy to be back with you this week as a guest blogger. You may remember Rebecca mentioning last week that she and her husband are moving. Rebecca's dad and I are also moving soon, so I’ve already begun packing up much of my crafting stash. When it was time to put something together for this week's post, I had to see what was still available and came up with a simple decoration that would be great on a door or inside your home and is changeable for any season. 
 
Let's get started! What I have is a 12 inch embroidery hoop, some muslin cloth, burlap ribbon, a paint color which coordinates with the ribbon and a foam brush. I'm also going to use my glue gun and some scissors, and later I added some lace ribbon and flowers from my stash. 

Next I laid a double layer of the muslin fabric over the inside ring of the embroidery hoop, about half way down the hoop, and attempted to add the outside hoop over the whole thing. Here's where I ran into a little issue. The two layers of muslin together with the layer of burlap and lace ribbon was too thick for the embroidery hoop, so I pivoted and removed the underneath layer of muslin, switching it out for a thinner fabric. With the thinner fabric in place, I was able to push the outside hoop down over the layers and the inner hoop capturing everything within the embroidery hoop. I tightened up the screw in the top of the embroidery hoop (which I had made sure was centered over the top of my fabric) and gave everything a tug from the back to be sure it was nice and taut across the front. ​

Happy Sunday everyone! This week's blog will be on the shorter side and is more of a conversation about craft room organization than a description of a DIY. As those of you who have been reading the blog for a while know, my craft room has gone through several iterations over the past 3 years. I upgraded to some IKEA furniture, moved things around, had to make some changes when I started working from home, moved some things around again and now my husband and I are ..... moving! Which meant it was time to reassess my crafty situation. For those who might not remember, my crafty set-up most recently was a corner IKEA desk, 2 tall IKEA drawer units, 1 short IKEA drawer unit and one metal bookcase.

Although the apartment we are moving to has a similar sized office room to the one we currently have, it was still a good opportunity to be honest with myself and do some purging. the first big purge will be the IKEA corner desk. While good in theory, I ended up not loving this desk and finding that it wasn't well-suited to actual crafting, but was well-suited to me dumping lots of junk on it ......

So my plan in the interim will be to use a desk given to me by my Pepere for any small-scale crafts that I do and invest in a larger desk once we eventually buy a house. I also decided that it was time to get rid of one drawer unit that I had. I opted to clean out the smaller, shorter drawer unit I had as the drawers were shallow and I didn't find it as useful as the taller units. So now the craft storage that I will be left with are the bookcase and the two taller units:

A few days of cleaning and purging were required to get down to these two storage units. Some of the things purged were beads, Perler beads, countless glass bottles, mosaic glass pieces, SOOOO much paper, many stamps and some stickers.

I also reorganized my paper, cards and stickers to fit on one of the shelves of the bookcase. The bookcase now holds my Cricut, paper, stickers, cards, paint and paintbrushes as well as a few extra things on the bottom shelf.

The two IKEA units hold some tools, Cricut supplies, my loom, yarn, felt and other fabric, a few select stamps, clay tools, glues/tapes, ribbon, colored pencils and other coloring implements, sanders and a few other random bits. There is even some extra room to spare in there!

This exercise really helped me hone in on what crafts I actually enjoy doing and see myself doing in the future. I shouldn't be keeping something because I "might" do it, but should keep supplies that support crafts I know I enjoy doing and will continue to do in the future.

This amount of supplies will also be much easier to transport to the new apartment which is a plus! What cleaning have you all been doing lately? Let me know in the comments below!

 - Rebecca

Hello everyone! Happy Sunday! So today I am here to show you the beginnings of a little home improvement project that I've been wanting to do for years. I have always liked the look of mismatched kitchen chairs all painted the same color and had been interested in doing that in my own kitchen. Well, 3 years after acquiring said chairs, I'm finally getting going on that project! This weekend I did the painting process to two of the chairs and I'll be showing you the more detailed process on one of them.

I'll be honest that this project really required me to go out of my comfort zone a bit in terms of prep work. I have always hated doing the appropriate prep work for more in depth projects. I usually just employ a "go for it" approach. However, as these kitchen chairs will likely be used on a somewhat regular basis, I wanted to take the time to prep them as best as I could.

Here's the "before" of one of the chairs:

As I wanted to paint these chairs black, the biggest step for me was removing as much of the varnish as possible so that the paint would adhere well to the chair. I decided to try a combination of using a Gel paint stripper, a hand sander and some sandpaper. Here is the paint stripper I used:

I applied the gel to the chair seat and after letting it sit and scraping off the varnish with a scraper, this is what I was left with.

