Inspiration Week: Introducing Holiday Style & Merry Sentiments

Hello & welcome to day 4 of our Holiday Release preview.  Are you excited for tomorrow?  I know I am (but truth be told I still have several last-minute details to pull together so I'm glad I still have a little time left). ;)  Thank you for all your sweet comments both here and on Facebook and instagram.  I read every one of them and they've all meant so much to me!  

Today I'm showcasing two fun layering sets called Holiday Style and Merry Sentiments.  The Merry Sentiments set is a 3x4 set filled with sentiments that build on the word Merry and then also includes a fun vintage-inspired layering light bulb image.  I've always adored light bulbs--There's just something about them, so bright and happy.  ;)  There's also a Merry Word die that coordinates with the set.

First I used the layering jingle bell and bow images from the set.  These images took me forever to design, but I will say it's never felt more gratifying to stamp with a new set of mine.  I generally feel like all layering stamps are magical, but even more so when it's something you labored so hard on.  



And here's my actual card using them.  Believe it or not, I didn't use a stamp positioning tool for these. Granted these are my best ones, but it just goes to show you don't have to have one to make it work.  My best results came from stamping the darkest image in black and then lining up the largest, lightest image over the top using the three shiny marks in the center to line things up.  For my bell I used Colorbox Seattle Sky Premium Dye Ink, Colorbox Storm and Versafine Black Onyx.

For my sentiment, I inked up some white cardstock with my favorite jumbo dauber and red distress inks.  When it was nice and dry I heat embossed my sentiment in white (this phrase comes cut apart so that you can use it all lined up in a row or stacked (as you will see from card shared below).

Next, I have a card using the tree bough and layering ornaments from Holiday Style.  I surprised even myself with all the fun and unique ways this tree branch can be used.  The ornaments are so bold and easy to layer freehand. Once again I found it was easiest to stamp the shadow first in the darker color and then stamp the ball over the top.  I then used a 1" circle punch to punch them out. 

The set comes with three different ways to hang your ornament with both a hook and a string as shown here.  I provided the string both as a solid image and one with a break in it so that when it's stamped on the tree branch it gives the illusion it's actually hanging from the tree.  For my sentiment, I turned to stacking the sentiment from the set, pairing it with my favorite new banner image from Little Angels.  

My third card uses the tree bough branch from Holiday Style and the other stamps from Merry Sentiments.  For this card, I stamped the branch in three different colors of ink to form a border around my card panel.  I then die-cut all my light bulbs from white cardstock and stamped them with my Misti Tool (using a similar technique shared HERE).  While a Misti isn't absolutely necessary it definitely made my life easier when it came to stamping a ton of these from different colors.

When I had them all stamped out I loosely placed them where I wanted them on my card and then used a little ink dauber to apply an inky glow around them with my distress inks.  I then adhered to my light bulbs and added some glossy accents to them.  My sentiment was stamped with a phrase from the set and paired with several layers of the Merry Word die stacked on top of each other.  

For this card, I went bright and happy again having my ornaments hang from what looks like a garland.  When I was nearly done I accidentally got some ink on my card base just below the red ornament.  I tried sanding it off, but it still looked too obvious to me so I got clever with some sequins to try and hide my mistake.  That particular sequin still feels a little misplaced to me, but overall it was a good save for something that could have landed my card in the trash. 

For my second rainbow of the day, I lined up the bulbs from Merry Sentiments in a fun clean and simple card.  I used our Wavy Border dies to form my string for the lights and inked up my background the same way I did for the first card using a mini ink dauber.

For one last card, I thought it would be fun to create an overall background and everyday card using the bow from the Holiday Style set.  Once again I was too lazy to mess with any sort of positioning tool.  I started by just inking up the bows with the base color and once I had them all placed I then could go through color by color with the layering images.  

When I was done I was hoping to hide some of my stamping imperfections & perhaps tone it down by spritzing it with water and flicking on some black ink.  In the end, I'm not sure if I ruined it, but after all the work I had put into it I decided to press on, adding a sentiment from our Sweet Shoppe set and coordinating Sweet Word die and fishtail banner dies.  The splatters and bows have a very 80's vibe to it, right?  

This is a little graphic showing all the different ways our Merry Sentiments set can be used. I think this little set has a big bang for your buck with the layering light bulb and 9 different combinations for sentiments when paired with the Merry Word die.

