STAMPlorations Birthday Hop! + PRIZES!

Who is ready to PAAAARTAAAAAAY?! If you raised your hands in the air and waved them like you just don't care, then this blog posting is for you. If you didn't... well LAME! But you can still read on. ;)

Some of you regulars may know that STAMPlorations stamps are my jam. I love their designs. I design stamps for their company. I think the owner is incredibly rad and sweet and lovely (seriously the kindest).

Well today, I'm ready to party hearty because STAMPlorations is celebrating it's 4th birthday in a wicked awesome way! A crazy ton of new releases are in the shop, we're giving away over $200 worth of prizes, and there's tons of crafty inspiration! 

Here are the cards I designed using some of the new products:

Check out that adorable new cupcake from the Cupcake Builder #1 CUTplorations set. I used the sketch from Stella Says Sketch challenge and paired it with the colors from the Sunday Stamps challenge. I matched that sweet cupcake with a snarky sentiment from the A Snarky Birthday to You stamp set.

The second card I made demanded some mixed media action. In the new release there are some AAaammaaaaaazing new scrawly sentiment stamps and matching dies. I embossed the Bold Sentiments: Gorgeous stamp repeatedly on a background, doused it with a healthy dose of purple ColorBurst crystals and - voila! - drama. 

I used the You Word Die set and some pop dots to finish my look. I'm going to link this up to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge - Anything Goes

So let's talk deets about this party! 

Just this week, we added over 50 new stamps and dies to the store. If you've got your eye on several stamps, stencils, and dies, add them to your wishlist because you could be one of two winners who will win products (up to $50 MSRP) in their wishlist! You may enter only once but you can get an extra entry (and increase your chances of winning) by sharing your STAMPlorations wishlist link in a post on your blog (where you share any type of project you've created) and displaying our birthday graphic above then linking to this post. The linky is open until July 3.

 Make sure to hop along today, and check out the other days because there will be prizes for commenters, too!

Oh and before I forget - EVERYTHING in the STAMPlorations store is 15% off! If you use my discount code STAMPGIRLBECCA at checkout, you can get an additional 20% off! Whaaaat?

Happy Hopping!

Summer Coffee Hop! Day 1!

It's my favorite time of the year! The Coffee Lover's Blog Hop is back! The festivities start today and I'm wicked excited to show off a super fun card I designed for the occasion. 

 The hop is hosted by Amy Tsuruta and Chaitali Narla.

Amy and Chaitali have invited lots of sponsors for the hop who are offering tons of fabulous prizes! Play along by creating a summer-themed project featuring coffee, tea and/or cocoa images. Post it on your blog and then link it up at the linky found on the Coffee Loving Cardmakers blog. The linky is open until Friday, June 30. Winners of sponsor prizes will be randomly drawn! (Psst! Keep scrolling for a free digi stamp you can use in your projects!)

Link up your summer-themed coffee, tea, and/or cocoa card(s) here

I designed a brand new stamp set for STAMPlorations in honor of the hop. It's called Dark Coffee and is filled with snarky sentiments (shocking, I know).

Check it out! 

I made a hilarious card for the first day of the hop, using this brand new set. 

I love the '50s diner flair to this set, and of course, those sweet cat eye glasses. 

Do you want to win this set for your own??

BLOG CANDY ALERT!

If you want to win this stamp set, leave a comment on my blog telling me about your favorite coffee cup. :) I'll do a drawing and give away the set.

Then hop over to STAMPlorations to check out the other brand new release coffee themed sets where they are ALSO giving away blog candy!

So much free stuff!!!

Happy hopping, friends!

Red White and Blue! Fusion Challenge

I cannot believe we are almost into the dregs of July. Over at Fusion Challenge, we're thinking about the impending Red White and Blue festivities with our latest inspiration image: 

If you haven't played along at Fusion - it's super easy! You can choose to make a card based on the sketch, the inspiration image - or fuse the two of them together and use both! 
 

