I used a couple of new Stampin’ Up! products to make this Spring Card With Basket Weave and Blossoming Basket. This stamp set, available during Sale-A-Bration, will be so useful for many different kinds of cards and occasions.

My Stamparatus arrived and finally yesterday I got to play with it! I think it is going to be a fantastic tool in many ways to make your stamping easier and better! We’ll talk about the Stamparatus another day, but I did use it to stamp this basket. You wouldn’t exactly “need” the Stamparatus to stamp just this basket, but since I’d cut my paper pretty much to fit the basket and since I wanted the basket centered and fully stamped, I used the Stamparatus. This way I could place the stamp where I wanted it on the paper, pick it up with the Stamparatus, and if it didn’t stamp beautifully (which it did!), I could have stamped it again with the Stamparatus with the paper and stamp in exactly the same position.

This Blossoming Basket was beautiful just stamped in the Memento Ink! It’s very finely detailed and lovely! I was eager to color it in with my Stampin’ Blends markers! Coloring with these markers is very relaxing and therapeutic! Some of the Stampin’ Blends markers are going on backorder because of their popularity, so I suggest ordering them if you want some as soon as possible. I believe it is better to order them individually or in the combos so that Stampin’ Up! will send out what they have right away and then send you the backordered ones when they are re-supplied.  If you order the Collection of all the markers, they may hold that whole set of markers until they have all of them back in stock.  It takes longer to order the markers individually, inputting all those numbers, but at least you will get them.

The Blossoming Basket Stamp Set is part of a Bundle with the Basket Weave Dynamic Embossing Folder. Let me tell you, this Basket Weave embossing is fantastic!!  You will really be impressed the first time you take your embossed cardstock out of the folder!  It is a WOW! You are supposed to spritz the paper lightly with some water to loosen the paper fibers and then emboss, and it works wonderfully!  I used the Basket Weave piece as a background over part of the card, then layered the Blossoming basket over it. I cut out the basket and sponged a tiny bit of Soft Sky Ink over the background Whisper White paper and in the little part I did not cut out under the basket handle.

The Blossoming Basket Bundle includes the Blossoming Basket Stamp Set and the Basket Weave Embossing Folder.  You can earn it FREE with a $100 qualifying order during Sale-A-Bration.  It is well worth the $100 order to get this Bundle, much less FREE!  You can use it for Easter, for Mother’s Day, for a bridal shower, for an engagement, for a sympathy card, for a birthday, for a Thinking of You card…..really an all-occasion stamp set!

The traditional Sale-a-Bration has always been that for every $50 a customer spent, they would earn a FREE Sale-A-Bration product.  This year Stampin’ Up! has also introduced a few products that could be chosen with a $100 purchase. So that gives you even more choices! And remember, with a $150 or more order, you also receive Stampin’ Rewards! And during Sale-A-Bration, with a $250 order you would IN ADDITION earn $25 more in products in addition to regular Stampin’ Rewards.

Sale-A-Bration ends March 31, and although that sounds like a long way off, it will come up sooner than we think. Don’t wait until the last minute! If you like this stamp set and embossing folder to make a card and other projects like this Spring Card With Basket Weave and Blossoming Basket for Easter and other occasions, stock up on your stamping supplies, like paper and adhesives, to reach a $100 order.

It’s time! Easter is just a month away so here is an easy Easter card with the Lots of Lavender Set, available FREE during Sale-A-Bration. This card uses two-step stamping and a little bit of watercoloring.

I chose Wisteria Wonder Cardstock for the card base, a color I’d practically forgotten I had!  Maybe it has been winter for too long! The lavender bouquet is stamped on Shimmery White Cardstock.  If you don’t have this paper in your collection be sure to order some.  It is so pretty on its own with just a barely-there glimmer.  It also is good to use for some watercoloring, if you aren’t using Watercolor Paper.  Whisper White Cardstock just does not hold up to very much water if you are trying to watercolor.

To use this stamp set as two-step stamping, I started with the “blob” stamp that doesn’t look like anything and stamped that with Wisteria Wonder Ink which becomes the coloring for the flowers.  Then stamp over the “blob” with the bouquet outline image.  I used Memento Ink, but you could use Wisteria Wonder to overstamp as well.

I was planning to color the leaves with markers when I realized there were leaf stamps in the stamp set. Here is a good technique for stamping the leaves. Lay the leaf stamps over where you want them stamped on the bouquet, facing down, then lay the acrylic block over them to pick them up.  They will be on the block in the perfect position for stamping!

