CHRISTMAS WOOFIE GONE BIRTHDAY!

Hi there,

I've been upstairs in my stamping room this morning and they are already starting to introduce those Christmas tunes into the radio playlist!  Yikes!  It's still too early for me and in an effort to slow the inevitable down a bit, I decided to repurpose a Christmas image to a birthday one - just because!

I got the idea from a Blog Challenge last week, and wanting to use one of the new Die-Version dies which SNS is now carrying, I decided to give Woofie a seasonal change. 

He comes like this in the Set:

... and I made him into this:

The inside is as much fun as the outside:

Sparkle N Sprinkle now offers many of the Die-Version dies. There are also these PopUp dies and CutOuts that are just so much fun. You can check them out here.

For my Woofie Birthday I stamped the Christmas image on to white cardstock and then colored the packages in birthday colored Copics (incorporating some of the colors from the printed cardstock). I then fussy cut and added dimensional glue to the packages to make them nice and bright.

Woofie was given a "coat" of Brushable Glue and was adorned then with Buff Flocking, to make him soft and fuzzy! The hat and balloons were stamped from another new stamp Set 673: Birthday Friends. They were stamped onto scraps of the patterned paper, fussy cut and then Versamark was applied to them before being heat embossed with Clear Detail.

I added a piece of the patterned paper to the card front and ran natural cardstock through the Cuttlebug Happy Birthday embossing folder. The embossed piece was torn and then inked directly with Memento Desert Sand. It went well with the Buff flocking.

I added a little sparkle with strips of 1/8" Tear-ific Tape applied with one of the Velvet Glitters: Peruvian Lily. This background was then layered to the card base. I cut and embossed the circle, from natural cardstock, using Spellbinders Classic Circles Large die and sponged the piece with Desert Sand, before removing the die.

The sentiment was stamped in Versamark and heat embossed with one of the Tuscany embossing powders, Sienna. I love using these embossing powders for sentiments, as they are very fine powders and are therefore great for detailed images as well as words.

I then hand cut the banner and sponged again with a little Desert Sand. The card was then put together with tape and some dimensional dots. 

I hope I have inspired you today to take another look at your Christmas stamps and see how else they can be put to use.

Since I missed the deadline for repurposing your stamps, I'd like to enter this card in the following challenge:

Love to Scrap Challenge Blog #42 - Say it in Color

Till next time,

Warm Hugs,

Shona

SPARKLE N SPRINKLE'S OCTOBER 1ST REVEAL

Welcome to fall and the inspiration of  the Sparkle N Sprinkle's Design Team as we introduce our six new sets for October. As you may know, autumn is my favorite season and I just love flowers, so I "picked" the Beautiful Friendship Set 665 to work with in autumnal hues.

This month SIX new stamp sets are being introduced.   These sets are 20% off their regular price, until October 3rd.  All the new reveal sets are available on Cling Mounted Rubber and as a digital image. The Bubble Gum, set #664 is the stamp set featured in  This Month's Technique Video.

Here are the six new sets:

Welcome Autumn #650   (Digi version - DIGI650)
Party Penguins #654  (Digi version - DIGI654)
Witches Brew #660  (Digi version - DIGI660)
Bubble Gum #664  (Digi version - DIGI664)
Beautiful Friendship #665  (Digi version - DIGI665)
Ellie's Dance Lesson #667  (Digi version - DIGI667)

On Oct 3rd,  one Grand Prize Winner will be selected from the comments left on the designers' blogs listed below.  The Grand Prize Winner will receive their choice of:

1) all SIX of the new rubber stamp sets
or 
2) all the new digital stamps and digital stamp sets. 

The new SNS Creative Challenges also begins today, with lots of prizes and recognition badges. 

The winner of the blog hop will be announced on Oct 3 on Facebook, the SNS blog, and on our blogs:

Belinda Shupe
April Williams
Marie Berquist
Shona Erlenborn (you are here)
Eret Pank
Anita Scroggins
Anne Temple

(Tip: if you have a problem with a particular link, try clicking on the person's blog title to send you to their Home page.)

Don't forget to leave a comment with each Designer to be eligible for the Grand Prize.  We love reading your comments and hope we have inspired you as well.  If you absolutely can not leave a comment for some reason, please email icinganne@yahoo.com with your comment and the name of the blog or Designer you are commenting about.