I am frequently asked what colors I used in my stamping and while I didn't keep records for all the cards in this post, I have gone back and tried to match them due to popularity.  I have listed them from light to dark.  :)

Jingle Bell
Colorbox Seattle Sky
Colorbox Storm
Versafine Black Onyx

Red Bow, Lights & Ornaments
Hero Arts Pale Tomato
Colorbox Strawberry
Colorbox Cranberry

Tree Branches
Grasshopper (first card)
Tree Frog (third card)

Pink Lights & Ornaments
MFT Cotton Candy
Hero Arts Bubble Gum

Slightly Darker Pink (alternative)
Colorbox Candy
Versafine Clair Charming Pink

Lavender Ornaments
Colorbox Pixie
Colorbox Lilac

Yellow Lights & Ornament
Versafine Clair Cheerful
Colorbox Banana

Orange Lights & Ornament
Colorbox Tangerine
Papertrey Ink Orange Zest

Green Lightbulb (fifth card)
Versafine Clair Verdant
Colorbox Grasshopper

Turquoise Lights & Ornament-Option 1*
Colorbox Seaglass
Colobox Ocean

Blue Lights & Ornament- Option 2*
Colorbox Poolside
Colorbox Wave

*I was having trouble finding an exact match for the blues I used since it appears they are now retired, but I have provided options for slightly more aqua or slightly more blue.

Here's a full look at the new Merry Sentiments 3x4 stamps and companion dies...

            

And here's a look at the new Holiday Style 4x6 stamps and coordinating dies...

        

Both of these will be available for purchase starting tomorrow morning!  Yay!

Would you like to win a $20 gift code to our online store?  Use the rafflecopter below to enter to win.  We will be giving away a new gift code each day for a total of five chances to win!  The contest closes on October 8th at Midnight PST.  Winners will be announced on Sunday, October 9th.  :)

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Make sure to check back tomorrow morning for one last stamp set and several standalone dies that I'm really excited about.  ;)

Other Sunny Studio Supplies Used:

    

Inspiration Week: Introducing Little Angels & Angelic Sentiments

Hello there and welcome to day three of our sneak peeks!  Today I'm sharing ideas using our new Little Angels set and a smaller 3x4 companion sentiment set called Angelic Sentiments that extends the life of this set to all year 'round.  Let's jump right in!  ;)

Up first I have a card using the boy and girl angels.  These little angels were designed to hold the candle, harp, horn or the included banner as shown here.  To create this card I inked up my background with Mermaid Lagoon, Salty Ocean, Chipped Sapphire distress inks and then a bit of Black Soot for the outside edge before splattering it with water.  

I then applied some watermark ink directly to a scratch piece of kraft cardstock by just pressing the pad to the cardstock to get good coverage.  I then sprinkled it with sparkly gold embossing powder and heat set it before die-cutting my stars from it.  The dies left a small impression in the center of each star so after I adhered them to my card with a glue pen, I just quickly heat them again to perk them back up.

For my next card I had those same angels hold hands and this time I went with more of a silver color palette for their gowns, adding Stardust Stickles to their wings.  For my clouds, I blended Spun Sugar & Shaded Lilac distress inks using a handmade cloud stencil I created using another new product that will be featured on Friday.  ;)

For my sentiment I also used one of the everyday phrases found in the companion Angelic Sentiments set.  This set has options to either build the sentiment to say "I'm praying for you" or "We're praying for you".  

For this card I thought it would be sweet to create a choir of angels.  There's a separate image for a book with hands in this set that you can either stamp and mask off before stamping the larger girl image over the top (or stamp, cut out and layer over the top of the girl) to turn the praying angel into a caroling or bible reading angel.  ;)  

For this card I borrowed some clouds from our Sunny Sentiments and Rain or Shine sets, but I probably could have also just used the cloud that came with the set.  I also snagged another favorite banner of mine from our Sunny Borders set to hold the sentiment.

My next card came to me in a dream.  Love when that happens, don't you?  ;)  I thought it would be fun to have a little cutout in my card front that matched the angle of the horn and revealed a pretty inked background below.  I had actually envisioned a sentiment coming out of the horn, but I just couldn't make it work and look right so I was happy when this short sentiment seemed like the perfect fit (in more ways than one) from the Angelic Sentiments set.  Instead I decided to heat emboss the musical notes from the set in a random pattern.

This card is a more Christmassy version of the first card in this post done up in classic Christmas colors.  The little bit of holly was borrowed from the Blissful Baking set shared yesterday.  

Can I just gush for a moment how much I've enjoyed this banner?  I've used it on sooo many cards from this release as you will see.  ;)

And for this card I wanted to use the little angel on the cloud that sort of inspired the entire set.  For my larger stars and the little dotted line that they are "hanging" from I borrowed some stamps from our Halloween Cuties set.  A birthday greeting from the Angelic Sentiments set completes my card.

