Hello from the Caribbean everyone! I just had to say that because I am so, so excited to be on our very first cruise as this post goes live!! OK, back to business. Welcome to the next edition of the Stamp Review Crew! We have lots of great inspiration for you here :) If you have never hopped with us before, we are a group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators that do a blog hop every 1st and 3rd Mondays of the month, and each time we pick just one stamp set for us all to use. If you want to see the master blog hop list, you can find it on the official Stamp Review Crew blog here.
If you are following along in order, then you just arrived from Martha Inchley's blog. Wow, right!
My first card for you is this very talkative card. It is just full of love! I only used 2 stamps from the set, and 1 from another I chose colors that kept it gender neutral, even more towards the masculine, though. Since I have so many guys in the family, that keeps it more useful for me. It would be cute in any color though, I think.
You can see the little word bubble I put on the inside here. I had to add more little hearts. Of course, there is some white gel pen going on inside and out :)
Next up is a card that I made using the Nacho Average Color Challenge. That was a tough one for me at first because I did not think those colors went together, but this card proved me wrong :) Again, I used just 2 of the images from Point & Click, and the sentiment is from the monthly photo-polymer release from February.
Inside is a repeat of just one design row and some more of those stars. And white gel pen, lol.
That's it for me! I will be thinking of all of you on Monday as we are cruising! I'll be back next week, and I hope to share some great photos with you all then. It is now time to hop on over to Dawn Tidd's blog. I can't wait to see what she has created!
More watercolor, I know! I hope you all are not sick of it yet, lol! With our upcoming cruise to the Caribbean, I have been thinking about the ocean, warm sun, and beaches quite a bit, and it is definitely influencing my stamping. How could it not, right?!
This card started with the idea for the background, and then I hunted through my stamps looking for just the right big sentiment to carry it off. The sentiments in the set are huge! And I love it!! This would have been pretty cool with a circle of vellum embossed with the sentiment also. I may have to do that soon... As the technique is pretty simple, I will just list the supplies I used at the end of this post.
The watercolor panel is popped up on some dimensionals. It is so hard for me to not use dimension :)
I stamped the anchors in each color I used in the watercoloring. There was a little gap left and I thought it was the perfect place to put a sentiment :) This sentiment is from the Seriously Amazing Paper Pumpkin kit, which is currently available to Paper Pumpkin subscribers to purchase. And the stray black mark, yeah, that is from my finger... oops.
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On Wednesday, I posted a card that I had made while stamping with Geoffrey's girlfriend, Amanda. I also mentioned that it was not the first card design we made together. Well, this is the first one.
Amanda said she had not done any watercoloring or heat embossing in her crafting experience, so I had to show her those techniques! She picked out the sentiment and the embossing powder color, and I went from there.
I started out with the embossed sentiment.
Wet the paper a bit, then added Pool Party ink with an Aquapainter. Then I added some Hello Honey ink around the Pool Party.
I spritzed some water on the drying work and dabbed off after letting it sit for just a few seconds to remove some of the color.
Then I dried it with the Heat Tool.
I spritzed it again with some Pearlized water and let it dry.
Then I trimmed it down to 4"x5¼" and stitched it to a Pool Party card base.
The inside is simply outlined with the Signo white gel pen.
I titled this "Psychedelic Agate" because it reminds me of the agates I have found over the years. Except they were never these colors, lol!
Again, I did not think to take a picture of Amanda's work. It was the same day, after all :) Hers had the yellow int he center and the blue around the edges, and her colors were a little lighter, but still perfectly lovely!
The only things I used that were not SU here was the stamp: Think Big Favorites #15 stamp set from Papertrey Ink, and Pearl Perfect Pearls in the Pearlized water.
I hope you enjoyed today's card. If you want to purchase any of the supplies used to create it, just click on the links above to go right to my online store.
If you place an order and the total is less than $150 (before shipping and tax), please use this hostess code: XA3QREMN
And have you checked out this week's specials? Here they are!
Do those words really go together? Well, today they do! I made this card with Geoffrey's girlfriend, Amanda. I am so glad to have a family member to share this with again :) She loves to craft and had never done any watercoloring. I thought this was the perfect time to pull out and ink up this stamp set! This was not the first thing I had her do with the watercoloring. I will post that later :)
I used some Pearl Perfect Pearls at the end to add some shimmer. See how shiny those flowers are?! At this angle, they look too shiny as all of the detail in the flowers is lost.
At this angle you can see the detail and colors on the flowers better. This was all colored with Tim Holtz Distress markers, then I used an Aquapainter to blend the colors. I created the background with some distress ink squished onto a piece of plastic and picked up with the Aquapainter. I stamped the Hello greeting with Gathered Twigs ink and the edges are not as crisp as I was looking for initially, but I think the way it turned out is more in keeping with the rest of the work. Except, if it had been crips and clean, it would have tied the die cut word in more with the rest of it. What do you think?
Inside, I stamped the floral branch in Sahara Sand in the corner, then outlined with White Signo gel pen.
Now, I wish I had thought to take a picture of Amanda's work, it was gorgeous! Very soft and delicate. But she had it packed up and was out the door before I thought of it. And she has already given the card to her sister for her birthday!
Stampin' Up! has surprised us all with a fabulous idea. MORE Sale-a-bration goodies! There are 4 new offerings this month, the last month of SAB for this year. Check out the new stuff here!
And in case you missed the original SAB brochure, check it out here:
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If you place an order and the total is less than $150 (before shipping and tax), please use this hostess code: XA3QREMN
Can you believe we are so far into this year already! It is just flying by, just like last year did, lol! It is the first Monday of the month, which means it is time for another edition of the Stamp Review Crew. This time we are featuring a wildly popular set from the Occasions Mini. Almost every demo I know has purchased this set. It is so very versatile, good for any age, gender, and occasion. If you don't have it yet, you are going to need it by the end of this hop, I can guarantee it! I think this set just cries out to be used with techniques :)
As always, this hop is set up in a loop with links that will always take you directly to the posts for the hop. If you get lost along the way, or just want to see the full blog roll, click on the banner at the top to go straight to the Stamp Review Crew blog post for this hop.
If you are following along in order, you just came from Betty Traciak's blog. Fabulous, right?! I am stop #15, and here is what I have made for you all to enjoy!
My first project is a subdued general card. I thought about using a sympathy sentiment, but decided to keep it open to use for just about anything.
I used a panel of watercolor paper and embossed the tree with White embossing powder.
Then used my Aquapainter to alternate stripes of Crumb Cake and Sahara sand.
After drying, I stamped the leaves on with Mossy Meadow, but I only inked up once and just kept stamping. I then went back and wiped off the excess ink from the white trunks.
Then I cut about 1½" off the bottom of the panel, marked the placement lightly with a pencil on the card base, and stamped the sentiment in Early Espresso.
I then laid the remaining portion of the panel on the card base to figure out how much to trim off the top to get it the right size.
Stitch around the edges, pop up on dimensionals. Front is done.
Stamp the tree trunk with Whisper White ink on bottom right corner of inside of card. Then stamp leaves in Mossy Meadow.
Here is what the inside looks like. The Mossy Meadow does a nice job of overlapping the white tree trunk. You can see the dimension here on the card front also.
Next up, I wanted to use those adorable little bikes! I love that there are 2 stamps for this image, it makes it really easy to make the frame bright and shiny :) I used 2 embossing powders for the bike frames. I must admit, I was thinking of our Heidi Baks when I made this card. She is quite the mountain bike racer!
I did not emboss the bikes on the inside. I was just too lazy :)
This is my last project, and the watercolor background takes center stage here. I just love how this turned out! It was pretty easy too. I was going for a soft and artistic feel with this card. I adore the font of the sentiments in this set! Isn't it just gorgeous embossed here? I must confess, I used the retired Pewter embossing powder here. I love that stuff so much, I bought a backup container of it before it disappeared. But, I am sure it would look lovely in Silver also :)
Another view, because the picture turned out great and I couldn't waste it, right! The hearts are leftovers from Valentine's card, Confetti Heart punched Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer paper.
To decorate the inside, I just took the trimmings from the front panel and adhered them the right side edge. I wanted to continue that soft blended look with being overpowering.
That's all for me! I hope you liked at least one of these. Please, leave a comment and share your thoughts with me, it means so much :)
Time to head on over to Bronwyn Eastley's blog where she is sure to WOW you (and me too!).
So, I have been subscribing to the Paper Pumpkin monthly kits since the very beginning, and I have to say that they just keep getting better! I was so excited to play with the newest kit that I made a pile of little Thank You cards on Sunday in about 1 hour. SO easy! I send little thank you cards with every purchase or my retired stamp sets on Ebay and I have to make a new batch every month or two, so this was perfect timing for me :) I am also going to bring some of these with me on our cruise to leave for the staff on the ship!
Here it is, the kit for this month! After you watch this video, you can scroll down and see what else I made with the kit!
I took each of the accordion card bases and cut them into little cards, about 2¾"x3¾" each. I was able to get 4 of these little cards from each card base. I added Silver encore ink to the mix here.
And the inside. More of the smaller dots inked up once and stamped several times.
I just inked this bunch of triangles stamp with the two ink colors at the same time and stamped on the card front. The sentiment is again stamped in Silver Encore ink- all of the cards are.
I was able to stamp the sentiment sideways here. I like the contrast in directions here :)
This one required some cleaning of the stamp between repetitions, but once I figured out the placement, I was able to stamp all of the images in yellow at once on several cards, and then switch to the blue.
The insides were generational stamped a couple times to keep it subtle. The stamping is not perfect, but that is the look I was going for :)
This time I was able to ink once, stamp twice and get some lovely variation and save time all at once!
I did it in yellow too. I actually use Pool Party and Crushed Curry together quite a lot already, so this was such an easy kit for me to love!
This is the Pool Party version, I won't add the Crushed Curry one as it looks that same as this one, just a different color.
I was able to make some little envelopes to go with these cards with the Envelope Punch Board. I started with a 5-5/8" square of DSP, scored at 2-3/8" on to opposing sides, then connecting the score lines on the other two sides. Voila! Perfect little envie!
I decided to whip up a couple of the boxes in the kit to store these cards and envelopes in, and decorated the outside of the box with Whisper White Craft ink. You could fit a deck of cards in these boxes too, which I think makes them a great size for all kinds of treats! Or for a deck of cards :)
There are a couple of ways to get Paper Pumpkin. You can go sign up and have your credit/debit card charged every month until you decide to stop (you can even just skip a month if you want). Or you can prepay for a set number of months. During Sale-A-Bration, there is a special on the 3 month prepaid subscription (regular price is $59.85 US and it is now $54.85 US), and it qualifies you for a SAB freebie at the same time!! You can also order the prepaid subscriptions on a workshop order and earn host benefits on them! Sweet deal, right?!
To subscribe with a monthly payment, click the icon below and get all set up.
Or click on on of the choices here.
If your order is less than $150 (before shipping and tax) please use this hostess code: XA3QREMN
