Watercoloring Altenew designs

 I have been somewhat working on sorting and labeling my non Stampin Up stamps. I have a small container that holds my Altenew and Pinkfresh stamps and stencils.  In the process I came across these beautiful florals that I hadn’t used in a long time.  I believe these are from the stamp set called Pen Sketched.  I have spooked at many cards made with the flowers embossed with gold and wanted to try that.  I was also playing around with a Jennifer McGuire technique for faux letterpress and foils.  I made a few card front panels. I  don’t own any kind of a foiling machine and she showed this as a substitute.  

I inked up the cutting side of my dies with versa fine pad 

ran them through the bigshot so they did not cut just left the impression in the card stock (different sandwich than when cutting)

Added gold embossing powder and the heat set it.  

I’m not sure you can see it real well in the pictures but it is like a Letter pressed look. The embossing doesn’t set on top of the card stock it is “sunk” pressed into it. 

Valentine quick card

 Valentine’s Day is right around the corner- are you ready???

Here you go and it even shows two sides of your designer series paper. 1. Cut your base piece of  card stock at 5.5 x 8.5    2. Now cut your 8.5 side down to 6 inches  (optional save what you cut off for embossing front left edge decorative piece).  3. Cut your Designer Series Paper (DSP) I did the piece at 6” then a piece that was 3” wide,  cut it down to 5.5 and used the 1/2” strip on the inside. (If you don’t want to do that just cut your DSP at 5.5 x 3)     4. Adhere the DSP to the front flap lining up the right side with the card back edge.     5. Front left decoration -Cut your extra white strip to 5.25 x1 emboss than adhere.  Decorate front and inside as desired. I made the  back inside layers 5 x 3.5, 4.75x3.25 then added the 1/2” DSP strip.                                                                   (I saw this card fold on a Susan Campfield video)

I’d love to see your take on this card, you could get 8 cards from one DSP piece of paper with NO waste!! 😄.   They would make a lovely little gift for a family member or friend! 

Retired Stamp Sets

 How often do you get out your old retired Stamp sets? Do you keep them or do you get rid of them when the Stampin Up catalog is over? I keep many of mine especially the ones that I really really like. That is the case with some of the sets that I used today.  

I enjoy watercoloring with my stamps. I pulled out the Mountain Air and the Snow Front Stampin Up sets and decided to do some scenic cards.   I used watercolor paper, lots of water, lots of different colors of ink, my aqua painters, lots of drying in between the layers and here they are. 

Maybe it’s time to pull out one of your old Stamp sets that you loved. If there’s a stamp said that we really love and wanted to keep then that means we should be using it. Sometimes we get so caught up in what is new that we forget about the old. So my challenge is - pull it out and use it. 😊