I then went over the entire chair with a hand sander and sandpaper to get as much of the remaining varnish of as I could.

I will say that I found the gel stripper to be very effective and it 100% did its job, but I did not use it going forward on this project as I thought it would have been extremely hard to clean out all of the nooks and crannies of the chair. I ended up using just the hand sander and sandpaper going forward for the other chair. This worked out well as I was most worried about making sure that the chair seat was free of any varnish. It was impossible for me to get all of the varnish off every curve and spindle of the chair, but I was not too worried. As the seat itself would be the "highest traffic" area of the chair, I wanted that to be cleaned off the best.

Now onto painting. Due to the aforementioned nooks and crannies, I though that spray paint would be the best option for giving the chairs an even coat of paint. I went for an outdoor spray paint as I thought this would increase the durability. I also used a light coat of a satin varnish over everything once I was done. But we will get to that later!

So I gave the chairs about 3 all-over coats of the spray paint, which averaged about an entire can per chair. Once that was dry, I brought the chairs inside and added some "grubiness." I have always been a fan of an aged and antiqued look so I took some sandpaper to create some worn areas where the original wood peeked through. I also used a dry brush with some white paint to add some aged details in a few areas. I love a grubby look and I also find that it takes away some of the stress of keeping things perfect. If the chair was made to look a little beat up and well-loved anyway then its less upsetting if it gets a ding or scratch here and there. Here's a few photos of areas that I distressed. It doesn't come across very effectively on camera, but I hope that you get the idea!

Once I was done distressing, I went over with a thick coat of the satin varnish I showed above. I did feel pretty confident that the outdoor paint was strong enough on it's own, but thought that a little extra protection couldn't hurt. So here are the 2 chairs that I've completed!

I love how they look and am very excited to get the other two chairs I have completed! In all honesty, I didn't get the other two done this weekend because I ran out of spray paint and although it was relatively easy, it was a tiring and arduous process. So time to take a break and do the others when my additional paint comes from Amazon!

What do all of you think? Are you a fan of the mismatched chair look or do you prefer when things match? Let me know in the comments below!

 - Rebecca

Happy Mother's Day! To all the mothers, grandmothers, godmothers, caretakers, aunts, and all other women out there who have helped to shape someone's life, you are so appreciated!

This week I'm showing you the sweet treat that I made my mother. She loves cheesecake so we went with a no-bake fruity cheesecake. The basic recipe that I followed was this one from Taste of Home: www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/triple-berry-no-bake-cheesecake/print/

I changed up the recipe slightly in terms of the graham cracker crust and added some rainbow sugar for color and crunch. In all honestly, you could just buy a premade graham cracker crust and use that, but I have some springform pans that rarely get any use and I was excited to use them!

I followed the filling recipe, but did add some vanilla paste for extra flavor and some blue food coloring to make it a pastel blue color. Once the filling was done, the whole cheesecake went in the fridge overnight.

My husband assisted with the fruit portion of the berry cheesecake and we cut up some fruits and put them in a little bowl with some sugar to release the juices overnight.

The cheesecake came out of the pan very cleanly the next day and once topped with some fruit and CoolWhip, it was amazing! I've made a few no-bake cheesecakes before and this one was the best yet I'd say. It didn't end up being too sweet and had the tang that you want from a cheesecake. I would highly recommend! It fulfills the need for cheesecake without being excessively complicated like an oven-bake cheesecake.

I know this is a blog about cheesecake, but I wanted to add a quick little paragraph about the awesome cards I was able to make for my mother and mother-in-law using my Cricut. I cut out the words Happy Mother's Day and used both the letters and the relief left over to make 2 cards.

I hope you all have a lovely Mother's Day and make sure that the mother-figure in your life feels appreciated!

 - Rebecca

Friends! Hello there, I hope you have been doing well. I've been fairly busy in aspects of my life and haven't had too much time to craft these past few weeks, so please excuse this mini, tiny, extremely short blog about what crafting I have been doing in my spare time. The main crafting that I have been doing recently is some weaving with yarn. My overall love of yarn was sparked by my fellow crafter Cara and I would very much suggest checking her out on Etsy if you are interested in any wall hangings: www.etsy.com/shop/SeptemberSunStudio?ref=shop_sugg.

I bought myself a fairly cheap loom on Amazon and have been buying yarn from both the Dollar Tree and JOANN's. Here are some examples of some weavings that I have done recently.