And for my last card I couldn't resist squeezing in a rainbow (of course) by using that same little girl angel and trimming off her wings and halo to just be a row of little girls.  Having never done images of anything, but critters I enjoyed the ability to create a human rainbow with all sorts of different skin & hair colors.

I completed my card by inking up our Sweet Word die with a rainbow of distress inks and heat embossing a sentiment from our coordinating Sweet Shoppe set.

Here's a full look at the new Little Angels 4x6 Stamps & dies and coordinating 3x4 Angelic Sentiments stamp set available for purchase on October 7th.

        

Other Sunny Studio Supplies Used:

                 

I hope you've enjoyed this peek at Little Angels and Angelic Sentiments.  Would you like to win a $20 gift code to our online store?  Use the rafflecopter below to enter to win.  We will be giving away a new gift code each day for a total of five chances to win!  Contest closes on October 8th at Midnight PST.  Winners will be announced on Sunday, October 9th.  :)

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Make sure to check back tomorrow when I will be showing some really fun ideas with a couple of new layering sets.  ;)

Inspiration Week: Introducing Mug Hugs & Blissful Baking

Hello and welcome to day 2 of our Inspiration week featuring the new stamps and dies from our Winter release coming out on Friday!!!  Can you tell I'm excited?  Today I'm showcasing ideas using the Mug Hugs and Blissful Baking sets. 

For my first card using Mug Hugs I created a Clean and Simple Rainbow inspired card using the coffee cup from the set.  After coloring all my images with Copic Markers, I added some interest to the hearts on each cup using Glossy Accents.  To make my cups stand out and reinforce them as a cohesive border, I added a piece of black cardstock behind them, hiding the seam behind the cup lids.

My second card for the day features a sweet little scene combining the new Blissful Baking set with the Penguin from Bundled Up.  To set my scene up like a kitchen counter, I simply inked up a simple line across my card using the edge of a post-it note as a mask.

The bag image in this set has been left blank so that you can choose to turn it into either flour or sugar (or one of each).  

The cookie sheet was designed to fit an endless array of cookie options from the set for holiday cards as well as Valentine's Day and everyday occasions.  While this set does offer coordinating dies for each of the cookies, they can also be stamped directly onto the cookie sheet before coloring.  ;)


Next up is a fun & festive take on the Mug Hugs set.  This set comes with an undecorated star sugar cookie just waiting for you to add the sprinkles of your choice.  A candy cane from the set turned upside down becomes a peppermint stick for my hot drink and I snuck in a tree shaped cookie from our Christmas Icons set (being shared on Friday) to complete my little scene.

I actually had the top portion of this card done and then went in search of a patterned paper to give my card some weight & interest along the bottom.  I completely lucked out because this piece just happened to be a near perfect match.  You would think when I have a foot high stack of Christmas paper collected from over the years that I would have endless options, but it turns out this was the only one that came close to working with my colors.  ;)

Up next is a card focusing on the hot cocoa image from the set.  I'm not actually a coffee drinker, but I can make a mean cup of hot chocolate so this image is near and dear to my heart.  This time I chose to adorn my cookies with heart sprinkles to match the heart on my mug.  My subtle print in the background of my brown cardstock is using a standalone marshmallow image that comes with the set.  ;)

For my next project, I thought it would be fun to show how the Blissful Baking set is perfect for so much more than just the holidays.  I designed most of the sentiments in this set to work well all year 'round and for many of them to fit nicely on a gift tag of baked goodies (which I will be sharing more ideas for on Friday). 

In case you're scratching your head why there are two of most of the cookies, I provided them in two slightly different sizes, giving you the ability to line up two rows of cookies and have them work with the diminishing perspective of the cookie sheet.

This set also comes with an extra little squiggly line image that can be added to the bowl to make it look like there's dough inside.  I left it as a separate option to expand the possibilities of the bowl and the ability to use it together with other images like the fruits found in our Summer Picnic set.

To set the stage and frame my images, I created a panel using our new Crescent Tag Topper dies.  :)

For this fun shaped card I mixed the candy canes and sentiment from Mug Hugs with the peppermint swirl candy and Sweet Word die from Sweet Shoppe.  You know I'm always looking for more ways to incorporate a rainbow into my cards.  ;)  

To make the scalloped edge match my candy cane rainbow, I loosely inked on some distress inks to match where the candy canes would land on my card and then went back and tried my best to blend them together.

The coffee cups from Mug Hugs make great little holiday gift tags!  I made sure to design this image really symmetrical so that you can create double sided tags and adhere two die-cuts together.

