I was inspired by today’s Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge to use texture and Tim Holtz products. Problem: there are too many choices! From pastes and stencils and Idea-ology to dies and so much else, how do you choose the products you’ll use. I’ve always loved his Silhouette Birds dies and don’t use them as often as I would like, so I started there. I adore his Picture Show die set too and decided to incorporate that.

    Strangely, I worked from the middle out. I took a piece of his Distress Watercolor Paper and stamped with his Ledger Script stamp set with Versamark. I heat embossed using the Lost Shadow Embossing Glaze (excellent when you don’t want the harsh white of using clear powder). Then I dipped and dried the paper using Lost Shadow, Pumice Stone (mostly), and Old Paper Distress Spray Stain. I die cut the “Viewmaster” round slide reel die from this paper. Next, I took some of his Collage Paper - I don’t know what print it is, but it is old and was just a sheet given to me by a friend. I fan-folded it and then trimmed the ends (using no precision at all) and used collage medium to make it stay in a rosette form. Before I glued this to the center of the round slide reel, I dipped piece into a very small amount Forest Moss and Rustic Wilderness Distress ink smushed on a mat and mixed with a lot of water. I knew I was moving toward using some green and I wanted a cohesive color look.

    I die cut the largest tag from the Simon Says Stamp rounded tags die set out of one of his Backdrops. I dipped the edges in some watered down Pumice Stone Distress Spray Stain and then inked the edges in the same color ink. I also glued this tag to an identical one cut from dark brown paper only for stability.

    Next, I took a dark green piece of Tim’s Kraft Stock Stack Cool Paper and dry embossed it with a very old and retired 2D TH embossing folder called Blueprint. I sanded the top of this to reveal the kraft paper. Next, I used the Simon Says Stamp Artful Palette Dies to cut out rounded squares and rectangles. I lightly inked the edges with Pumice Stone ink and adhered them with foam adhesive to the tag, using one of the coordinating templates.

    I glued the round slide reel with the collage paper rosette to the middle of the tag, on top of the kraft pieces. I added a thread nest in dark brown. I glued on 2 previously made die cuts from the retired Holiday Greens die set. I think these are inked with Rustic Wilderness and Crushed Olive Distress ink. I cut a Silhouette Bird from previously inked watercolor paper (this could be Worn Lipstick mixed with a little Candied Apple and flicked with some Gathered Twigs) and lightly inked the edges with Pumice Stone. I glued this on to the greenery pieces.

    Finally, I adhered one of his Idea-ology Clippings to a small piece of his black woodgrain cardstock and glued it to the top of the tag.

    I completed the tag with a piece of wrinkled seam binding I had in my stash.

    I am also entering this into the Little Red Wagon Challenge to use a stamp.

If you shop from the links below. I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. It is much appreciated and helps fund my crafting. Also, any item first marked with an asterisk * was provided by an online store. Otherwise, I bought my supplies. 

    I love the phrase “Hey There, Pumpkin,” as I call my daughters by this affectionate name (or more commonly, Pumpkin Head). I decided to take the Harvest Blessings stamp set* and the Classic Friendship stamp set* and create a tag. The tag shape is all my own making — no die involved.

    I first stamped the largest pumpkin (which has interchangeable phrases that go in the middle: Blessings, Pumpkin, and Thanks) with Versamark on Neenah Desert Storm Cardstock. Next, I heat embossed with Tim Holtz Distress Embossing Glaze in Rusty Hinge. Instead of stamping the word Pumpkin between the top and bottom of the pumpkin, I stamped it separately and heat embossed it with Lindy’s Gang Twilight Bronze embossing powder. If you don’t have that, any metallic embossing powder would work great. I cut out the word and glued it in the center of my fussy-cut pumpkin. The stem was stamped with a dark brown ink - no heat embossing.

    Just behind my pumpkin, I wanted to create some very subtle foliage. I used 2 different die sets for this. First, I used the Simon Says Stamp Dainty Floral Vine and added leaves from Tim Holtz Funky Foliage die set from Sizzix to cut from the same Desert Storm cardstock.

    I used Poppystamps Scalloped Stitch Frames die set to make the frame from green paper from the Tim Holtz idea-ology Green 8 x8 Paper Pallette Collection. This is retired so I have linked to a frame set from Simon Says Stamp. Combined with a rectangular die, this would make a frame. The light background of the frame and the dark background paper on the tag are both from Tim Holtz idea-ology Backdrops Vol 4. I stamped Hey There from the Simon Says Stamp Classic Friendship stamp set with Versamark and heat embossed with the same Lindy’s Gang Twilight Bronze embossing powder. The frame is popped up with foam tape.

