Aloha, all!
Every Spring, I remember one of my favorite Springs, when I was a freshman in a then women’s college in the eastern United States. Each class was assigned one of four colors – ours was Gold – and each quarter one class was in charge of dinner and entertainment on a festival day. We were assigned to the Spring festival, and the day’s theme was, “Spring is a New Beginning and Golden is its Color.” It’s such fun to have a memory such as this, and even more fun when the Stampin’ Up! Only Challenge Blog (suochallenges.com) has Spring is About to Spring as its theme.
I love the Easter Season, and I truly miss all the daffodils I would see in my gardens when I lived on the U.S.A. mainland. Here in Hawaii, daffodils and other spring bulb plants just don’t have the chilly weather that they need to grow well in most of the state. You can imagine that I was so very happy to see Stampin’ Up!’s You’re Inspiring Stamp Set in the 2018 Occasions Catalog. In my last blog post, I featured one of the daffodil stamps in the set. Today I’m featuring the other.
The “other” stamp is one that’s only just a bit more than 2-1/2″ wide. So, when I decided that my design called for a strip across a 4″ wide layer on my card, out came my Stamparatus. Now I know that most of you probably don’t yet have one of these fun stamp positioning tools. But it won’t be long and everyone will be able to order one – from the Stampin’ Up! 2018-2019 Annual Catalog, which will be released June 1st. With the Stamparatus, I first positioned the rubber stamp so that the bottom was on on a line on the grid pattern on the bottom of the tool. Then I stamped the 2-1/2″ row of daffodils once, slid the Whisper White Cardstock over to the right, staying at the same line, until the stamp on the Stamparatus’ lid was just to the left of the first stamped image. Finally I used the stamp mounted on the Stamparatus lid to stamp again. (I have got to make a video, huh?!)
Once I was finished stamping the images, I colored in the flowers using Daffodil Delight, Old Olive and Pumpkin Pie Stampin’ Blends. These are so easy to work with! Because these images are small, I used the smaller of the two tips on the Blends. I managed to go outside the lines a lot as I’m still dealing with not having great prescription glasses after my recent cataract surgery. I can hardly wait until my eyesight settles down and I can get new glasses! The good news is that I don’t really notice the wonky coloring – that’s what watercoloring is supposed to look like (well, maybe not dry brush painting; but that’s not what one does with Alcohol Markers).
I trimmed the top and bottom edges of the Whisper White strip using Old Olive Cardstock punched with the Decorative Ribbon Border Punch. With this punch, you just punch out a strip of cardstock that you can then adhere to the back of the main layer – you don’t “waste” a large piece of the cardstock that’s hidden behind the image. I mounted that on a piece of Daffodil Delight Cardstock, embossed with the Basket Weave Dynamic Textured Impressions Embossing Folder, that’s part of a bundle in the Stampin’ Up! Sale-a-Bration second flyer. The bundle is one you can get for FREE with a $100 purchase of other Stampin’ Up! products, through March 31st. But the Embossing Folder (only) will be available in the upcoming 2018-2019 Annual Catalog. It’s a keeper for sure!
The ribbon that I used for this project is NOT Old Olive Ribbon. I really do like the way that the Pear Pizzazz 3/8″ Shimmer Ribbon coordinates with Old Olive Cardstock. I think that it must be the reflection of light on the shimmer ribbon that changes its tone a bit.
I hope you will consider making your own project welcoming Spring this month – and share it over on the SUO Challenges Blog! If you’ve read this far, I should probably share with you that I will be stepping down from the SUO Challenge Blog at the end of the month after 5 years of coordinating the work of a fabulous group of Design Team members. It’s time for a fresh look at the challenge, and time for me to go on to participating in other stamping related projects. I’m looking forward to it!
Happy Stamping!
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