This is what the stamps look like on the block, but you couldn’t place them randomly on the block and get them placed properly on the image.

Now if you want quicker and faster, I would just color in the leaves with a marker, whether the Stampin’ Write Marker or preferably the Stampin’ Blends.  Those colors are a little less intense than the Stampin’ Write Markers.

For the greeting I just stamped the “Happy Easter” from Teeny Tiny Wishes, one of my favorite stamp sets!  To keep it easy, I just stamped it right on the card front, not on a banner or other piece. This stamp set has greetings for almost any occasion you can imagine, and I prefer having this set in the wood-mount since they are all small stamps.

After I stamped and colored the lavender bouquet, I felt the card still needed something, so I used my Aqua Painter and some Wisteria Wonder Ink to just add some very light watercoloring around the bouquet. Here is another card with Swirly Scribbles where I put a slight watercolored background behind the flowers.

And for a final embellishment, I tied a very small little bow over the stamped bow. It’s probably a little too large for this card, but that’s okay!

Don’t forget!  Sale-A-Bration is going on through the end of the this month, March 31. Sale-A-Bration is the Stampin’ Up! promotion where for every $50 you spend on products, you earn a FREE Sale-A-Bration gift.  No limit!  And this year, if you have a $100 increment, you can choose one higher-value item instead of two $50 choices. Time will fly this month, so be sure you get your order in!

Flowers are always great for making an Easter card or spring card. If you choose the Lots of Lavender Stamp Set as your Sale-A-Bration free item, you can try your hand at this easy Easter card with Lots of Lavender.

Here is a quick and easy Easter Bunny card that is fun to stamp and make! The stamp set, Basket Bunch, has so many possibilities and it’s not just for Easter! This bunny is so cute, he can be used for Easter, spring or baby cards and many other occasions.

For this card, I simply stamped the bunny randomly on the Whisper White card layer in Soft Suede ink. To color in the bunny ears and bow, I used the Pink PIrouette marker. That’s all I colored at first, but then I decided to add some brown to the one bunny to let him stand out from the others. I colored very lightly with the Early Espresso Watercolor Pencil and then blended the color with a Blender Pen. So fun to color with the Watercolor Pencils!  I also thought about coloring the ears and bows on all the bunnies on the card. There’s no one perfectly right way to design this card. Just do what you like. The card base is Soft Suede cardstock.

The greeting is one that is included in the stamp set.  I stamped it in Soft Suede ink and die cut with one of the ovals in the Layering Ovals Framelits Dies and also die cut a pink glimmer layer with one of the scalloped ovals in the same set. The glimmer paper is one of the Sale-A-Bration choices when you spend $50 on a Stampin’ Up! purchase.

If you are interested in the Watercolor Pencils, order them soon before the supply runs out!

The Basket Bunch Photopolymer Stamp Set is in the Occasions Catalog and also has coordinating Basket Builder Framelits Dies.  If you purchase the stamp set and dies together in the Basket Bunch Bundle, you will save 10% and have everything you need for this fun stamp set!

I hope you remembered to change your clocks for Daylight Savings Time! Just “spring” forward, this is when we lose an hour of sleep! But I think I’m looking forward to more daylight in the evening after dinner to go for a walk!

Try your hand at making a card like this Quick and Easy Easter Bunny Card with whatever stamps you have, just stamp randomly on the cardstock and see what you come up with! It’s so much fun to just stamp this way!

If you need any stamping supplies and want to take advantage of Sale-A-Bration before it ends March 31, just check out the Stampin’ Up! Online Store HERE!

This Emboss Resist Watercolor Easter Egg Card was fun to make! The other day I got out the Stampin’ Up! Watercolor  Paper and played with it. On some pieces I stamped with Versamark Ink and heat embossed with Clear Embossing Powder, then watercolored with reinkers and my Aqua Painter. When you use Watercolor Paper you can move the color around and work with it, which you cannot do with regular cardstock.  I also spritzed the Watercolor Paper with water to help move the color. You can use the Stampin’ Spritzer or any plastic spray bottle. A couple of the pieces of Watercolor Paper I just spritzed with water, dropped on some reinker colors, let it flow around, maybe spritzed some more, and dabbed the excess with a paper towel. This resulted in just multicolored paper, which I then die cut with the Oval Framelit Dies for the “plain” eggs on this card.