I was looking balefully at my heaping pile of paper scraps and decided to cull through the goods to find all of my red, white, and blue objects. Hence why there are no process photos along the way... I just started piecing and gluing. I thought the design was the perfect foundation for this lovely sentiment from Unity's Dog Tags & Thanks stamp set. We have a large military community in Grand Forks, and I plan on sending this to one of my friends who's currently deployed.

I hope you'll stop by Fusion and play along! Have a fantastic Thursday!

Elegant Wedding Card

Ooooo! There's a doozy of a new challenge just posted today at The Card Concept. It's filled with glamor and pops of red and feathers!

Since I love all of these things, I was excited to take on the inspiration image!

I reeeallllllly wanted to incorporate feathers, but alas! - my black chicken finally gave up the goat (yes, that was a barnyard pun) and so I was all out of stock of black feathers.



Instead, I decided to play with the bold red blooms and work in that black and white damask wrap.

I stamped a big ol' flowy poppy from the Penny Black XYZ stamp set and colored a portion of it in with Dina Wakely Scribble Sticks.

Let's pause for a second to let me exclaim my LOVE for these scribble sticks. Initially I bought them thinking that they would be just like Distress Crayons or Gelatos, but they are not even close. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that these are my new all-time favorite coloring medium of all time.

The scribble sticks act as like a cocaine-fueled watercolor crayon. Meaning they are super dope. They can write on canvas on TOP of acrylic paint, too! I'd highly recommend and if you're interested in trying them out for yourself, Amazon has them on sale for $20.99. *affiliate link

Once you scribble on a marginal amount of color, just use a waterbrush to pull out the color. Insta-shading and fewer harsh lines or coloring required than watercolor pencils. 

I added a sentiment from the Unity Love is Grand sentiment set because wedding season is upon us and I need to do some serious stocking up on some lovey dovey designs. 

Some glittery black damask paper, a lacy die cut from Spellbinders and some crinkle ribbon from Verve later - voila! 

I hope you'll all go and play along with The Card Concept's latest challenge because I can't wait to see what you'll make!

I'm also going to play along with some awesome challenges:
Addicted to Stamps - Flowers 
Penny Black & More - Anything Goes
The Ribbon Girl - Anything Goes + Ribbons

Thanks for popping by!

Chic Pink Birthday Card

There's a brand new challenge up at The Card Concept this week and it's a real beaut.

It's filled with black, white, and cream patterns, a pop of bright pink, and some metallic accents.

See??

As soon as I saw this image, I knew I just had to use this black and cream paper stack from American Crafts that I've been hoarding. 

I plopped down a blob of hot pink acrylic paint and sccchmmmeeeared it with my fingers. Then I added some white and black Distress Spray Stain splatters to messy it up a little bit more. 

I embossed these lovely poppies from the Verve Stamps Poppy Birthday set and colored them in with Distress Markers and a watery paintbrush. 

I added a feather, some small gemstones and stamped sentiment (from the Poppy Birthday stamp set) to complete the look.

I hope you'll all go play over at The Card Concept, where we welcome card styles of ALL types! :) 

I'm BACK! With a Thank You Card.

Hello Friendly Friends! I am BACKKKKK! Thank you all for your kindness and understanding as I took a short bloggy break to deal with personal things. Sometimes.. ya just gotta. 

I'm back in action with a bright and fun card I designed for the new STAMPlorations theme & sketch challenge. 

The theme for this month's challenge is Stamps & Family, but I chose to use the sketch for my design. 

I stamped a bunch of those funky flowers from the Trendy Spring Blooms set in black ink and then colored them with lots of GLITTER!!!! 

I just found these Spectrum Noir Sparkle Markers at Michael's for 70 percent off.... so naturally I had to take them for a test drive. 

Once everything was colored, I did some fussy cutting and added some fun gemstone and enamel dot centers to some of my flowers.

I used a serious of sentiments from the Trendy Feathers 2 stamp set and created a text pattern for my background. 

And just like that - a card was born!  

If you liked any of the stamps you saw me use in today's card... have I ever got good news for you: You can get them for 20% off in the STAMPlorations shop by using code STAMPGIRLBECCA at checkout. Woop woop! 

It feels good to be back in action! I hope you all will go play along with this month's challenge so I can oooogle some sweet designs.