With all the talk about our wonderful Stampin' Up! colors yesterday, I thought I would post an easy card I made with just black ink and white glossy card stock!  There's never anything wrong with just black and white! I remember doing a swap a long, long time ago using just black and white and it was one of my favorites! I like to use Glossy White card stock to add a little something to the card. (although it is difficult to photograph without glare!)  The base of the card is just Whisper White card stock with Basic Black layered on top of that.

Can you guess what stamp set I used on this card??  It might be tricky! Obviously I used lots of circle punches and popped some up with Stampin' Dimensionals.  The greeting is from Perfectly Penned.

Try your hand at just using black and white on a card or scrapbook page! I used the Jet Black StazOn Ink Pad, which is good for that real black…and for stamping on Glossy card stock.

So did you figure out what stamp set I used??  It's from the Holiday Catalog, although still available to order……It's Ornament Keepsakes!  Did you guess I used ornament stamps on this card….and it's not even Christmas?!  Once you alter the shape of the stamped image, it no longer is Christmas-y!  I just used circle punches to punch out the centers of the ornaments!  Get more use out of your "Christmas" stamps!

If you want to order some Christmas ornament stamps this weekend (Ornament Keepsakes!)…remember it is FREE SHIPPING from Stampin' Up! April 6-8…. just go to my Online Store and place your order! Get some Glossy White card stock, too, if you have never tried it!

Today is the first day of spring, so why not make a card for someone to brighten their day even more! On this card I used some Sale-A-Bration products that you can get free with each $50 purchase.  The Whisper White card layer is embossed with the Big Shot and the Vine Street Embossing Folder. For the look of flowers growing, I just punched some of the Sycamore Street Designer Series Paper for the flower design and backed it with some card stock colors. Of course I had to add a little Rhinestone Jewel to the center of each flower.  The stems I cut by hand. The greeting is from the Tea Shoppe stamp set.

As you can see from this card, you don’t even need flower stamps to make a flower card!  Use some designer series paper and punch out some designs that can look like pretty flowers!

If you want to place an order before Sale-a-Bration ends on this Friday, March 22, just go to my Online Store here.  Make sure you see my name in the upper right corner and you are set!  Spend $50, get a free Sale-a-Bration Stampin’ Up! product!  Spend $100, get two!  Spend $150, get three SAB products plus Hostess Rewards plus a free pack of Silver Glimmer Paper!!

Let me know if you have any questions! Here are your SAB choices below!

One of the many beautiful flowers in the Stampin' Up! Collector's Stamp Set for March, Best of Flowers, is one of my favorites, Stipple Hydrangea.  Way back when, it was the only flower in the set and was used in so many beautiful projects! If there was only one reason to buy the Best of Flowers stamp set, it would be to get this retired Stipple Hydrangea stamp! This was one of the premier stamps to use for stamping on tiles back then.

On this card, I stamped the hydrangea in Stazon Black ink on Shimmery White card stock. It is colored in with my favorite tool, the Aqua Painter, using various Watercolor Wonder Crayons. It isn't a huge artistic endeavor….just plop down some color from the watercolor crayons on the petals, not even filling in completely or anything, and move the color around with the Aqua Painter.  You can do it without being a watercolor artist!  But you'll look like you are!

Shop at my Stampin' Up! Online Store any time! Spend $50 and get a Sale-A-Bration product FREE!

I don’t know if these flowers in the stamp set Everything Eleanor are azaleas, but they at least resemble them.  I know there are blizzards and snow in many parts of the country, but my azaleas are blooming! In fact, the annual River Oaks Garden Club Azalea Trail will be coming up the weekend after next.

Everything Eleanor is a beautiful stamp set, yet I haven’t used it a lot. I stamped the swirl with Gumball Green and stamped with flowers in Black Stazon so I could color them in. To color the flowers, I used my trusty Aqua Painter, which has water in the barrel, so it’s like using a paint brush with its own supply of water!  Since the flower images already have a lot of highlight marks on them (the little black lines), I colored in those areas with Primrose Petals ink first. Then I added a little more water to the dab of ink in the lid of the ink pad to lighten it and colored in the rest of the petals with the same color. When you are using Whisper White card stock rather than watercolor paper, you do have to be careful not to add too much water or work the coloring too much because Whisper White won’t hold up to it. But I can usually use it fine with just some light coloring.

The greeting is from Loving Thoughts.

Then I thought a butterfly or two might be in order. I punched out several colors plus one vellum one to see what I would like and Primrose Petals and Summer Starfruit won! I embossed both with the Lacy Brocade Embossing Folder, adhered them each with a Glue Dot, and added some Basic Rhinestone Jewels. The punch is the Bitty Butterfly Punch.

You could stamp a card like this and then add any kind of sentiment or greeting you wanted.

Stampin’ Up! has all the supplies you need to make this card!  Please visit my Stampin’ Up! Online Store here…..and don’t forget about Sale-A-Bration!  With every $50 purchase in merchandise, you get to choose one free product from theSale-A-Bration brochure.  Good until March 22!  But don’t wait until the last minute!

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Sympathy cards are the ones we all hate to have to make, yet hopefully they bring much comfort and caring to the recipient. And we all know from experience that when you lose a loved one, every expression of love and sympathy helps ease our pain.

Maybe making sympathy cards are one of the most important things we can do with our stamping and cardmaking. This one is fairly simple. The Apothecary Art stamp set gives the card some formality and elegance. It may look complicated to color in, but really it is not.  Just take a few moments to add a little color to the flowers and then the leaves are easy. The sentiment is stamped with the Loving Thoughts stamp set. I added half of a Tea Lace Paper Doily underneath. The Apothecary Art stamped image is cut out with the Labels Collection Framelits. The background is embossed with the Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder. The little flower is one from the Vanilla 5/8″ Flower Trim in the Spring Catalog and dipped in a little bit of Daffodil Delight ink (just tap or twist the top of the flower into the ink pad). The little bit of 5/8″ Victoria Crochet Trim and Whisper White 5/8″ Organza Ribbon are shown in the Stampin’ Up! Annual Catalog. (I know the vanilla of the crochet trim doesn’t really “match” the Whisper White, but I did it anyway!)