Krista's Crafty Corner: May Stamp of the Month

Welcome to our Stamp of the Month Blog Hop!

We will be featuring May's SOTM, which is “Friendship Bouquet…”, a set of 8 stamps.

If you have come here from Dawn Heuft’s Blog, you are on the right path! The blog hop is a great big circle, so you can start here and work your way all around. If you get lost along the way, you’ll find the complete list of participating consultants HERE.

This month we 58 Close To My Heart Consultants sharing their creations using this month's SOTM!! I’m sooo excited to see what everyone has created with this BEAUTIFUL stamp set! This has been a FAVORITE of my customers – and they couldn’t WAIT for May to arrive so they could purchase this stamp! LOL! J

This Blog Hop is simple to do…just CLICK on the link at the end of the post on each blog and move along to the next one!!! Have FUN and happy hopping!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I knew this stamp set could be sooo beautiful when it was colored in. I felt a bit challenged, as I don’t often color in stamps anymore.J Lately, when I’m stamping it seems that I tend to use a Cricut image…and stamp directly over top of the image – or I use a solid stamp to stamp my image so I don’t have to color in anything!

I was excited to try two different techniques when I created these two cards J

Supplies Used:
X5920 – Winter Como Cardstock Pack (goldrush & honey)
X5642 – Cocoa Cardstock
1388 – Colonial White Cardstock
X7153B – Florentine Paper Packet
Z1474 – Kraft Die-Cut Cards & Envelopes
D1477 – Universal Backgrounds
C1459 – Stitched Together
S1205 – Friendship Bouquet
Z1686 – Cricut Art Philosophy Collection
Z1732 – Color-Ready Seam Binding Ribbon
3174 – Blending Pen
3505 – Watercolor Pencils
Marker colors: Honey, Buttercup, Sunflower, Chocolate
Ink colors: Olive, Cocoa, Bamboo

Feel free to “Hop” on over to Gina’s BLOG to see her amazing work. I can’t WAIT to see what my Scrapbooking Buddy has created! I LOVE to see her work and stop by her blog often!!

If you’d like to see some more details concerning my two cards and details on how they were created, keep scrolling down and I will share that with you.

Be sure to visit ALL the Consultants at their Blogs…and we love reading your comments on what YOU liked about each piece of artwork!

I know you will get LOTS of ideas using this May Stamp of the Month stamp set!!

This set “Friendship Bouquet” is ONLY available from May 1-31…so contact your CTMH Consultant (or feel free to shop with me at my website J) to see how YOU can get this stamp set for an AMAZING discount!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My first card…

When I was planning to create this card, the Florentine paper pack came to mind. J

I stamped my sunflower image in Cocoa ink and then got out the watercolor pencils to shade in the image.

May 2012 SOTM florentine_sunflower card closeup blending pen

I love using the watercolor pencils AND blending pen technique…you don’t need to color neatly at all! LOL!!!

When you bring the blending pen in to color over the pencil areas, it shades everything together and it gives it a smooth beautiful look!

Since this was a simple card, I decided to add some 3D foam tape (a creator’s best friend) to the goldrush mat on this card. I quickly cut the scalloped edged rectangle mat with our Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge.

The ribbon I used, was our WONDERFUL, NEW Color Ready Ribbon! I took my sponge dauber, dipped it into Goldrush ink…and sponged on the color I needed to create my ribbon!!! LOVE how you can CREATE any COLOR of ribbon you need for your product!!!

My second card…

This was a FUN card to create as well!!

This time, to color in the flower image, I used CTMH’s exclusive markers with the blending pen.

I stamped the flower image in Coca ink, and then traced the colors sunflower, honey and buttercup throughout the flower. Using the blending pen was amazing!! It “blended” those 3 shades of yellow together perfectly!!!

May 2012 SOTM 6x6 sunflower card close up

I did “POP” the flower to give it dimension. I also stamped the image with script from our Universal Backgrounds stamp set on the first background. I believe that is my favorite background stamp set!! I seem to use it QUITE often! LOL!!

I also used that wonderful 3D foam tape to pop my scalloped square mat.

Did you remember I used our wonderful 6x6 die-cut card as the base of this card? If you are not familiar with these cards…click here to see how they look.

May 2012 SOTM blog hop 6x6 card inside card

You will notice and may wonder where is the scallop edge that we usually see on this card? J

I put this scalloped edge on the INSIDE of my card!!! I wanted to create a pocket to tuck something inside! I could stick a gift card, bookmark…anything that fits, into this little pocket.

I used a bit of 3D foam tape (I told you I use this a lot! LOL!) to pop up the sides, and then I have created my pocket for whatever I’d like to stick in there! J

If you haven’t done so already…Feel free to “Hop” on over to Gina’s BLOG to see her amazing work.

Thanks for stopping by!!!

*If you visit my blog often, a reminder for you!!!

The Dotty for YOU

contest

(that I- Krista- am holding for my friends and customers)

will be

continuing until

May 31st!!!

In honor of National Scrapbooking Month we have a FABULOUS Paper pack available called “Dotty for You!”

I thought it would be FUN to have a drawing for a MYSTERY HOSTESS for all orders Placed ONLINE at the special link on my website!

We will have THREE mystery hostesses, one hostess in April and two in May.

Each person will WIN $40-$100 in Hostess products!!! The amount will be determined by HOW many orders are placed online, but each mystery hostess will earn at LEAST $40 in Hostess products!!!

How can YOU join in on this FUN?

For EVERY….

**Dotty for You paper pack

(You can get MORE than one…and only $5 for each $35 order you place!!)

**April Stamp of the Month($5 with every $50 order)

**May Stamp of the Month ($5 with every $50 order)

that you purchase, you will get a ticket into the

Mystery Hostess Drawing!!!

CLICK HERE for the all the details!!

Happy Creating!!!

Krista Hershberger J

Close To My Heart Independent Consultant