Photo overload - watch out!

Well yesterday was a VERY productive day.

We had football matches, birthday parties and a visit from Grandad to fit in, but I was let off of football duties and Grandad took my place which meant that after a lovely roast dinner, I played catch up and have to say that I was very proud of how much I achieved.

My February newsletter was sent out yesterday full of information on Sale-a-Bration, March classes, Stampers 6 group, ribbon shares, paper shares and parties - be sure to sign up on the link on the right hand side to make sure that you are included.

Anyway, I was very good and I did make my mum's birthday card yesterday (which is probably a good thing as it is today and we are off out for yet another meal tonight!), and I did promise step by step instructions, so here goes, as best as I can considering I had no tripod, I couldn't use a flash, the light was awful and I didn't have any idea where I was really going with the card LOL! I just knew that I wanted to use blue and yellow and the Rose is a Rose two step stamp set!

In the above picture you can see the Rose is a Rose stamp set together with So Saffron and More Mustard inkpads.

The stamp set is a two step stamp set which means that whilst the stamps don't look much on their own, put two together with different shades of the same colour and you create a masterpiece.

Firstly I stamped the large image onto Whisper White cardstock with the So Saffron ink. Nice even just on it's own!

Then we use the wonderful contraption that is the stamp-a-ma-jig. If you are ever one of those people who stamps wonky, this is the tool for you - you'll wonder how you managed without it for so long. So the SAMJ is a black handle and a sheet of clear plasma. You put the plasma in the corner of the SAMJ and stamp your image by placing your stamp right in the corner too and stamp the image. You can use any colour ink but I used what I had out and you can see the image here.

Then take the plasma sheet and place over the original image where you want to stamp the second image. This works well if you are trying to line up letters for titles or other things like that too where you need to be pretty spot on - how about that All in the Family Set - impossible without the SAMJ!

So once your plasma is in place, place the black handle so the plasma is in the corner again. Hold the handle still, remove the plasma, ink up your stamp and place the stamp exactly in the corner and you will be perfect!

Excuse the colours but you get the idea about what depth you can get with two step stamping. There are quite a few sets like this throughout the SU catalogue including the Botanical Bloom set in the Sale-a-Bration promotion!

For my actual card, I used textured Bashful Blue card, the En Francais background stamp and Bashful Blue ink. Just inked up the background stamp and stamped straight on the card. Love the effect of tone on tone stamping - very subtle but lovely!

Get some of the Bashful Blue double stitched grosgrain ribbon, make a bow and attach to the left hand side of your card.

I wanted my wording to match perfectly too - isn't that just the SU way LOL! So I had some white chipboard letters, I took a blender pen and just took ink from the inkpad with the blender pen and coloured in the letters. Now if I had the matching marker pen, I could have used that but I've just not got everything yet, although I'm doing very well :-)

So I used the So Saffron inkpad as my base colour and then used the More Mustard to highlight some of the sides to add dimension.

Can't make many cards without using my scallop edge punch - love that thing :-) So I scalloped the edge of the front of my card...

And then I wanted a So Saffron edge on the inside of the card, so I scalloped the edge of some So Saffron card too and stuck the strip on the inside page.

You can see how pretty it looks here :-)

And finally, here is my masterpiece. The chipboard peices were added with normal glue, the rose was cut out and mounted on 3D foam pads to give dimension and three silver brads were added to the top three scallops of the card to add some balance.

Phew! Well if you've got that far, well done. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be (apart from the quality of the photos obviously!), so I might just make this a regular thing.

Watch this space and enjoy your Monday.

Have fun!

Natalie x