{capture the moment}

1

It is getting to be a busy time of year for my family, and perhaps yours as well.  Baseball games, ballet recitals, birthday parties and family reunions are now filling up my calendar.  So some times it is fun to come up with quick & easy designs that can be versatile for any occasion.  For my last project of this countdown I created this fun turquoise & white card.  Very simple and striking, with a special touch of American Crafts velvet ric-rack adhered to the underside of the edge.  I thought that it might be fun to make the same card with different colors.  So I picked a rich vanilla cardstock base and stamped with pumpkin orange as my accent color.  I didn't have any ric-rack in this particular shade of orange, so I just made my own with pinking shears and orange cardstock.  With the different sizes and shapes of flowers in the new Green Thumb set, your possibilities are sure to be endless.  And don't forget!  Tonight at midnight EST you will be able to see this set in entirety on our website.  And wait until you see what the Design Team whipped up for projects using this set.  In my opinion, they are the best yet!  So if you're up, be sure to stop by! See you tonight!

2

I just noticed that I have used green in almost every creation included in this countdown!  But you know what, that is okay!  Why you ask? Because it compliments the name of this stamp set perfectly, which happens to be "Green Thumb"!  Today's project is a quick and easy card.  I just stamped my own patterned paper with a retro dot from Green Thumb and the sunburst stamp from Butterfly Kisses.  The grasshopper and sentiment go together perfectly.  Look real closely and you will see that it reads "hoppy birthday" for a fun play on words.  For ink I used Old Olive & True Thyme classic (dye) inks from Stampin' Up!  Tomorrow will be the final day of the countdown!  The big day is almost here!

3

Fresh ripe strawberries served with tart lemon curd on top.  Mmmmm. That's the inspiration behind today's little project.  I have wanted a 2-step strawberry for years.  And now I finally have one, well, actually two, because there are two sizes in this set.  This project uses the smaller of the two to create patterned paper. I cut out a single strawberry and tied it to the pencil with matching red ribbon.  I wanted the spine of the notebook to be a nice retro green rather than black, so I painted it using a foam brush and acrylic paint.  Doing several thin coats works better than one thick coat.

4

This project uses another set of 2-step images, peas & a pea pod.  One thing I love is that the three peas are all one stamp, so you don't have to do each one individually.  This would save a lot of time, especially if someone wanted to mass produce the images for baby announcements or something.

I used one of my favorite techniques to give this card some artistic flare.  I stamped the pea pod on watercolor paper using dye ink.  Then I used a water pen (you could also just use a brush & water) and carefully "colored in" the image with the water.  Since the dye ink is not "waterproof" the water blends the ink together.  The end result is an image that looks as thought it was completely painted by hand, but in reality it is just any easy technique with a stamp!    The example below shows the pea pod half finished.  You can really see the difference in the two sides I think. 

I really love the font I found to use for the words in this set as well.  The "sweet pea" sentiment works perfectly with the understated "swirliness" (is that a word?!?) of the lettering style.

ETA- There was actually no scalloped punch involved!  I just used some new $1.98 scallop scissors that I had picked up at Hobby Lobby!  The font I used to design the sentiment stamps for this set is called "Giddiup" which came as part of the font package included with my Adobe Illustrator program.

INKS: Old Olive & Certainly Celery Classic (dye) pads
OTHER: Polka Dot Fabric Tape from Making Memories
the fabric tape is matted with a thin strip of vanilla cardstock followed by green cardstock.  Then I trimmed the green layer with scalloped scissors.  In an essence, customizing my ribbon!

Can't wait 'til the 1st?

If you can't wait 'til the first, try your hand at winning the special Papertrey spring release set over at Lisa Johnson's 1st Anniversary celebration.  Read more about it here.  Good luck! Boy, what a way to celebrate!