So let's see what I did for my project this month. In September I worked with Margaret at the Somerset Scrapbook Convention. Here's a quick look at a bunch of awesome ladies about to find out a really quick and easy way to add sparkle to any project:

On the Scrapbook page project, we had used Sparkle embossing powder just to bling up a little bird's nest.  I had totally forgotten what a big sparkly impact you can get just by covering your image or piece of paper with this awesome embossing powder! So I decided to highlight this simple technique in my project this month:

Isn't that just lovely with the added sparkle, not only to the image, but the plain white cardstock? Here are four examples of some hand-made glitter paper:

Just by applying Versamark and heat embossing with the Sparkle embossing powder, you can transform a matte finish to a sparkly glittered masterpiece, which can be punched, used for backgrounds or as I did in my card - even add sparkle to a colored image!

I stamped the bigger image in Versamark off the bottom left of the card front and then heat embossed with Sienna embossing powder. I thought rather than using black it would be more inkeeping with my autumnal feel. Plus, these Tuscany embossing powders are detailed powders, so they work really well on detailed images with fine lines, as well as sentiments. There are 12 colors to choose from too, so there will be one to go with each of your projects. You don't have to stick to black anymore! On my project I used the Sienna embossing powder for the sentiment too. Look at the fine detail it produces:

Next I colored in the big image with Copics. I repeated the process with the little rose image on a scrap piece of white cardstock. Then I used the "Out of the Box" Technique to die cut and emboss the circle. I then took my Versamark Pad and applied it to the entire piece - the white frame with the colored image in the corner. The entire piece was then heat embossed with Sparkle.

For my background I used a technique called Alcohol Marker Marbling, which I found on Splitcoast Stampers a couple of weeks ago. Using four of the same Copics that I used to color the roses, I scribbled on a Ziplock bag, spritzed on some Alcohol Blending Solution, and smooshed glossy white cardstock onto the bag. It resulted in a background that matched my project perfectly! 

Next on to my Chipboard word. I learned something new about chipboard pieces at the Convention. I had noticed that when I tried to emboss these chipboard pieces, they would often leave an outline of their shape on my Versamark pad. Apparently the chipboard shapes are cut by a laser machine and in essence are being burnt while they are being produced. The black outline is actually soot, and if you take a paper towel around the edges of your chipboard piece, the soot will come off on the paper towel and not your Versamark pad. I keep an older pad specifically for my chipboard pieces. The other option is to use a dauber applicator for your embossing ink.

 The Chipboard piece was covered with Versamark and then heat embossed with some Sienna Star. This powder is the same as the Sienna, but with glitter added. I then reapplied a little Versamark and heat embossed some Magic Speckle to give it the mosaic look.

To finish the card, I placed the stamped, marbled background piece in the window of the frame. I then edged a piece of yellow cardstock with 1/4 Tear-ific Tape and layered the card front to the sticky edged card base, applying Sunset glitter to the exposed sticky edges. The "Friends" chipboard piece was stuck down using Dimensional Glue and the little rose image was attached with Dimensional Foam.

For a little extra bling I added a little strip of the jewelled ribbon, a strip taken from the Diamond Mesh, to the top of the card, which completed my project for today. I hope I've given you some ideas to go and play with. Full instructions for this card, can be found in the SNS gallery.

Remember to leave a comment here and on the other Designers' blogs to be eligible for the Grand prize of all six of these new sets!

Here's a little sneak preview of my next post, which will feature the paper-piecing technique! It uses one of the other new reveal sets - Party Penguins - too cute!

Hope you'll pop back next week to check out this project! Till then, hugs and get your Sparkle On (the cardstock)!

Shona

SPARKLE N SPRINKLE'S FEBRUARY 1ST REVEAL

Welcome to Sparkle N Sprinkle's February 1st Reveal.  This month we are introducing three new sets. One of these sets is Spunky and Rocco, they're having a good laugh with each other - a great little friendship set!  With the awful frigid weather we've all been experiencing lately, I was thinking "warm and fuzzy", so chose to highlight this cute set for the reveal.  I struggled for a while with how I would stage these two fun critters, then last week, walking around Michaels, I happened upon a wooden shaped heart. The cogs started rolling and although it turned out much different than what I had first envisioned - the general idea remained! 

Here are the three sets being revealed this month:

Mermaid Kisses #529

Spunky and Rocco #526

Spunky and Bug #523

All you have to do in order to have a chance at winning one of these sets (along with a glitter and embossing powder of your choice) is to comment on each of the design members' blogs. Three winners will be selected by Random.org during the Designers Mystery party. We don't know who the three Mystery Designers are, so you should comment on them all to increase your chances of winning! Here is a list of the designers:

Emmy van den Heuvel

Cristina Ojeda
April Williams
Anne Temple
Anita Scroggins
Donna Ellis

Shona Erlenborn (you are here)
Eret Pank
Mayra Duran-Hernandez
Marie Berquist
Jazzy Jill (for the technique video)

Each of the three stamp sets are available at 20% off.