    I used both leaf stamps in the Harvest Blessings stamp set to stamp with Hero Arts Wet Cement ink onto the dark Backdrops paper background. A lot of light brown inks would work for this, or even Versamark, as I was only trying to get a watermark effect.

    I assembled everything as shown adding a dark brown cardstock background, a hole reinforcer, crinkled seam binding and a little tan and white baker’s twine.

    Hope you are all enjoying Stamptember. 

If you shop from the links below. I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. It is much appreciated and helps fund my crafting. Also, any item first marked with an asterisk * was provided by an online store. Otherwise, I bought my supplies. 

    With so many cute, solid images in the Harvest Blessings stamp set*, I just had to use these to make a background. I used Stampin’ Up! ink including Pumpkin Pie, Old Olive, Rich Razzleberry, Crumb Cake and Early Espresso. I have linked to similar colors of ink and cardstock available from Simon Says Stamp below. I stamped the yellow leaves with Gina K Designs’ Sweet Corn yellow ink. I stamped randomly all over a piece of vanilla cardstock. I also stamped the word ‘sending’ in dark brown ink and then the itty-bitty heart stamp with the Rich Razzleberry ink. A great alternative to this cardstock and ink color is Gina K's Plum Punch. I cut it into a tag shape - no die used.

    I die cut this stamped panel, as well as a Rich Razzleberry panel, using the Paper Rose Stitched Rectangles set of dies. These may be hard to find, but Simon Says Stamp makes an almost identical set which I have linked below.

    For my focal point, I stamped the large pumpkin and stem in Pumpkin Pie and Early Espresso ink. Then I carefully stamped the word Blessings in the middle with Versamark. I also stamped the 2 leaves on a scrap piece. I heat embossed all three with Ink on 3’s Gold Rush embossing powder. I fussy cut the pumpkin and the leaves and popped them up with foam tape. The background is made of a cork sheet I’ve had in my stash forever. I die cut that with Spellbinders Labels 18 nested die set. It is retired but 2 great alternatives from Simon Says Stamp are their Grandstand Labels and the Petal Tipped Labels.

    I assembled everything as shown and attached the tag with some linen thread to the fold in my card. I decided to adhere the tag to the card using a bit of foam adhesive, but you could easily leave it loose.

Happy Stamptember, y’all!

If you shop from the links below. I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. It is much appreciated and helps fund my crafting. Also, any item first marked with an asterisk * was provided by an online store. Otherwise, I bought my supplies. 

It's a Stamptember Blog Party here at the Tiny Paper Blossom blog! Today and tomorrow only use the code above at checkout to get this free die set added to your order. You have to do 3 things to get it: 1. Spend $30 before tax and shipping on other items. 2. Add the item Simon Says Stamp Nested Stars to your cart and 3. enter code STRZ at checkout. Then the price of the item will be set to $0. You may only use a single promotion code per order.

    Welcome! This was a fun card to make. Even though I am “the Crazy Pumpkin Lady” and decorate my home with countless pumpkins in autumn, I don’t have any blue pumpkins (I do have a teal one, however). The ideal range of colors come from Altenew’s Tranquility line of inks, a gorgeous set of blue-gray colors that include Cloudy Sky, Nimbus, and Misty Morning. I used Altenew’s Misty Morning for the lightest blue and smallest pumpkin. Since I need to reink my Altenew pads, I chose 2 other blues very similar to Altenew's for the darker pumpkins. I first stamped the largest pumpkin in 2 steps: first the blue pumpkin and then the Thanks phrase in the middle using Hero Arts Wet Cement.

    I used Hero Arts Wet Cement inkpad for the stems. I used Concord & 9th’s Stardust for the leaves and acorn bottom. I fussy cut all the images and glued the gourds together with the yellow leaves. I lightly ink blended a white cardstock panel with one of my blue inks (can’t remember which one but probably Misty Morning). I stamped the ‘you mean so much to me’ sentiment in Versa Fine Clair ink in Pinecone to get a super crisp, dark brown image. The white leaves in the background all come from Trinity Stamps’ Wildflower Clippings die set. I used a tan thread nest behind this.

    The textured background comes from a very old Tim Holtz embossing folder called Gridlock (retired, but eBay has several at good prices). I edged the 2 white background pieces with my Tim Holtz Tonic Paper Distresser. I assembled everything as shown, using both foam tape and glue, attaching the tiny acorn to sit just over my sentiment.

If you shop from the links below. I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. It is much appreciated and helps fund my crafting. Also, any item first marked with an asterisk * was provided by an online store. Otherwise, I bought my supplies. 

