Ink & Share Blog Hop featuring Sale-a-Bration

     Welcome to the very first Ink & Share Blog Hop! Right now you are hopping along with me all the way from Calgary, Canada. Come hop along with a group of talented independent Stampin' Up demonstrators from all over the world every month for some inspiration and creative ideas!

     I am so excited because this is my very first blog hop...I am new to blogging and I'm trying to go out of my comfort zone and try out new things.  For our first hop, we are featuring Sale-a-Bration items. All our SAB items are awesome...it's so hard to choose which one to use! But I finally decided to go back to my favorite stamp set...Lots of Lavender. It's just so beautiful, I can't stop playing with it!

     For this card I stamped my lavender bouquets on a piece of Whisper White cardstock using my Basic Black ink pad. I then clear-heat-embossed my images as I will be colouring my flowers. Once coloured, I cut my images out and moved on to my sentiment. 

     I used a sentiment from the stamp set Ribbon of Courage, which I gold-heat-embossed on a stitched circle die-cut piece of Basic Black cardstock. I had my sentiment off to the left side of the circle as I wanted to layer my bouquets beside it. 

     For the rest of my pieces, I used a Fresh Fig (standard A2 size) card base, a layering piece of Whisper White cardstock (4 x 5 1/4"), and scrap pieces of Blackberry Bliss and Peekaboo Peach cardstock. I also cut out a piece of the Painted with Love DSP (2 x 4") and then added the Year of Cheer washi tape into the mix just to tie into the gold embossing. 

     Once I got all my pieces ready, it was easy to assemble my card. I first adhered my Whisper White cardstock onto my card base, then layered all my scrap pieces of cardstock, washi tape and DSP  off to the left side. One bouquet is glued onto the layering piece as well, while the rest of the bouquets were glued onto my sentiment piece, which I adhered using dimensionals on top of my looped twine. Finally I added a few embellishments using sequins and a few White Perfect Accents which I coloured in to match my card. 

     And here is my finished card, hope you like it! Don't forget to check out my fellow demonstrator's lovely creations and keep hopping along with us...who knows where you'll end up! Next on the hop is the talented and super awesome stamper Shirley Merker.

Melissa Tennison

Joanne Hodge

Lisa Kmiec

Tricia Butts

Deb Naylor

Ginger Rabesa

Amy Grendel

Jacqueline Bobeldijk-Schilder

Laura Mackie

Ingrid Heijnen-Hermens

Linda Handford

***PHOEBE BORROMEO-CARR***

Shirley Merker

Karen Pearmain

Malissa Laws

Kirsten Aitchison

Last-minute Valentine Card

     I did it again...I lost track of time and forgot to do my last Valentine card. So right on Valentine's day, I am making my final cards. It is a simple two-for-one card, and again I used my Heart Happiness stamp set along with my Ribbon of Courage and Flourishing Phrases stamp sets.

     I believe that there is beauty in simplicity, and there is something to be said with making simple cards and stepping them up as well. My cards for today involved just heat embossing. I used my Versamark and white embossing powder on my Cherry Cobbler cardstock (3 1/2" x 5 1/2") and then reversed it on my Whisper White cardstock (same dimensions) by stamping my images with Cherry Cobbler ink pad instead and then clear heat embossing it. The important thing to note is that you'll need to use a stamp positioning tool for this to make sure you get two exactly identical pieces of card fronts. Unfortunately, I haven't received my Stamparatus yet, so I'm still using my old positioning tool. 

stamping images on Cherry Cobbler cardstock using Versamark pad for white heat embossing

re-stamping images on white cardstock with Cherry Cobbler ink pad for clear heat embossing

   

     This is what my card fronts look like after all my images and sentiment have been heat embossed. I could have left it like this and it would've been a nice simple card, but I wanted to step it up a bit. So I taped both cards together and cut them both on the diagonal. And then I did a little switcheroo after. Here's what that looks like.

     These card fronts were then just adhered onto my Basic Black A2 sized card base with foam tape for additional dimension. Now I wanted to of course add some shimmer, so I used the silver glitter washi tape from last year's SAB. And for embellishments, I added these white sequins. These sequins didn't come in red, so I improvised and just colored them in with a red sharpie. Problem solved!

     So from very simple cards, I stepped them up a bit by cutting and a bit of switching, and adding some embellishments. Here's my final cards. 

     I'm not sure which version I liked better...the simple or the stepped-up ones. One thing for sure, experimenting fuels creativity. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed today's cards. Have a lovely day! (It's almost the weekend...yay!!!)