SPARKLE N SPRINKLE'S MARCH 1ST REVEAL

Hi there, and welcome to the Sparkle N Sprinkle March 1st Reveal. Today we have five new stamp sets being revealed. I particularly gravitated towards the Iris Frame set this month, as it boasts three versatile sentiments, and being "away" from my home, this one will come in very useful for me!:

Two of the other sets are perfect for Christmas.
Many of our customers said they promise themselves to make Christmas cards a little bit each month, all year long, but they fail to find the time. So this month's technique kit uses the pretty Red Cardinal drawn by Rosiland Solomon.

The Winter Cardinal stamp set is available by itself on line.
It is also included in Jazzy Jill's Technique Video for the month.

The first of the month also means a new challenge at SNS Creative Challenges where the theme is always
"Anything Goes with Loose Glitter, Embossing Powder and/or Flocking."

Here are the four other stamp sets available this month:

Born to Shop #554

Winter Cardinal #518

Crystal Medallion #531

Springtime Spunky #537

A little something for everyone!

Five Winners (one for each new stamp set) will be selected by Random.org during the Designers Mystery Party. Winners will also get to choose one Glitter and one Embossing Powder to go with their new stamp set.

How the Mystery Party works:

On Five of the participating blogs below, a Commenter will be selected to receive the prize. 

No one knows who the five Mystery Designers are, so you may wish to visit each blog to leave a comment.

The winners will be announced on March 3 on Facebook, the SNS blog, and on our blogs:

April Williams
Anne Temple
Anita Scroggins
Donna Ellis

Shona Erlenborn (that's me)
Eret Pank
Mayra Duran-Hernandez
Emmy van den Heuvel
Belinda Shupe
Marie Berquist
Jazzy Jill

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

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

So now you have all the necessary details on how to acquire these lovely sets, let me share my card with you. As I said, I really love the sayings in this set:

Iris Frame #532

The other draw for me was the dotted shading, and that was why I thought to make it into a shaker card, using the micro beads. 

For a different look, I stamped the Iris frame on Kraft cardstock in Versamark and heat embossed with my favorite white embossing powder - Belgian Cream. I then took an aqua brush filled with bleach and took out the color from the cardstock from the stems and flowers. I wish I had thought to take a photo, because that alone is a unique look, but I decided to do more!

I took some water color crayons and a Dove Blender Pen to color the image. I added some Dimensional Glue to the yellow stamen to give them a little height.

I cut out the window using an Exacto Knife and stamped my saying in Versamark onto Embossable Acetate, heat embossing with Concord embossing powder. These rich Tuscany powders are the perfect choice for detail embossing. I taped the acetate down to the back of the window and used dimensional tape to create a little well around the window outline.

I thought that the little butterfly brads would be perfect as embellishments so I attached a green one to a slightly lighter piece of card and applied little patches of Dimensional Glue to one of the wings and close by the butterfly (I did this so some beads would remain on these patches and not all fall to the base of the window). I put a teaspoon of micro beads into the well, removed the protective backing of the tape and closed the butterfly and beads inside.

I attached the two other butterflies to the card front and attached it to the indigo card base after scoring the edges.

I hope you've enjoyed my share with you today, and that you will also check out the other designers' blogs. Remember to leave a comment with each of us. Someone has to win these sets - and it could be YOU!

Let me leave you with a sneak peak of one other card that I made with the Born to Shop set. I'll be sharing this one with you in a few days:

Intrigued? Join me next week!  Till then, good luck winning some prizes and remember to enter the Creative Challenge for many other chances to win Sparkle N Sprinkle products!

Hugs, 

Shona

WE'RE OFF AND RUNNING!

Well hello again! I forgot I had another post obligation, so now you get to hear from me one more time before Saturday!! Yeah! I will make it brief!  I have to say today was not a good day, and it took me ages to come up with this card, which I had to completely redo because of all the boo-boos I tried to cover up!! Please tell me that that happens to you too?

Anyway, here is the end result using one of the latest Sparkle N Sprinkle sets 522: Running:

The background was sponged with Memento Summer Sky and New Sprout. I then cut out the embossed buntings from a Darice embossing folder from yellow cardstock and hand-wrote the letters. 

The runners were stamped in Memento black and colored in with Copics. 

The sentiment was stamped with Versamark and after hand-cutting the banner, the edges were distressed with a little Versamark and heat embossed with Dandy Dandelion.

After distressing the yellow base card with the same Dandy Dandelion, the card was assembled as shown.

See you Saturday?

Hugs,

Shona

BATHROOM RENOVATIONS USING STAMPING TOOL?

Hi everyone!

I've been noticing lately that a few of my blogging pals have been sharing their home renovation projects. Some are still in the throws of their projects, others are lucky enough to be done with them! I'm so happy to say that I am now one of the latter! 

Our story started with a little water leaking down into the front hallway. Hmmmm? You know how things go - one little thing leads to another (usually much bigger!). The bathrooms upstairs were the originals, and ten years ago we had changed out the sink, vanity and toilet in the master bathroom. The kids' hall bathroom was untouched and was awful, and has been on the to-do-list for a long while. The leak helped speed up the project commencement and of course while the plumbers were in redoing the piping, we decided to knock through the wall and do the master bathroom at the same time.

I'll try to make it brief, though I have hundreds of photos. 

So, here is the first reason for the demolition!

Here is the second: (that's where we looked for the leak - unsuccessfully).

Really attractive right?  Turns out when we did the demolition it was the original - from 1962!  We have the newspaper that came out from behind the walls! (The newspaper was from 1961!)

OK, so let's see how this one looks now:

I did this cute little collage with a clock in the middle of the kids when they were little (just took some of the older photos and had them printed in sepia). I thought it tied in nicely with the rubbed bronze fixtures!

Our master bathroom, though small, was not in quite as bad shape, or so we thought!

When we got to the old shower pan pull up, we found a colony of carpenter ants:

Our pest control guys, arrived in less than an hour to take care of that problem. 

... and so here is the finished product:

My favorite part (besides the rain shower) is the little niche to hold our toothbrushes and David's razor.

OK, so the question of the day is: There was one stamping utensil used in the renovations? 

Can you guess what it was?

One clue .... it was only used in the master bathroom.

.... and the answer is:

Yep, you guessed it - the handy, dandy brayer!! 

Hope you've enjoyed a little peek at our latest home project.

I'll be back on Saturday with the Sparkle N Sprinkle March 1st Reveal, hope you'll stop back then.

Hugs,

Shona