    Happy STAMPtember from me to you! It’s a thrill to be participating as a member of the Simon Says Stamp Designer Family in my first STAMPtember. All my projects will use the elegant and easy-to-use Harvest Blessings stamp set*. When I opened my up my package from Simon Says Stamp and I saw all the pumpkins and gourds on the stamp set, I thought “they know me!” You see, I LOVE pumpkins. I decorate my home for fall in almost every room. I have pumpkins made of ceramic, glass, wicker, wood, plastic, and sweater material. I have a giant ivory-colored pumpkin platter (from Crate & Barrel eons ago) that sits on a shelf in my kitchen almost year round, except for December. I have a coffee mug that says “Crazy Pumpkin Lady” that I bought from Joann’s (#RIP).

    Anyway, it was easy to come up with ideas for this set. For this first card, I decided to treat the solid-image stamps to my Distress Oxide inks. So that I could overlap the images, I used masks made from Post-It Notes to cover the images I stamped and didn’t want to stamp on top of. I used Rusty Hinge, Dusty Concord, Broken China, and Peeled Paint, along with Ground Espresso Distress Ink for the stems. After doing this stamping in a vertical line on a piece of Neenah Desert Storm cardstock, I splattered it with my Dr. Ph. Martin Bombay India Ink in Sepia. However, an equally good choice for this dark brown splatter is Tim Holtz’s Distress Spray in Ground Espresso. Just flick it from the little straw inside the bottle, instead of spraying it.

    When my ink and my splatter were dry, I fussy cut the right edge of the stacked gourds as shown. I laid this edge down on some dark brown cardstock and traced it with a pencil. Next, I fussy cut the edge of the brown paper so I could make the shadow behind the gourds. I glued this thin piece behind the gourd piece.

    Next came the leaves. I stamped the 2 leaf shapes in the stamp set onto the same Desert Storm cardstock with Versamark and heat embossed them with Lindy’s Gang Twilight Bronze embossing powder. If you have trouble finding this one, any dark, metallic embossing powder would work great. Gold would work perfectly too. I glued the leaves as shown onto my stamped piece.

    I took a piece of purple cardstock (my best match for the Dusty Concord Distress Ink, I’ve linked to the Simon Says Stamp Eggplant cardstock below as I think it would be ideal) and dry embossed a piece of 4.5 x 6” cardstock with a favorite: Simon Says Stamp’s Tiny Tufts embossing folder. I purposedly used a larger than A2 piece for this as the dry embossing sort of “shrinks” the size of the paper because of the impressions it makes. Next, I cut it to an A2 size of 4.25” x 5.5”.

    I built this card in an odd way - I took the purple piece and glued it to a cardbase made of Neenah Classic Crest 110lb cover stock in white. Then, I took the stamped piece (with the brown glued on the back) and scored it and folded it over the left side of the card. It made it kinda chunky and I might do this differently next time.

    I then die cut Simon Says Stamp’s Boho Celebrate die three times from dark brown cardstock. I stacked two of them and glued them together, and then smooshed my Versamark inkpad onto the top one and again heat embossed with the same Twilight Bronze embossing powder. I cut the third die cut in half and glued only the right half onto the back of the word. I did this because the word was going to be glued down on the higher left side, and then hang over the lower embossed purple panel (I really hope that made sense [said no AI ever]). I was happy with how it all worked out.

    Enjoy this Stamptember month at Simons Says Stamp and tune it every day for some fun surprises. By the way, the Harvest Blessings stamp set WILL be available past Stamptember. 

Thanks!

    This card features plenty of Pinkfresh Studio’s products. I used the largest of the Elegant Circles dies. I stacked 2 and then added foam tape to the back. I also used the stamp, stencil and die bundle from All Kinds of Wonderful to create the 4 flowers that make up the bouquet. I used a variety of pale blue inks, one tan, and a green from Tim Holtz, Stampin’ Up! and Concord & 9th for the colors.

    For the background I took a 4.25 x 5.5” piece of Neenah Classic Crest 110lb coverstock and ink blended C9’s Powder ink from the bottom right corner to the top left. Then I took the Pinkfresh Studio Floral Lattice coverplate die and cut it. This took a bit of weeding to make it look like it should. Next time I cut it, I will make sure I have a tight sandwich for my die cutting machine. I backed this with a Neenah white cardbase.

    I added the Pinkfresh Studio sentiment from the stamp and die set Beyond Happy just where the stems meet at the bottom of the circle (I love these circles).

    Finally, I added some sequins to the card for a little sparkle. Sadly, several of these Pinkfresh products have retired and are not available from many retailers. But, many other stamps, dies and sentiments would work. 

    I am also entering Time Out Challenge #319 with the Pick 2 of Floral and Birthday.