EVERYTHING HAS A SEASON

Wow, what a quick month May has been! Too many volunteer obligations! Now, I've got less than a week to get the backyard photo ready for the prom photo shoot!

As I mentioned in my May Reveal post, my favorite stamp set this month was the Garden Silhouette. Just love it. Silhouette stamps and gardens - two of my very favorite things! Here is the sneak peak that I left you with.

I used two of the images from the Silhouette Garden set to make this simple card. Might make a few more of this to have on hand for upcoming birthdays. 

I made the background, with a gorgeous summer's night, just around sunset, in mind. Using an felt applicator and a few Adirondack Alcohol inks, randomly put drops of Stream, Sunshine Yellow, Purple Twilight and Meadow and dab onto white glossy cardstock. Add a little Blending solution to mute it down if needed.

The two images were stamped side by side in Black StazOn. I then took a piece of the background and added more Blending Solution, to mute the colors. When it was dry, I heat embossed the sentiment using Versamark and Black Detail. It was cut with scissors and added with dimensionals.

A piece of scalloped white lace trim was folded around the back of the card front to emulate a window valance. Layered on to black, white and then to the black card base.

A quick and simple card - don't you just love those?

I'd like to enter this card in The Artistic Stamper challenge - In the Garden.

Thanks for popping by today, I'll be back in a few days to share some more cards from the May Reveal. Here's another sneak peak, using the travel mixed media set and some new but "dirty" embossing powders, to whet your appetite:

Till next time,

Hugs,

Shona

SPARKLE N SPRINKLE MAY REVEAL

Hi, and welcome to Sparkle N Sprinkle's May's Reveal.
Our website was not playing nicely, so we are a bit late showing off our May projects with the new images.

This month Sparkle N Sprinkle is introducing EIGHT new rubber stamp sets and 5 new digital sets. Through May 21, the rubber stamp sets are 20% off their regular price.
The beautiful Nesting Bird set is available:
 on Cling Mounted Rubber
as a digital image
and is also included in Jazzy Jill's Technique Video for the month.

SPECIAL FOR VIDEO KIT CUSTOMERS ONLY:
FREE shipping any size order. When checking out in the on-line store, please use a credit card (not PayPal) and write VIDEO KIT CUSTOMER in the COMMENTS section. Your account will be manually adjusted.
Video Kit Customers using PayPal, please phone the office to receive free shipping.
Offer expires May 21, 2014.

On May 21 EIGHT winners will be selected from the comments left on the designers' blogs listed below. Each winner will receive a new stamp set, and the choice of one embossing powder and glitter to go with their new set.

The new stamp sets are:

Travel Mixed Media #607
Floral Flourish #634
Leafy Flourish #641
Nesting Bird #602   (digital available)
Church Sympathy #604   (digital available)
Across the Miles #603   (digital available)
Spunky with Flowers #605 (digital available)
Garden Silhouette #600 (digital available)

The blog hop winners will be announced on May 21 on Facebook, the SNS blog, and on our blogs:

Anita Scroggins
Steff Munnings
Donna Ellis

Shona Erlenborn (you are here)
Eret Pank
Mayra Hernandez
Emmy van den Heuvel
Belinda Shupe
Marie Berquist
April Williams
Anne Temple

Remember to comment on each of the Designer's blogs to increase your chances of winning!

My personal favorite set this month is Set 600: Garden Silhouette. I happen to love using silhouette stamps and gardening is another of my creative passions. 

Sparkle N Sprinkle is now carrying stencils and embossing paste. Did you know that you can make gorgeous, sparkly and dimensional  backgrounds for your projects using embossing paste, a stencil and your choice of embossing powder? Here is the tutorial in the tips and techniques section if you'd like to check it out. 

I went a little crazy with this technique one evening. I used different stencils and varied the embossing powders used.  Here's a look at some of the results:

I wish I had taken a photo of all the backgrounds I made, before I started using them!! One of my favorites was made using the Clockwork stencil by Tim Holtz. I made two backgrounds, one using Blue Silver Embossing Powder and the other with Silver Lightning. 

The first card shown used the Blue Silver version. Here is the Silver Lightning background:

Don't you just love the chunky sparkly dimension?

My only advice with this technique is set aside some time to do several at once. You will need to have soapy water on hand to clean the paste off the stencil as soon as you take it off the cardstock. I placed the stencils in a basin of soapy water immediately and cleaned them all at the end.  As long as they are soaking in the soapy water it is an easy clean-up, just don't let the paste dry on the stencil!  The other benefit to doing more than one at a time, is you need to apply the embossing powder to the paste while the paste is wet, but you have to wait till the paste is dry to heat emboss the powder. I left the backgrounds overnight to dry and then embossed them all in the morning. So much fun!! It felt like Christmas morning - opening presents!!

As soon as I saw this sentiment in the Garden Silhouette set, I knew I had to make something with my clockwork backgrounds. For my first card, I inked up a mirror background stamp with the Creole Spice Kaleidacolor ink pad and then spritzed it with water before stamping onto glossy white cardstock. I left it a short while to dry. The colors will become muted and "dreamy". The image was stamped on top with Memento Tuxedo Black. 

I applied Versamark to the Prima flower and heat embossed with the Silver Lightning embossing powder again. It was attached to the background with a brad, then the image and background were layered to black glossy cardstock. I stamped the sentiment in Versamark on glossy black cardstock and heat embossed with Belgian Cream. It was cut up and taped to the focal image. Complete instructions, if needed, can be found here.

For a totally different look, using the same stencil, I added a "few" glitters to my second card:

As I mentioned before, one of my other passions is gardening and I love taking photos of everything that happens out there! The flowers in the card were cut out from this photo, taken last year:

After cutting out the flowers, I applied Lavender Iris, Bubble Gum, Raspberry Soda and Pretty Princess glitters with a Sakura Glue Pen to add some pink sparkle, to highlight the gorgeous colors of the Coneflower! 

The sentiment was stamped in Versamark and heat embossed with Black Detail and then cut and embossed with Spellbinders Fancy Framed Tags Three. I distressed the edges with some Memento Sweet Plum ink before adding a little Versamark and heat embossing with Sangria Star.

To assemble the card and pull the silver and pinks together, I decided to add a glittered border, using the same stencil and a couple of the Velvet glitters. I applied 2 1/2" Tear-ific Tape to the right side of pink cardstock. Versamark was applied to the back of the stencil that will be touching the tape, this makes it easy to release from the tape afterwards. Remove protective backing of tape and lay the stencil on top. Apply Orchid Rose and return excess glitter to jar. Take off the stencil (you will need to remove the Versamark ink from it - some soapy water works fine) and then apply Reflection glitter to remaining exposed tape. There is a tutorial for this technique in the Tips and Techniques Section, if you need more detailed instructions. 

A strip of Orchid Rose balances out the left side of the card and the flowers were attached with dimensional tape of various depths, to create lots of dimension. This card and directions can be found in the gallery, here.

I'd like to enter this card in the challenge over at The Artistic Stamper, where the theme is "In the Garden".

Hope you've enjoyed your visit with me today, I'm leaving you today with a sneak peak of another card I made using the Garden Silhouette set.

Till next week!

Hugs, 

Shona