Stamp Off Blended Beauty of Friendship

 Happy Stamp Off challenge day!  Today, Susan, Buffy

and me will be doing a project that uses the Stampin' Up!

Blending Brushes, found on page 129 of the catalog.

I have to say that I am in love with these Blending Brushes.

They make it so easy to create shading, without lines.  

In the above project, I used some torn paper, to

blend in the Pear Pizzazz "grass".  Then I used a piece of paper, 

that I ran through a cloud die, to blend in the sky.  I added the

"sun", by placing a post-it in position before I started blending

 the sky.

For the images, I used the Beauty of Friendship set on

page 11 (it also has coordinating dies).  After completing the 

background with the blending brushes, I stamped the tree,

then the leaves and finally some Night of Navy splatter 

in the branches.  I left space for the sentiment, which was also

inked with Night of Navy.

I hope that my card has inspired you to use your Blending Brushes.

Now it's time to click on over to Buffy and Susan's blogs

to see their wonderful projects!! 

Way to Goat on Pattern Party

 Again with some happy paper from the hostess Pattern Party

DSP pack on page 171.  I find myself constantly grabbing this beautiful paper.  It pairs wonderfully well with the 

Way to Goat set on page 64.  When you have such well

coordinating paper, you can create quickly, by just adding

the focal image.  In this example, I cut out the goat and

sentiment with a die from the Hippo and Friends collection

on page 163.  The goat was colored with Stampin' Blends.

Hand-Penned Petals Bundle

 Today, I grabbed my Hand-Penned Petals stamp set (page 105),

with the coordinating Penned Flowers dies (page 159).

You can stamp the flower images, or color them with chalks

or Stampin' Blends.  There are so many possible combinations.

I used the beautiful coordinating Hand-Penned DSP

on page 131, adding two strips to layer the images on top of.

Finally, I added a couple of coordinating Genial Gems.

Simply Succulents with Potted Succulent Dies

 There are some sets that don't get love, when I get new

product.  I decided that I needed to pull out my Simply

Succulents (page 35) and coordinating Potted Succulent 

Dies (page 165).  This is such a fun product combination,

because you can stamp on DSP (as above), or stamp images

and color them with blends or chalks.

I ran the background layer through the Painted Texture 3D

embossing folder on page 155.  I added a strip of 

In Good Taste DSP to act as a table top for the plant.

Beautiful Trees with Hippo and Friends

 I felt the need to create a happy Get Well card.  When

it comes to bright and happy, the Pattern Party (hostess)

DSP on page 171 gets the job done.

I cut out the elements with the Beautiful Trees dies on

page 158.  There are lots of ways to layer these tree parts,

so it was fun to have the colorful stripes as a base.  The

sentiment comes from the Bunches of Fun set on page 41,

and was cut out with the Hippo and Friends dies on page 163.

Sea Life Dies

 It is always a delight to get new crafting product.  Something

about novelty gets the juices flowing.  The Sea Life dies are

great fun to play with, because you can assemble all kinds

of underwater scenes.  Using different DSP can make for

all kinds of design options.  

Here are the DSP packs that were used for this card:

Beauty of the Earth (water background and sea weed)

Pretty Patterns Hostess DSP (large and small fish)

One of the sea weed plants comes from the Smooth Sailing

set of dies.  I love the blotchy plants, that look so much like reef colors.   The sentiment came from Sweet as a Peach and

the coordinating dies.  I added some Genial Gems for the 

fish eyes.   I think the large eyes on the small fish is a good fit.

You're a bit locked in in terms of the direction that this fish

is going, but that is ok because the background can be

varied greatly from card to card.