The card base is Daffodil Delight cardstock.  The background layer is a piece of the Sale-A-Bration Perfectly Artistic Designer Series Paper. The grass is the Cherry on Top Cotton Paper, cut with the Fringe Scissors. (Even though the Perfectly Artistic Designer Series Paper is one of the Limited items, at this point in time it looks like they still have inventory so you can still choose it as your FREE Sale-A-Bration item.)  The Happy Easter greeting is from the Easter Lamb Wood-Mount Stamp. Love that lamb stamp! It will still be cute to use after Easter on baby cards or other things!

Order some Watercolor Paper and start playing!  You may end up with ink on your fingers but it sure is fun! Add some emboss resist techniques for special designs like this Emboss Resist Watercolor Easter Egg Card.

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Remember when you were a child and colored Easter eggs?  You put the egg in a little wire holder and dipped it half in one color and then half in another color.  Maybe you dyed the whole egg one color and then dipped each end in other colors. That is what I was thinking about this morning when I made this card. Usually a little white crayon came in the egg coloring kit and you could color a design on the egg first and when you dipped it in the color, the crayon resisted the dye. It was a fun surprise to see how the egg turned out after it was dipped in the color and removed from the cup!

To make this card, I used Watercolor Paper, which, obviously is the best medium for watercoloring!  If you don’t have Watercolor Paper, our Shimmery White card stock is the next best thing. And sometimes you can get away with using Whisper White if you don’t use too much water or work the color too much and get the paper all pilly. I didn’t use a white crayon, but instead I stamped with Versamark Ink and embossed with Clear Embossing Powder and the Heat Tool. I spritzed the watercolor paper with water so the color would move around easier and used my Aqua Painter to color the different areas with ink in the lid of the ink pads or by adding refill ink in the lid. The great thing about using Watercolor Paper is that it is more forgiving, you can move the color away from where you didn’t want it to go, or add more color when you wanted it. I should perhaps have done a better job of taking a paper towel to wipe off the ink from the embossing earlier, but I really wanted it to look imperfect, like the colored Easter eggs we all used to make or still help our children make now.

The egg shape was die cut with the Big Shot and Oval Framelit Die. You can color a sheet of Watercolor Paper and then punch or die cut many shapes from it.

The Easter greeting is from the great stamp set Teeny Tiny Wishes. I have used it so much! The designs on the egg are from the stamp set Work of Art. And the chick, of course, is from the Sale-A-Bration stamp set Honeycomb Happiness.

We have just ONE MORE WEEK of Sale-A-Bration! It ends next Thursday, March 31! If you want to qualify for a free Sale-A-Bration product with every $50 purchase from Stampin’ Up!, better get your Wish List out and see what you want to order and what Sale-A-Bration item you want to choose.  Remember, no limit!  One FREE item for EVERY $50 you spend!

Have fun making Easter eggs, whether it is a watercolored Easter card or the real things! Those were the days!!

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This is a fun and easy Easter Egg card to make! Fold a Whisper White card base in half as you would normally do to make a card. Bring over the Oval Framelit Die you wish to use on the card and lightly pencil where the die will fit on the card.  You want the right side of the card to be just inside the die so that the fold will not be cut. Lightly put some pencil marks so you can see how far over to stamp the curved image from the Work of Art Stamp Set. Depending on the size die you use (I used the largest one below the scalloped edge oval die.), you may need to extend the stamping off to the side. Even if you overstamp the stripe you made, it won’t really make that much difference. Or you can stamp the stripe again to balance it out.  But this technique is very forgiving.

In this photo below, you can see how I did the stamping, although it didn’t extend to the left side far enough so I had to make the area larger.

Once you have enough area inked up with the Work of Art stamp, use the Big Shot and Oval Die to die cut the oval Easter Egg shape.  Be sure you have the middle of the card fold INSIDE the edge of the die so it won’t be cut to hold the card together. Otherwise you will end up with two die cut ovals! See photo below.

Add a greeting.  I inked up the Happy Easter greeting on the Easter Lamb Wood-Mount Stamp and stamped just the words on a strip of Whisper White.  You can curl it a bit with a Bone Folder if you want it to look like a banner. Then I added some sparkly silver sequins to the card for some bling!

Have fun making a card like this!  Use various colors, adhere the egg to the front of a card, whatever your imagination comes up with! Try stamping an Easter Egg card before Sunday!

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