I have also been taking the time to try out all of the cool things that my fancy new Cricut can do. I know I've mentioned it before, but in case you haven't heard, I have a Cricut and it's awesome! I think everyone know about Cricut's ability to cut out stickers and paper, but I made some little art pieces not long ago where I wanted to try out two more of its abilities such a cutting out stencils and writing in fancy fonts.

In my pack of materials that I got when I received the Cricut was some adhesive material that I used to cut out a stencil of a moon and stars. I ended up using both the stencil itself and the relief left over to create two little mini canvases.

I used a sponge and some acrylic paint to paint around the stencils and made two little skyscapes. I also decided to try out the Cricut's ability to write which is something that I find so impressive for some reason! You can use different colored pens and have the Cricut write in a variety of fonts. As someone who loves the look of fancy script, but cannot do it herself, this is a game changer! This is something I'm very excited to keep trying out.

And ... that's what I have today friends. It is small, but I just wanted to remind you that you can find the time to do a few creative things even if life is crazy. Not having the time to do your hobby for a few weeks doesn't mean that you've "lost" it. Be kind to yourselves!

 - Rebecca

Hello Friends!  It’s Suzanne, Rebecca’s Momma, and I’m happy to be back with you on the PPP with the next installment of Card Making Basics.  In December, we talked about the most basic of supplies – paper, adhesive, a paper cutter and a paper scorer: www.thepatternedpaperplate.com/blog/cardmaking-101.  In February’s part two, I showed you what you can do with just some pretty paper and sentiments printed out with your printer: www.thepatternedpaperplate.com/blog/cardmaking-102.  Today we are going to take it up a notch and add stamps and ink to our growing list of supplies.   With these, we’ll be able to really personalize our cards and make unique works of art.

Let’s start with stamps.  The OG variety are rubber stamps, usually made of red rubber though some companies use purple or green rubber.  These stamps give a clear, true image and last a long, long time.  They are usually mounted to a wooden block with the image of the stamp on the top of the block.  You can buy these individually or in sets from companies like Stampin’ Up!, Simon Says Stamp and Hero Arts -- even the “cheapo” bins at the big box craft stores.  Here are some examples – a beautiful Scala stamp from a company called Hampton Arts that I used on Rebecca’s high school graduation ceremony and party invitation.  The other is a set from Stampin Up!.  This set is typical of many companies where several stamps are grouped together with images and sentiments that coordinate together.  Your project has a nice cohesive look when using these -- I used three of the stamps in this set to make a thank you card.

The upside of a wood mounted stamp is that it is always ready to go.  You can grab it, tap it on your ink pad, take it to paper and you are good to go.  On the downside, wood mounted stamps take a lot of room to store because of the blocks.  It’s also difficult to see where you are stamping, so the chances of stamping something crooked are high.  If you are cutting out your image, like I did with the Scala stamp, that’s not as much of an issue. 

Next on the list are cling mount stamps.  They are the same red rubber as wood mounted stamps but are not permanently mounted on a block.  Instead, the rubber is backed by a cling foam which allows them to stick temporarily to an acrylic block.  They stamp just as well as wood mounted stamps and have the advantage of storing in a much smaller space.  Because the rubber is trimmed close to the image and the block is clear, you can also see where you are about to stamp much more easily and have a better shot at getting your image straight.  Here’s a photo of a set from Stampin’ Up! that I used to make a card that could be used for birthdays or get well wishes. You can also get cling mounted stamps from companies like Tim Holtz and Fun Stampers Journey. 

Finally, there are “clear” stamps.  These come in two varieties – photopolymer and acrylic.  Both have several benefits.  They are thin, making storage easy.  They are clear so you can see exactly where you are stamping, which makes placement practically perfect every time.  You will need acrylic blocks with these stamps as well since they are not permanently affixed to a wood block.  Clear stamps will stain, which is OK and doesn’t affect their ability to stamp a clean image.  What is the difference between the two?  Photopolymer stamps are made from a higher-quality material and are more durable to repeated use and repeated cleaning over time. Acrylic stamps are typically less expensive, but not as durable as photopolymer.  Neither is quite as durable as the OG rubber but depending on the quality of the stamp you buy; photopolymer stamps will last a good long time.  Here are a couple of examples – again, my company of choice, Stampin’ Up! and some from the good old Dollar Store.  The SU! sets are photopolymer and while the packaging doesn’t list it, I’m sure for $1, the others are acrylic.

You’ll notice that many of my stamp sets are from Stampin’ Up! (SU!).  Full disclosure here – I was, for some time, a hobby demonstrator.  That means that I was my own best customer and did not actively pursue sales with anyone but myself.  I am not currently, nor do Rebecca or I receive any compensation from any items you may chose to buy.  In the time I was a hobby demo with SU!, I was able to amass quite a collection of stamp sets in that time.  Many of them have great images but my favorites are those with a wide variety of sentiments.  In fact, when choosing your first stamp sets, I suggest a set just like that.  Choose something that includes a ‘happy birthday’, ‘thank you’, ‘hello’, ‘get well soon’ and other greetings.  Sets like the ones shown have a great variety and are very versatile.  These are the ones that you will use repeatedly in conjunction with your pretty papers.  You can also choose sets that focus on one sentiment, with different variations in a variety of fonts.  See these examples from a company called Papertrey Ink – in one, the Happy can be paired with all the other words to make up a number of greetings.  Same goes for the Thank You in the other set – Thank You Friend, Thank You For Everything, Thank You Very Much and Just A Note to Thank You are all options.  With different papers, these sentiments will carry you a long way.

Now let’s talk about some ink to use with those stamps.

Dye Inks are the most common inks used for card making.  You can find them in every color of the rainbow and in both full size and mini cubes.  The pads come in a variety of surfaces – linen, felt and sponge.  The two most common kinds of dye inks are water based and distress inks. 

Water based inks have transparent colors.  These are easy to clean off your stamps and dry instantly when stamped onto paper.  They work best on white and light color paper and most colors won’t show up on dark colors.  Because they are water based, they will “bleed” if you try to color over them. They are also not lightfast, so could fade after a period of time if exposed to light.  While these inks are great for stamping on card stock, they won’t work well on other surfaces.

Most companies that make stamps also make inks -- SU!, of course, Catherine Pooler, AlteNew, Gina K, Papertrey all have a line of ink pads that coordinate with their lines of paper.  Sticking with one company assures that your ink and paper match perfectly, which gives a nice look to your card.  Here you can see that I used an SU! color called Cajun Craze throughout this card – the cardstock for the base layer and in the decorative paper and for the ink.  It gives the card a cohesive look.

On Rebecca’s invitation above, I used an ink color called Crumb Cake from SU!, which is a perfect match to the craft card stock used for the base of the card.  You’ll see that I used two shades of green ink on the cards with the sentiment sets above.  In each instance, the green ink is a perfect match to the green paper or the green in the floral print.

Distress Inks are water-based dye inks but are unique and different.  They dry a lot slower and react with water, so they blend well with each other and with water to produce effects that you can’t get with regular dye inks.  Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Oxide inks are THE ones in this category.  I have not dipped my toe into this particular ink pool, but I have a dear friend (Hi Deb!) who does beautiful work with Distress Oxide inks.

Pigment inks are a lot thicker than dye inks and are opaquer. That makes them great for stamping on dark card stock.  Because they are thicker, they take longer to dry and are generally fade-resistant.  ColorBox and Hero Arts make two of the best pigment ink pads.  One pigment ink pad I will call out especially is AlteNew’s Obsidian Exceptionally Crisp pad.  It takes some time to dry, but it gives a sharp, true image that holds up well to coloring or other wet techniques.  I used that pad here and the black ink stayed nice and sharp under the Stickles glitter glue.

There are also several specialty inks that work for various techniques that we’ll talk about on future card making entries on the PPP.

• Solvent Inks – Solvent inks are the best kind to be used on any hard, non-porous surface (other than items that will be washed regularly - they don’t hold up well to regular washing) like glass, plastic and metal.  This kind of ink is permanent.  StazOn has a full line of solvent inks that work great.
• Chalk Inks – These types of inks are like pigment inks but have a more matte, “chalky” finish.  With that finish, they look great on darker card stock.  VersaMagic is the premier name for chalk inks.
• Specialty Inks - Watermark and resist inks are just two kinds of specialty inks are designed to be used for creating watermarks and heat embossed images.  VersaMark is the name to look for here.

Finally, a quick word about cleaning your stamps once they have been inked up.  For most water-based dye inks, water is enough to clean the stamps.  A soft rag dampened with warm water used to wipe them clean is perfect.  You can also buy a shammy from many companies (here’s mine, well used!). 

Cling mount and clear stamp sometimes lose their “stick” and won’t adhere to the clear acrylic blocks anymore from being handled.  A quick wash with the tiniest bit of a gentle soap and a thorough rinse will return that stickiness and they’ll be as good as new.  Remember, staining on the stamps themselves is OK and does not transfer to your ink pads or effect the quality of the image you’ll get when using the stamp.

Get your stamp on, friends!  It’s a great hobby!