Simon Says Stamp MEGA Falling For You Blog Hop!

Hey!

Happy Friday! Hooray for the start of the weekend! How about we kick it off in style with one MEGA blog hop full of inspiration, prizes, an incredible line up (I'm still wondering how I got my name on the guest list) and amazing new products from the wonderful peeps at Simon Says Stamp? Sounds good? Super!

Simon Says Stamp have just released a HUGE amount of goodies as part of their Falling For You! collection. It's all available to purchase NOW! We're celebrating with a good ol' blog hop so you should have hopped across here from the super-talented Mary Dawn Quirindongo. If you haven't, then be sure to start out at the Simon Says Stamp Blog!

I was kindly sent a couple of products from the range and they arrived just in the nick of time to whip up a couple of cards. First up, I fell head-over-heels for the HUGE Falling Hearts 6x6" cling stamp  - it's such a wonderful design! I felt like getting a little arty so I heat-embossed the design with white embossing powder, saturated the piece with water and created a little faux-watercolour ombre look with some Spun Sugar Distress Ink. The sentiment is from the Simon Says Stamp Floral Bookmarking stamp set and co-ordinates perfectly with the falling hearts.

• I opted to heat-emboss the sentiment onto vellum as it doesn't detract from the pretty background that I spent most of my time creating! 
• I added a little more of a distressed look by flicking water onto the painted piece and blotting it with a tissue. The water reacts with the Distress Ink to give a bleaching effect - perfect for an imperfect look!
• If you're going use a heat tool to speed up the drying process be careful not to apply excess heat to pre heat-embossed images. Burnt embossing powder is not a good look! 

Next up, I played with the Circle Dots stencil which features a very cool design suitable for a variety of occasions and recipients.

I figured I'd just let this stencil do the talking with some gold glitter paste  - to put an extra spin on things I decided to stencil the design over this soft, watercolour-style paper from Crate Paper's Kiss Kiss collection. The sentiment is from the Simon Says Stamp Summer Garden stamp set designed by Mama Elephant. I'm seeing this peach and gold colour combo everywhere right now and love it!

Well that's all from me today but before I tell you who to hop along to next, be sure to leave a comment as every blog on the hop has a Simon Says Stamp prize pack up for grabs for one lucky winner! A winner will be drawn at random from the comments on April 28th.

And now it's time to hippety hop across to Lydia Fiedler for some more SSS inspiration! Thanks so much for stopping by here today and have a wonderful weekend! :D

Sugar & Spice

Hey!

Happy Easter Sunday! I'm hoping that this scheduled post will publish OK as I'm more than likely to be en-route to the in-laws for a day of good company, good food and drink, and good giggles. Oh, and maybe some Easter chocolate too *wink*!

So it's not only Easter Sunday, but it's release day at Clearly Besotted too! Yup, all those sneaky peeks we've teased you with over the past few days are now available for purchase from 10pm tonight! Stephanie will be sharing all the new products in full beforehand so be sure to take a peek! :)

Today's final sneaky peek features with new set, Sugar & Spice. It's dedicated to the females with fun, bold family and friend words with wonderful co-ordinating sentiments. I decided to have fun with this set and use a number of the co-ordinating sentiments at once (yes, I'm having my cake – or should that be Easter egg?– and eating it!)

• I decided to use a heart stamp from the set, Scientifically Speaking to tick the hand-drawn boxes. It complements the patterned paper (American Craft's Shimelle Collection) on the card front too. 
• The style of this card reminded me of offices so I stole a pink paperclip from our office stash. It helps in balancing the design set at the jaunty angle which my OCD struggles to handle! 
• The round heart is the lens from the camera stamp from the new set, Keep in Touch.  I simply stamped it, coloured it and trimmed it from the full image. It makes a cute flair-style embellishment! 

I also smothered that heart with my clear Wink of Stella pen and Glossy Accents. I couldn't resist! ;)

I don't think I could give this card to any of the wonderful, creative friends I've made without ticking all the boxes. Every single statement is true. :)

And that, my fellow papercrafting peeps, wraps up the Clearly Besotted sneak peeks. It's decision time for you now; pop across to CB HQ to check out wonderful projects and the products in full to help you make your mind up. Happy shopping!

