I thought I would show you my stamp ink pad inventory.  When I’m making the coffee filter flowers I was having difficulty with blending some colors together.  One of the areas you have to deal with when using coffee filters is the ink looks darker when you first ink everything and because it is so porous it soaks up a lot of ink.

I decided to make an inventory sheet (or should I say sheets) so I could see what the colors looked like on the coffee filter petals when they were dry.

Using the TH Alterations Tattered Floral die cut is where I started.  I’ve found using the die cut to cut the coffee filters works the best.

I’ve tired using a punch but it didn’t cut as well.  I didn’t try the Cricut but figured the coffee filter would be to fragile to pull off the mat without tearing.

This is a great die cut and it is a must have to make all kinds of flowers.  This is a thick die and it can work in your CB.  I use a B plate (one the I use to cut), the die cut, the paper and then another B plate.  It will cut through 8 layers of coffee filter without any issues.

I fold the coffee filter in half.

Then half again (this makes 4 flowers at this point).

And half again.

Find the flower on the die cut and place it in the area, then place the B plate (the B plate I use for cutting) to hold it in place.  This B plate is not my cutting plate but I wanted you to see how I placed it on the die cut.

Run the sandwich through CB and it cuts right through every layer.  You can see in this picture that my B plate that I use for cutting is very scarred and has lots of cuts.  This is ok, they are designed to get scarred up and eventually they will break.  At that point get yourself another B plate and keep going!

If you are real careful you can get two cuts out of your coffee filter on the small flower.

I need a bunch of these (I’m ink pad poor), so I tried to get as many cuts out of one coffee filter as I possibly could.

Next, I used Excel and listed all the names of my ink pads.  Once I had them listed I sorted them alphabetically and then numbered them.

I probably could have just taken a flower at this point and inked it up and slapped it on a page but I wanted to be able to color coordinate the pages (light color to dark color) and in the same order as I keep my Copic Markers.

I know what you are thinking, and yes it was a lot of work but I’m really glad I did it because it makes pulling colors together for flowers a lot easier.  Tune in tomorrow when I finish up this project.  I needed to break this post up so it would not be so long.