Promotion valid through February 3. 
You may also phone the SNS Shoppe to place your orders.

So there you have it, all the details on how to win one of these fun sets and some glitter and embossing powder to go with it. Now back to Valentine Decorations!

To start, I made my fuzzy characters!  I took a piece of white card and covered it with Snow White flocking. Using the Coloring with Copics technique, I colored Rocco and Spunky. I love this technique, because it means you can have flocking in whatever color you need! 

See how fuzzy they are?  I did stamp their faces twice and popped them up for a little more dimension. Copics used were: E33, E35, E37, C5, W5, R21 and R17.

For the background, I took the wooden heart and covered it with Versamark and then heat embossed with Cappuccino Star (one of the Tuscany collection embossing powders). It looked natural, but with a nice sparkly finish.

If you are a follower of my blog, you'll know that I've recently been using a few of the new chipboard words, that SNS is now carrying. My project today uses three of the words from the Words of Love set. "Love" and "Laugh" were heat embossed with Tuscan Star, as was the little silver heart brad. "Friends" was embossed with Pebbled Copper. I applied some Mega Tack Glue to the back of the words and set them aside to dry.

I don't know why, but I felt that my decoration needed a tail! So I heat embossed the five bottle caps with the same rustic powders that I had used on the heart and words. I punched a whole in the middle of each of them and threaded the jute string through them tying a knot at inch intervals, so they wouldn't slide down the tail.

Love the colors it created on the caps, when the powders melted in to one another!

I traced the shape of the heart onto black cardstock and cut it out. The tail was attached to the back of the heart as was the heart brad, before attaching the backing to the heart (I used the Mega Tacky Glue again for this). 

A hole was punched for the knotted string handle to go through. I attached the glued words and Spunky and Rocco were added with dimensionals. My project was complete!

I think I covered everything, but if you need more details you can check them out in my SNS Art Gallery, right here.

Hope you've enjoyed my part of the reveal today. After you leave me a comment, go check out the other designers to see what they have in store for you from these three fun sets, and for more chances to win!  Good luck!

Till next time!

Hugs,

Shona

FALL IS AROUND THE CORNER

I picked up a leaf yesterday from the driveway which had caught my eye, thinking that I would do something with it stamping wise. This morning, I was reading Judy Rozema's blog and I was inspired to try something with that leaf!  On my way over to the stamping room, I picked up another brightly colored leaf along with a clump of oak leaves with some acorns still attached. 

I dried the leaves off and applied Versamark directly to them and heat embossed them with Sparkle and Tuscan Star embossing powders from Sparkle N Sprinkle. I used an embossing pen to apply the ink to the acorns and then heat embossed them with Cappuccino Star.

I made the background panel from Kraft cardstock and added Sparkle and Tuscan Star randomly over the piece. 

The leaves were stuck to the panel with Tear-ific Tape and dimensionals. I edged the card base with Peruvian Lily velvet glitter which gave the card a frame.

Then came the hardest part, taking a photo!!  I was in my stamping room, outside in the back yard, in the front yard and in the kitchen, looking for the best lighting to capture the sparkle and shine. I finally got a close-to-real image when I propped it up it on the piano music stand with the piano light on it. Perhaps it was the black background that helped.  Not sure, but maybe I've just found my new light tent!

So that's it for today.  

Hope to see you back soon.

Shona

NEW SKETCH CHALLENGE AT SPARKLE N SPRINKLE

I'm writing this, before I head off to Scotland this afternoon!  I hope it publishes while I'm gone! There's a new sketch challenge over at Sparkle N Sprinkle, and if you participated in last month's challenge you'll need to check to see if you were the lucky winner!  So pop over here, to see the scoop on last month's winner and to get a look at some of the designers' ideas, to get your creative juices going!

Here is the new sketch for April:

I decided to make a gift card holder out of the sketch.  Here's my take:

I made my own background paper by stamping the sentiment with some of the new Tuscan embossing powders and then distressing with orange and brown distress inks.  After embossing Leo with Teddy Brown embossing powder and distressing the piece, I then bleached him!  Full directions can be found here for my card.

So come on and give it a try this month - you have an entire month to enter!