Many of the stamps you might want to use in your scrapbooks have areas that are not filled in by the ink when you stamp the outline. There are several ways to fill these areas in and complete the image.
The easiest way is to use colored pencils, markers, or pens, just like coloring any other image. You can use virtually any brand, as long as it is marketed as acid-free.
A second way to color the images is to use your chalks along with cotton swabs to fill in the open areas. This technique works best with large open areas and thicker outlines. Chalking an image is fairly imprecise, so you want an image that is fairly forgiving.
If you like the look of watercolor paints, you can recreate the look with an inkpad or reinker, a water brush, and a stamped outline image. If you use inkpads with flexible lids, you can just press the inside of the lid down onto the inkpad. Some of the ink will cling to the lid, and you can use the lid as a palette for painting the image. The water brush will help you transfer the ink to the stamped image while still keeping it wet enough to look like watercoloring. If you use a reinker, simple squeeze a drop or two onto a plastic plate or container lid, and use it as your palette. Just be careful not to let your water brush get too wet, or your paper will buckle and warp.
Sometimes, you'll want to produce multi-colored images from a single stamp. For that, you use a technique called masking. It involves covering all parts of a stamp except those you want to stamp in a certain color when you ink the stamp in that color.
There is a lot more you can learn about using stamps in your scrapbooks. For a more thorough discussion of stamping, I encourage you to visit the Splitcoaststampers community. There is a wealth of information available there for free.
Practice coloring stamped images using one or more techniques mentioned above. Then, try producing a single multi-colored image using stamping, as explained in this lesson.
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