March Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

It's March and that means a new Stamp of the Month from Close To My Heart. This month's set is called "Floral Happiness" and contains 16 images of flowers and phrases. You can view all the images in this set in the right-hand column of my blog all month long. And since it's a Blog Hop with over 55 consultants participating, you're sure to get lots of inspiration using this beautiful stamp set.

If you've already been hopping, you came here from the talented Nancy Brown's blog. To see where to go to next, simply follow through my post to the end where I'll link you over.

Remember, you can get the Stamp of the Month for only $5 when you spend at least $50 before shipping and tax on your CTMH order. Or, you can always purchase it at full retail for $17.95. If you don't already have a consultant, I invite you to shop with me at this link.


Now here's what I created with the stamp of the month...

This card measures 5 x 7 inches and features the lovely Chantilly papers, baker's twine, a pink button, and a label cut from the Cricut Artiste cartridge.

Here's a closer look at the flowers. After stamping and cutting them out, I added a bit of Stardust Glitz Glitter Gel with my finger, then popped them up with different levels of foam tape.

What makes the flowers in this stamp set unique is the base-and-shade combinations. Here I stamped the detail portion of the flower (we'll call this the shade) with Hollyhock ink first.

 I found through experimentation that it was MUCH easier to line up the base portion second. Something about doing it the other way made it more difficult for me to line them up properly. For my shade, I used Blush ink. Here's another tip: When first mounting your two stamps to blocks, be sure to mount them the same way/angle on each block. That way, when you pick it up you know it's already squared up and ready to go. Make sense?

Compare this flower with the one above. Can you see the difference? More depth and dimension, right?

After cleaning the ink off the base stamp, I inked up a sponge dauber with Cotton Candy ink and tapped it only on the outer edges of the stamp like this. Then hovered over my already stamped flower, lined it up and stamped right over the top. This added some nice shading around the edges. Cool, eh?

I cut a label from White Daisy cardstock on the Cricut (Artiste, pg. 36, 1 inch). Then stamped the phrase with Hollyhock and inked the edges with Blush. Don't you love baker's twine? It's such a fun embellishment to add to a card.

The bottom edge of my card has paper folded into a knife pleat fashion. To see how to create a knife pleat and a few more paper-folding techniques, check out my YouTube video I did a few years ago.

To create the knife pleat for my card, I started with two pieces of B&T paper: one at 1 1/4 x 12 inches and another at 1 1/4 x 8 1/2 inches. By the time it gets pleated at 1/2-inch intervals, it comes down to about 6 3/4 inches. I inked the edges with Sweet Leaf before adhering it to the card.

That's it for me, now let's go see what Maria Myers created with the stamp of the month. Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you learned something new!