Look What Washed Up on My Shore

These starfish are easier to stamp than to find. I haven't had much luck finding starfish on the beach, or sand dollars either, now that I think about it ... but this guy is hands-down THE easiest stamp in the Picture Perfect stamp set.

Two stamps in two shades ~ that's all it takes. I put out Delightful Dijon and So Saffron for the Monday Stampers to use and it's a terrific combination. I took my cue from Cindy at Nutmeg Creations and offered up this as a sample. Does the patterned paper look familiar? It is from the 'Valentine's' Love Blossoms paper stack. Thankfully, I won an extra package at my upline's team meeting last month!

Think beach, nautical, seashore for any combination of inspiring colors that please you. 

There is no framelit for the starfish, but it is very easy to cut out, especially with the SU snips.

I offered a selection of ribbon and twine and bling and each of the stampers added her own special touch. Most of us remembered how to tie a square knot, and it's been a while since we were scouts and scout leaders!

I also used this design with the United Methodist Women at Wesley Chapel UMC in a stamping session we had last week ~ we crafted stamped cards for prison ministry. We had a delightful morning stamping and prayed that the cards will provide blessings for the senders and their recipients.

I guess you can tell, I am sold on Picture Perfect, and not just for the starfish (my original lure, no pun intended). The font and the sentiments are sweet.  I will get a lot of mileage out of this set for many occasions, for cards for guys as well as gals and for my Project Life projects. 

I hope you'll try it!

Easy and Stunning Hummingbirds ~ The Stamped Kind

If there is anything easier than stamping the perfect rose from the Picture Perfect stamp set, it is stamping the hummingbird.

This was only the second hummer I stamped and it's pretty close to perfect. See how clean my grid paper is - just one other wild beaked guy . E.A.S.Y.

I have never been drawn to hummingbirds, perhaps because I have never made an earnest attempt to attract them. Wild bird seed and a feeder from the hardware store has always been my experience with backyard birds. And I do love my birds, the familiar and regular visits from the cardinals and blue jays and finches, the wrens in their birdhouse, and the ground feeders. 

I do, however, recall lounging away one morning on a friend's poolside patio and noticing an almost invisible zip of something through the air from the pool's fence into a neighboring tree. As one bird zipped by and up into the tree, another zipped down and out of sight. I was mesmerized by this constant zipping of what I discovered was hummingbirds. 

Not only was the fence covered in red blooms, but there was also a red plastic feeder close by at the kitchen window. Were the birds chasing each other? Was there room for only one at the feeder? I have since learned that the males (with the ruby red throats) are very aggressive over food sources.

I do not have a hummingbird feeder out in my 'woods,' so I will be content with just stamping them. 

There is more variety on the coloring of the small birds than just Pear Pizzazz, Wild Wasabi, Old Olive and Real Red, but that's the color combination I chose after looking at bird photos and at demonstrators' suggestions.

My Monday Stampers spent their entire morning with the Picture Perfect set.

Jeanne's hummer is nosing in on an attractive vine created with the flourish stamp from Timeless Textures stamp set. The blooms were free-handed in Watermelon Wonder and Daffodil Delight. 

Beautiful! 

And there's one more stamp in the set to see, so stay tuned ...

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.