Summer is well and truly with us here in North Texas – we are forecast for 100F+ for the next 10 days. My garden is looking a little parched despite the fact I am out watering at 7am every day!
One thing that will not fade away in the heat is the lovely flowers that are part of the Accented Blooms Stamp Set. I have used So Saffron, Pool Party, Powder Pink and Pear Pizzazz to watercolor my flowers and they are still as vibrant as the day I painted them.
The Stamparatus is Stampin’ UP!’s latest tool and an absolute must have for all stampers. It helps you perfectly align your stamp images, stamp multiples of the same project quickly and accurately and gets complete ink coverage – ‘cos you can do a ‘do-over’ as my video today will show.
Today’s card uses the Stamparatus to set up the greeting straight and level. I made about 30 of these cards as thank you’s for my lovely customers who shopped with me in June and I can tell you it made the job of stamping the greetings very quick.
I have included a couple of video tutorials on this post ~ the first giving you a general intro to the Stamparatus and the second one on how to line up the text – using the red rubber stamps.
Last week I shared an anniversary card and that I have a number of anniversaries this time of year, brother, niece and long time friend. The Artistically Asian stamp set has been in the catalog for a couple of years now but I have not used it as much as it deserves. I also dipped into the Beautiful Bouquet stamp set for my greeting (if you don’t have this one consider adding it to your next order – it is a great one to have in your stash)
My card colors are Tranquil Tide and Coastal Cabana, I tripped over this combination when designing a card for my June Card Class and have used it again today.
We have a new embossing folder in the 2018 -2019 Annual Stampin’ UP! catalog, simply called ‘ Tufted‘ I wanted to use it so much but for it not to get lost in too much other detail.
Once again a gentle stroll thru my stamp sets and dies I spied the Flourishing Phases stamp set and the coordinating Flourishing Thinlits Dies – neither of which had been used for a while.
I have a monthly technique class and am always looking for new ways of using paper, stamps and ink. The Marbled Background Stamp has been in my stash for a few months and I wanted to use it for ‘something’ but not sure what – so I played for a while starting with stamping Memento Black ink and a quarter sheet of Whisper White card.
It was OK but was not floating my boat so I pulled out the Artisan Textures Stamp Set and randomly stamped over the surface with Versamark and sprinkled with Copper Embossing Powder then setting it with the Heat Gun……………. and there it was …………… a pretty cool effect that I have dubbed ‘Fool’s Gold’ as it reminds me of the rock of the same name – a throwback to my university degree where I majored in the Earth Sciences.
Today I am thrilled to be taking part in the Ink & Share blog hop again. You will have arrived from Rebecca-Jo Unwin’s post. This month’s theme is Summer ~ I really thought about this and recall family holiday’s when we were children in North Devon in the UK, there was a particular beach, Putsborough Sands, that had wonderful sand and you could walk into the sea for ages before it got too deep.
It bought back such happy memories that I decided that my summer card would feature a beach with a comfy chair where you can take time to just watch the world go by.
We are now 3 weeks into the new catalog and the new 2018 -2020 In-colors – these are a group of 5 trendy colors that are available for 2 years that coordinate with the core color families.
Most of my lovely customers will have seen the samples I made to showcase each of the new colors along with the scrummy coordinating ribbons, each card was made the same, just swapping around the colors.
I used the beautiful Love What You Do stamp set to help me making my samples – it has a lovely watercolor type ‘splodge’ which makes a great background to the flower and greeting.
Earlier this week I had my 2018 – 2019 Annual Catalog launch, each person got their own personal copy of the new catalog, we had a scavenger hunt, a drool over some of the new products I was able to pre-order, snacks and some ‘make and takes’
One of the make and takes was this card using a new stamp set, Serene Garden and one of the new card colors, Merry Merlot, plus some Stampin Blends pens – which will be available in the coming weeks.
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These are the last of the multilayered cards I made last month as thank you cards for my lovely customers – and wouldn’t you know this paper retired just last week! but I want to share them anyway as the technique will work for any of the new DSP packs in the 2018 – 2019 annual catalog.
The design is inspired by an idea from the UK demonstrator Pootles and it appealed to me very much – but instead of cutting up my DSP I used the scraps that were left over from previous projects. As a result I made about 2 dozen cards in total and although they followed the same formula every single one is different.
I set myself a couple of rules, the layering pieces of card must be the same color as the card base and each card needed to have 3 pieces of DSP.
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Stampin Up have a range of 50 different colors in the color families – each one has ink and card and a matching marker pen. There are ink refills for the ink pads but did you know that you could refill the markers using the same ink as for reinking your stamp pads? Continue reading
Cindy's Corner 