Thanks so much for visiting this little blogeroo today - I really appreciate it and hope that for those of you celebrating it, you have a very Happy Easter!

Scrumptious strawberries...

Hey!

Welcome back to the sneak peeks of the Clearly Besotted release for April!

Yesterday I shared a simple, cute, interactive card (check it out here if you missed it!) so for today I'm sharing something a little bit more artsy. Well, maybe faux-artsy as it's really just a case of water and Distress Inks. No real artistry required - if you wanna see that, check out this card by fellow teamie, Debby Hughes. It's jaw-droppingly amazing (and kinda makes me embarrassed to share my card here today!)

This cards features the set, Simply Scrumptious, and it's exactly that - scrumptious! Featuring my favourite fruit of the summer, gorgeous flourish-style leaves and lovely sentiments - it was clear that this set was going to see some inky love!

I love the different looks you can achieve by simply trying a different technique with your supplies. I used my trusted Distress Inks and water for this look. I created the blue wash first by saturating a piece of watercolour paper with water and adding drops of Broken China spritzed with water on my acrylic block. I then dried this with a heat tool (this is the important part!) before stamping the vine which was inked and spritzed with water. I then dried this before stamping the strawberries in the same way. It's imperative to dry each layer otherwise you end up with a muddy mess of colour which turns to brown. Not pretty.

To add more detail to the images, I used my white gel pen to add seeds to the juicy strawberries and veins to the leaves. You probably don't notice it, but it makes a real difference - trust me! If I had 'em I'd have used Distress Markers to add more depth too. :)

I wanted the sentiment to be subtle so I heat-embossed it onto a piece of vellum, cut it out and used vellum-friendly adhesive to secure it.

So there you have it. You don't need to be an amazing artist to achieve an arty look (although it helps!)

Speaky of arty, check out what the rest of the amazing, creative Design Team have created today by popping across to CB HQ, aka Stephanie's. I guarantee that you won't be disappointed. They rock!

Don't forget that it's release day tomorrow for all of these goodies - yay! So I hope you can pop back for a final peek of one more project using another fabulous set from the release before the goodies are available to purchase at 10pm UK time.

Thank you so much for stopping by here today!

Typewriter love!

Hey!

Or should that be 'hello' given today's card? :)

I'm here with the some sneak peeks of Clearly Besotted's April release and I can confirm that you're in for a treat! This little card was whipped up using the new stamp set, 'Keep in Touch'. Don't tell the other sets, but I think this one is my favourite. It's so cute, on-trend and features some of my favourite icons. Just don't tell the other sets, OK?

I thought this card was pretty sweet using the stamps as they are, but I couldn't resist incorporating a little interactive fun to the design...

All that's missing is the sound effects of a typewriter! This idea is so simple and achieved by cutting the typewriter paper insert with a craft knife and stamping the sentiment onto a tiny piece of cardstock to slot into it.

For the perfect finishing touch, I added some Glossy Accents to the typewriter keys:

That's enough typing from me today! I'll be back tomorrow with yet another sneaky peek of the Clearly Besotted April release. In the meantime, if you haven't already, pop across to Stephanie's for more sneak peeks including links to fabulous projects from the Design Team including our guest teamies, Rebecca Hoy and Nicole Picadura!

Paper Crafter's Library: Featured Artist

Hey!

Happy Good Friday Eve! I'm just popping by today to let you know that I'm flattered to be the Featured Artist over at the Paper Crafter's Library. I've created an exclusive project for them which contains some of my favourite things: Crate Paper, Studio Calico and Clearly Besotted goodies.

Oh, and I've also thrown in some gold sparkles thanks to the product that I can't get enough of at the moment: Cricut Gold Iron-on Glitter material. I love the shed-free sparkle it adds to a project and it's a bonus that it works in my Cuttlebug with my dies.

So if the sneak peek above has you curious, be sure to check out the full feature here!

I'll be back tomorrow with some Clearly Besotted sneak peeks! Thanks so much for stopping by today!