Spotlight on...Hope Stamps Eternal!

Welcome to the Hope Stamps Eternal Blog Hop! If you are just happening upon my blog, make sure to start at the beginning at Rachel's blog so you don't miss any of the projects! All of these super talented girls have used stamps from The Greeting Farm and I know you'll want to check them all out! Be sure to read through my entire post for information about Hope Stamps Eternal's grand re-opening sale and some blog candy too!!

Whenever discussions of favorite stamps/stamp sets come up, I immediately think of great sentiment sets with lots of versatility. So I was very excited to see the Sentiments set from The Greeting Farm! Just look at the options in that set - there are words and phrases for ANY occasion, and all the different fonts are just awesome! I've got two cards for you today using the Sentiments set and I loved playing with it!

(Side note: please excuse my less than stellar photography! It was rainy and cloudy all day yesterday so I could not get a good natural light photo and was forced to resort to the dreaded artificial lighting!)

For this first card I stamped the sentiment repeatedly to create a focal image, pulling my colors from the patterned paper, which is Tiptoe Thru the Tulips by Imaginisce. It's a double sided paper and I used both gorgeous sides for this card. The floral side is pre-glittered in some spots and I added some extra sparkle using yellow Stickles. The ribbon is White Sheer Polka Dot by May Arts and the brads in the corner are Fairy Dust brads by Imaginisce. The brads are iridescent and sparkly in person and really do look like they've been coated with fairy dust! This card turned out so soft and springy in real life, I just wish the photo did it justice!

For my second card I used the "My Friend" sentiment (love the font used on this one too!) to create a quick and easy 4.25" x 4.25" card. The paper is from the Brandywine pack by Memory Box and it is just so beautiful I couldn't bring myself to cover much of it up! It's amazing how the perfect paper and sentiment are all you need to pull together a little note card that any friend would
appreciate! I added some little punched out flowers to mimic the blossoms on the paper and adhered some Petal Pink jewel stickers from Memory Box to the center of each of the flowers.

The Hope Stamps Eternal store is running a grand re-opening sale that ends tomorrow, March 31st. Use code GRANDRE10 at checkout to receive 10% off your order. AND, as if that weren't cool enough, HSE is also offering FREE shipping on orders over $50. This special also ends on March 31st, so run and place a big order right now!!

And one final piece of awesome news - Rachel (the fabulous owner of HSE) will be randomly selecting one person who comments on one of the HSE Blog Hop posts to receive their choice of a Basic Grey 6x6 paper pack for FREE! It will be totally random as to whose blog the winner will be pulled from, so be sure to comment on ALL of the participating blogs!

Up next in the Hop is Colleen at Glitter Ink - she does fantastic work, so head on over and give her some love! Thanks for stopping by today!

March PTI Blog Hop

I can't believe it's Blog Hop time again!! (Or that I've been so bad about blogging this month!) My goal for April is to post every single day - I'm stressed about it already!

Anyway, the theme for this month's blog hop was to use some of PTI's fabulous stamps to create a background and then turn that background into a finished project. I ordered Guide Lines II from the last release and have had so much fun playing with it! It's SO easy to use too! I've created almost a dozen different backgrounds, but have only turned one into a card so far and that's the one I'm sharing today.

I stamped the grid in Spring Moss and then stamped some of the decorative elements from the set using Aqua Mist and Melon Berry ink. I stamped two more of the Aqua Mist shapes and punched those out with a 3/4 inch square punch. The centers are dotted with the smallest dot from Polka Dot Basics using Melon Berry ink and then the squares are matted on Spring Moss cardstock. The main image is from the Anniversary set, Everyday Classics, which I am in love with! Thank you to Nichole and PTI for offering this free set to those of us who are hopelessly addicted to PTI and buy way too many stamps!! That image is stamped in Aqua Mist and the sentiment, also from the Anniversary set, is stamped over it in Spring Moss. The ribbon is Melon Berry bitty dot ribbon, which I think is just so beautiful, and the blue gemstones are from my local stamp store. The blue of the gemstones is a few shades darker than Aqua Mist, but I think it works and gives a nice sparkle! And you can't tell from the photo, but the main image and the two small images are traced with a clear spica glitter pen, so it's really pretty in person! The bottom of the background is trimmed with my scallop border punch from SU, revealing a little strip of Aqua Mist at the bottom.

Nichole asked that we also share a photo of what our backgrounds looked like before we cut them up and hid them with other elements on our cards, so here's mine! I cut sheets of PTI white cardstock into quarter sheets and used those to create the various backgrounds I've done so far. That way they're perfect to use as a whole card front, or cut up as I did on my card above.

Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to visit this thread for a list of everyone participating in tonight's hop!

Quick and Easy Notecards

I signed up for a MS Walk in April, and as I've been fundraising from family and friends, I need some thank you cards on hand to thank everyone who is helping me reach my goal. So I made myself a set of thank you cards with matching envelopes that were super easy to do, but I love how they came out! I used one of the images from PTI's Retro Background Basics and used four different colors in the set - Ocean Tides, Raspberry Fizz, Ripe Avocado, and Summer Sunrise. I did one horizontal and one vertical card in each color, and stamped envelopes to match! The sentiment is from A Muse and I used a clear spica glitter pen to trace both the sentiment and the images. The camera never seems to pick up that pen, but the cards are pretty sparkly in person. I think something like this would make a nice easy gift for teachers, brides/mothers to be, or anyone really, especially if you vary up the sentiments to include some with Happy Birthday, Thinking of You, etc.

If you're interested in sponsoring me for the MS Walk, please visit my website to donate online, or e-mail me if you'd like my address to send a check. Thanks!

PTI Birthday Card

I haven't stamped anything in the last few days, but I've got a few card photos stored on my camera that I haven't shared yet. This card was for my friend Stacy's birthday a few weeks ago. Each of the strips - Lemon Tart, Aqua Mist, Ocean Tides, and Dark Chocolate, were stamped with a different border from the new PTI Retro backgrounds and borders sets.

I stamped this card at night and waited until the next morning to take the photo when I had some good lighting. Well when I went to take the photo, I noticed the pattern I'd stamped on the Aqua Mist was pretty much invisible and the pattern on Ocean Tides was very pale too. Not sure what happened, but I was able to restamp the pattern on the Ocean Tides strip before I took this photo. With the ribbon in the way up top, I couldn't redo the stamping on the Aqua Mist, so that strip looks like I didn't stamp on it at all. :-(

I dotted the center circles on the brown strip pattern with a silver glitter gel pen for a little sparkle, stamped a sentiment from PTI's Birthday Basics, and finished it off with some Dark Chocolate satin polka dot ribbon. I've used the Aqua Mist/Ocean Tides/Dark Chocolate combo before, but I really like the addition of Lemon Tart for a little brightness!