Thank You, My Friend

One who loves a pure heart and who speaks with grace 

will have the king for a friend.  ~ Proverbs 22:11

She called me friend, for which I am thankful.

We ~ me, plus several others, gathered around the table to create and to chat, and to share. Connie was kind and gentle and generous; she was talented and inspirational. 

Thank you for your friendship; we will miss you, Connie.

Gardening in the Stampin' Up! Rose Bed

So ~ I pulled out all of my reds and pinks and yellows and oranges and greens and started stampin' the easiest rose I have ever tried, the three stamp rose from the Picture Perfect stamp set.

And then it happened, my Blushing Bride ink pad was suddenly in two pieces. It's not as if I don't get ink all over everything as it is, and there went the ink side over the island and across a page of beautifully stamped images. 

Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered a how-to on You Tube and searched for 'How To Fix a Broken Stamp Pad.'  Katherine Turner to the rescue! I chuckled at her intro: 

"if you watched my last video, you would have seen a stamp pad  fly across the table - I'm sure it's happened to a lot of other people ..."

I will have to say that it took more than once for me to reattach the two sides; I don't know what I was afraid of, the ink pad was already broken! But I stopped and started and rewound the video until I was able to successfully slide and snap the two sides back together. Enough of the pinks, onto the greens.

I did have fun with all of the color combinations, though, pulling out ink colors that haven't seen the light of day in a long while ~ remember Certainly Celery?  I stamped dozens of images and I am going to share them with my stampin' sister-in-law who guessed first and correctly where I drew the inspiration for my new blog's banner: Wynken, Blynken and Nod, a children's poem by Eugene Field.

(Another stampin' friend answered at the same time, so Judy has a treat headed her way, too.)

I was going to work with the hummingbird from the same Picture Perfect stamp set, but after my ink incident, I'll leave that for another day.

The Perfect Rose

I do believe that this is the most beautiful rose stamp (s) that Stampin' Up! has designed. 

I added the plural S because it is a three-step stamp, but fret not, it really is quite easy.

The rose comes in the stamp set Picture Perfect (p.37 on the Occasions Catalog) and thankfully, the set is not being retired! The set includes 18 stamps which will produce a lovely rose, a stunning hummingbird and a textured star fish ~ plus exceptional sentiments, six of them, with attractive fonts.

I debated over the set, wanting the star fish only, but after trying the roses, I am sold.

In the card above, inspired by one demonstrated by my upline, the stamp set Timeless Textures (p.29 in the Occasions catalog) provides for the background. The set includes nine stamps and I chose four to randomly stamp in Wild Wasbi green - stamped off once and even twice.The flourishes are stamped off shades of Melon Mambo.

SO ~ the stamped panel of Very Vanilla is layered onto Melon Mambo. 

I roughed up the edges of the Melon Mambo with my paper snips for a little 3D texture.

And that is layered onto a base of Very Vanilla.

And for that beautiful rose~

There are three separate stamps and they are numbered and tabbed for easy placement. Above, I have stamped each individual stamp in its color ( 1- 3) and the bottom right rose is the combination of all three stamps in their respective colors: 

    stamp 1 ~  Blushing Bride

    stamp 2 ~  Melon Mambo stamped off 

    stamp 3 ~  Melon Mambo full speed ahead 

Begin with stamp 1 in the lightest shade of colors being used. Stamp number 2 stamp directly on top of the image created by stamp 1. Stamp number 3 stamp directly on top of the now- two- layers. 

It's easy, I love it and I will be making many more of these roses. I do not have green thumbs, but I have red thumbs, fingers and hands after working on this card. And, I have no scrapes or scratches from thorns and no bug bites.

For the rose leaves ~ there are also three stamps which can be layered for depth in color and texture. I only used two of the stamps and two colors. The lightest color goes down first to create a full, flat leaf; I used Pear Pizzazz. The darker color, Wild Wasabi, is used second to create dark veins. It is hard to go wrong! 

Alas, there are no framelits for the rose and leaf, however, they are extremely easy to fussy cut. On the card above I popped up the rose and slid in two leaves beneath the bloom.

So, I would suggest playing around with a variety of colors in your rose garden.

On line I have seen a variety of color combos: 

       Crushed Curry - Daffodil Delight - So Saffron

       Cherry Cobbler - Real Red - Real Red stamped off

       Pacific Point - Tempting Turquoise - Marina Mist

Do experiment, and show me how your rose garden grows.

Let's stamp!

Wait! Don't Leave!

No, wait!  You're in the right place!

This is my new blog space.  I hope you love it because I do.  And surely you must know that I did not create this all by myself. I had a very patient young lady take my ideas (and lack of/fear of tech knowledge), swirl it all together, and here it is! 

Please follow me - email to subscribe - contact me; sometimes it feels lonely out here.

Here's a good reason to contact me now ~ I have a Stampin' Up! goody for you if you know the inspiration for the art in my banner ... 

Chat with you soon, in the meantime

Let's stamp!