Before I wrap up, I thought it would be fun to create one last card focusing just on the snowflake images from the Mug Hugs set.  While these were primarily designed to fit on the mugs as embellishments, they're also great all on their own.  

Using THIS fabulous card by Laura Bassen as my inspiration, I heat embossed the snowflakes around the perimeter of my card panel and then sponged on Wilted Violet, Blueprint Sketch, Salty Ocean & Peacock Feathers distress inks.  I then stamped some extras, die-cut them with the coordinating dies and popped them up with foam tape.  

The Mug Hugs set actually started as a digital set created for the Coffee Lover's blog hop last year.  While the digital version is no longer available, you can see several more ideas that would work well for this set at that post HERE.

And here's a full look at the new stamps and coordinating dies available for purchase on October 7th (you can click on images to view them larger):

         

I hope you've enjoyed this peek at Mug Hugs & Blissful Baking.  Would you like to win a $20 gift code to our online store?  Use the rafflecopter below to enter to win.  We will be giving away a new gift code each day for a total of five chances to win!  Contest closes on October 8th at Midnight PST.  Winners will be announced on Sunday, October 9th.  :)

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Make sure to check back tomorrow when I will be unveiling our new Little Angels set and sharing tons of fun ideas using it!

Other Sunny Studio Supplies Used Today:

    

Inspiration Week: Introducing Gleeful Reindeer Stamps & Dies

Hello & welcome to our holiday inspiration week.  I'm so happy to have you join us!  I'm absolutely giddy to share what I've been up to for the past several months and all that I've planning and creating with our new release for Winter!

Today I'm sharing ideas using a new set called Gleeful Reindeer.  This set comes with three darling reindeer images, trees in three sizes, a sled, several companion images like presents and decorations for the trees and five happy sentiments.

Up first is a card that I just was dying to create using the reindeer happily leaping through the sky.  I inked up my background with Salty Ocean & Blueprint Sketch Distress Inks and then flicked on some water to help add to the snowy/ starry look.  I then added some random dots of sparkle with my favorite Stardust Stickles.  My images were colored with Copic Markers and Glossy Accents (by Ranger) was added to the reindeer noses for a touch of shine.

I love how the trees in this set look equally beautiful colored in green or snowy white for two completely different looks!

For my next card I went with an offset design, creating a sweet little scene with the sitting reindeer and the largest tree.  I stamped the string of lights on my tree before coloring with Copics and then added glossy accents over the top of them to make them shiny after they had been colored.  To ground my little scene I sponged on some Tumbled Glass distress ink with my favorite Jumbo Dauber by Tsukineko in the bottom right corner before adhering my pieces with a zig 2-way glue pen.  

I like the way the Doodlebug Sugarplums 6x6 paper compliments the colors in my scene and balances out a design that might have otherwise felt a bit heavy on the one side.

For those who know me well, I'm a sucker for red & white prints so I couldn't resist creating a card with a red & white snowflake background using the little snowflake images in the set.  This time I chose to decorate my tree with the little ornament image in the set.  The sled image is perfect for pulling gifts, a Christmas tree or even the sitting reindeer.

To finish off my scene, I stamped the edges of my card panel with a scalloped border from our Sunny Borders stamp set and coordinating dies.

For my next card I have the reindeer pulling his Christmas tree on the sled.  The set comes with two different ways for the reindeer to pull his sled with both a leather strap with jingle bells and a tied rope as seen here.  I love how these trees come to life with a little creative coloring!  

This time I used those same snowflakes for a soft, snowy backdrop.  To save time, I added several to my clear block at once, giving me the ability to stamp and heat emboss my background in just a few minutes.  For my sentiment I used a banner that is part of a set that will be shared on Wednesday.  ;)  You are going to see me using that a lot--It's quickly become my new favorite.

I thought I would also share a bonus card with you today, combining the sentiment from this set with a complimentary 7/8" stitched holly die that will automatically come free with each order placed in our online store starting on Friday, October 7th (while supplies last).

I have created a free printable PDF for you with step-by-step instructions on how you can re-create this card at home, found HERE.

Here's a full look at the new Gleeful Reindeer stamps and coordinating dies available for purchase this Friday...

     

I hope you've enjoyed today's sneak peek.  Would you like to win a $20 gift code to our online store to spend on some of the new sets?  Use the rafflecopter below to enter to win.  We will be giving away a new gift code each day for a total of five chances to win!  Contest closes on October 8th at Midnight PST.  Winners will be announced on Sunday, October 9th.  :)

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Make sure to check back tomorrow when I will be sharing two fun new sets that I'm hoping you'll fall in love with as much as I have. ;)

Other Sunny Studio Supplies Used Today: