Celebrate Spring

Good Morning and Happy Friday!

Glad you could join me today. Spring is in full effect here in Michigan. Temperatures have been in the high 70's for the last few days and has been certainly well enjoyed. To celebrate the onset of spring, today's card creation is a bright and cheerful card showcasing the beautiful Greenhouse Garden two step stamp set.

Don’t you just love two-step stamping! I know I do. Stampin’ Up makes several adorable stamp sets that allow you to create the two step stamping technique. To make today’s card, I took one of the solid image flowers inked it up with my Pool Party ink pad, then lightly inked only the edges of the stamp with my Elegant Eggplant stampin write marker.  After stamping the solid flower image onto my whisper white cardstock, I then took the coordinating outline stamp from the set, inked that image with my elegant eggplant ink pad and stamped right over the solid flower, creating an intricate yet detailed floral image.

To get the perfect placement of the outlined image over the solid image, I used my trusty stampin’ ma-jig to assist me with this task. The stamapin ma-jig is a must have tool for any avid stamper.  To ensure that your stamped image is exactly where you want it be every time, the stampin ma-jig is a must have tool for you. 

The sentiment is also stamped in elegant eggplant and comes from the sincere salutations stamp set. 
I hope you've enjoyed today's card creation. Tune in next week for some more stamping inspiration. 

Hope you enjoy your weekend. 
Until next time, happy stamping!
 

 

Medallion Love

Good Morning and Happy Wednesday! 

It's time for another day of inspiration from the Crafting Elegance stamping studio. Today's card uses both the Medallion and the Sincere Salutations stamp that can be found in the 2011-2012 Idea Book and Catalog.  These two stamp sets are quite popular and when paired together can create a stunning yet clean and simple design. Although Pink and Brown is my favorite color combination, I also heart the classic color scheme of black and white. 

Because I am in the need of making a bunch of all occasion cards for a few customers, I  thought this design would be simple and elegant enough to mass produce. Hope you agree. 

Thanks for stopping by today. 

Happy Stamping!

Technique Tuesday - Inking Emboss

Hello Crafters,

Welcome to Technique Tuesday at Crafting Elegance. Each week on the blog, I will provide you with a paper crafting technique that you can use in your stamping. This week's technique is what I call Inking Emboss.  Please don't confuse this technique with the inking an embossing folder technique. Although these two techniques are similar, this one has a slight twist.

Inking Emboss is where you take a piece of solid color card stock, place it inside one of your favorite Stampin' Up! embossing folders, run it through your big shot machine to create a embossed design, then ink the raised embossed area using a brayer.

Today's inking emboss was made using the Stampin' Up!'s vintage wallpaper embossing folder, a 4" x 5 1/4" piece of pool party card stock and chocolate chip craft ink.  The effect the ink gives on just the embossed portion of the card stock is amazing. I am a true fan of making you own backgrounds and designer series paper, so if you are like me you the inking emboss technique will become one of your go to techniques for creating backgrounds for your cards.

This card also used the perfect polka dot embossing folder, some chocolate chip satin ribbon, and the Sincere Salutations stamp set for the sentiment. I Hope you 've enjoyed today's creation. Be sure to post a comment on your thoughts of today;s technique. Also sign-up to follow my blog, so that you don't miss out on any of my regular postings.

Happy Stamping!

Glitter Queen Blog Hop Day 3

Hey Stampers,

Welcome to the third and final day of the Glitter Queens October Blog Hop!
First and foremost I want to thank each and everyone of you for participating in this month's hop. I sincerely appreciate you stopping by each day to see my creations and posting the wonderful comments.

Continuing with the autumn theme, today's project is another creation featuring the Gently Falling stamp set. I used the same water coloring technique as yesterday to stamp and color the leaves on today's project. After coloring the leaves, I then cut the leaves out with my paper snips and attached them onto the card with stampin dimensionals. The background of the card uses only one of the leaf images from the set which is stamped in versamark ink onto a piece of Pool Party cardstock. The sentiment is from the Sincere Salutations stamp set inked in Chocolate Chip, then sponged with the Tim Holtz, Antique Linen ink.

I hope you have enjoyed all the projects that I have shared with you during the hop. Please leave me a comment to let me know what you think of today's project.

Don't forget to sign-up for my 6 weeks of Christmas Newsletter that starts this Sunday.

Although the hop is coming to an end at midnight tonight, I do hope that you will continue to visit my blog for more inspiring  Stampin' Up! creations. So that you don't miss any of my blog updates, be sure to follow my blog. Click on the Follow My Blog link in my left hand side bar to begin following today.

Hop on over to Anji Clements blog by clicking here to see what she has in store for you today. Hope to see you again real soon.

Happy Stamping!

Dawn Griffith

Deidra Williamson

Dee Slater 

Joan Robertson

Bridgett Owens 

Stephanie Lorenz

Jennifer Kay

Cely Havens

Tamara Gadberry

Candice Crawford 

Anji Clements

Glitter Queen October Blog Hop - Day 2

Hello and welcome to day two of the Glitter Queens October Blog Hop! Today is Tuesday and that means it is Technique Tuesday at the Crafting Elegance blog. In honor of Technique Tuesday and the Glitter Queens Blog Hop, today's project features a fall themed greeting card using the the famous water coloring technique.

Water coloring is one of my favorite ways to color. Although it may seem intimidating it is quite an easy technique to coloring stamped images. Today's card uses the new Gently Falling stamp set which is featured in the 2011 Stampin' Up! Holiday Mini catalog. This stamp set comes with two sets of stamps for creating beautiful leaf images. One set of stamps is the solid image of the leaves, while the other set is the line art image of the leaves.

Water Coloring Technique Instructions


The water coloring technique was used to make the background designer paper. To make the background, take the line art image set and stamped various leaf images in black Stazon ink into a random pattern onto Stampin' Up!'s water color paper. It is always best to use Stazon Ink when water coloring so that your outline image does not run when it gets wet. I also highly recommend using water color paper when doing this technique, so that your paper does not buckle when painting your images with water.

Next I took my aqua painter paint brush, squeezed a small amount of water to the tip of my brush, then dipped the brush into the selected SU classic color ink pads to paint my leaves.  To insure the color of the leaves were variegated, I colored only small sections of the leaves at a time until I achieved my desired color pattern and intensity. To soften the intensity if the color, simply add a bit more water to your brush when coloring.

After coloring in the images, I then took my En Fancis background stamp and stamped the entire paper with Crumb Cake Classic ink. Then I stamped and water colored a few extra leaves, cut them out and attached them to the card with Stampin dimensionals. Finally I added the greeting, a piece of ribbon and an antique brad to finish the card. Leave a comment below to let me know what you think of today's project.

Before you hop onto the next blog, Crafting Elegance would like to present to you our 6 Weeks of Christmas Newsletter as our free Blog Candy for everyone!

Once a week for 6 weeks, you can sign up to receive my Christmas Newsletter filled with Holiday projects and step by step instructions to help you prepare for the upcoming Christmas holiday. All the projects showcased in the 6 weeks of Christmas newsletter will not be displayed on my blog.  Only subscribers to my newsletter will receive these exclusive project samples. Best of all the 6 Weeks of Christmas Newsletter is absolutely Free!

To join my mailing list, click on the sign up for my newsletter link located at the top left hand side bar of my blog. You don't want to miss out on this exciting event. The first e-mail will be released this coming Sunday!

Thanks for joining me today.  Don't forget to join us tomorrow for another Fall creation. Next on the hop is Anji Clements. Click here to visit Anji.  If you happen to have missed a few Glitter Queens along the way, check out the links below.

Happy Stamping!

Supplies
Stamp Set: Gently Falling, Sincere Salutations
Cardstock: Whisper White, Chocolate Chip, SU Water Color Paper
Ink: More Mustard, Pool Party, Soft Suede, Basic Grey, and Old Olive Classic Ink Pads;                         
      Black Stazon Ink 
Accessories: Victoria Crochet Trim, Antique Brads

Dawn Griffith

Deidra Williamson

Dee Slater 

Joan Robertson

Bridgett Owens 

Stephanie Lorenz

Jennifer Kay

Cely Havens

Tamara Gadberry

Candice Crawford 

Anji Clements