...Gina K Designs May Inspiration blog hop Day Two

Hello folks and welcome to the second day of inspirational posts for the Gina K Designs May release - I'm even more excited today than I was yesterday because today we get to look at two of the sets that I have in this release! I cannot wait to see what the rest of the DT folks have done with these!

This post is seriously picture heavy - you're gonna need more coffee...

The Cast and Crew for Gina K Designs welcomes you to another fabulous blog hop celebrating the new stamp sets from the May StampTV Release Party! We hope to inspire you with some beautiful card projects as you hop along to each of the designer’s blogs! Today, we are featuring two stamp sets by Beth Silaika and yours truly! 

The first set we are featuring is Sophie Pig by Beth Silaika. Beth has created a super cute set with the sweetest images and matching sentiments to make the perfect card project to make the card recipient smile or feel better right away! 

The second and third sets we are featuring are my sets Old Country Roses and Fine Feathers! My Old Country Roses set is a layering set based on those old style cabbage roses and you can easily whip up a fresh bouquet or two for any project. Fine Feathers is a collection of highly detailed feathers that are a perfect focal image to create a message of inspiration, hope, thanks and more! ED- I hear that Fine Feathers are temporarily sold out, but I happen to know that more are on the way, all the more time to get your ideas together.

Enjoy the gorgeous inspiration samples from the team and then don't forget to comment on each blog for your chance to win a $20 Gina K Designs gift certificate! To see who won, check the Big News Forum at StampTV a few days after the hop.

Ok, here are my samples for today's blog hop!

First up, miss Sophie Pig!

Hogs and kisses, love it! For my first card I just stamped Sophie and coloured her with copics before floating a few hearts around her, for my second card I thought I would make her the star, literally! I stamped her in the wee muddy puddle and masked her a little to get the puddle to surround her. I moved a few splashes also to suit my layout. I cut an aperture using a star shaped die in my card front and popped her in behind, I then added a frame onto which I drew stitches with a white gel pen. I love a punny sentiment and this wee set is full to the brim with them! Super cute set!

This was the Sophie card that I shared at the release party - don't be afraid to colour around the letters in your sentiments, sometimes it the 'extra' that you need!

Here are the samples for my set Old Country Roses.

Gingham is my most favourite thing to pair with old fashioned roses - the Sending Love kit was full of gingham, it must be fate.... :)

This 'Have a wonderful day' card uses the biggest bloom in the set. I mounted the big bloom on top of the large trio of blooms just for some dimension. Leaves were also cut out and stacked underneath. I like to use 3 shades of ink, a pale a medium and a strong shade - they don't have to be the same colour, I got a nice effect using a blue on top of a green for these leaves - it reminds me of vintage fabric and the way floral prints would be slightly offset in interesting colours.

Old Country Roses is a layering set and I have prepared a tip sheet to help you see how simple it is to line these stamps up - some folks worry about alignment, but I purposely designed these to be super simple - all of the lining up is done on the centre of each bloom - here's the tip sheet:

You can see how each bloom or leaf is made using 3 separate stamps - it's so simple, just select 3 shades of ink to work with and follow the tip sheet and you cannot go wrong.

Here's a graphic to show you the 4 types of blooms and 3 types of leaves that can be achieved with this set.

The tiny Roses are sooo cute, they look so pretty, I made some tags up in the smaller sizes. I'm loving the roses in yellow!

 And pat on the back to you for getting all the way down to this part of the post! Here are my last bunch of samples for today - My cards for the Fine Feathers set.

I stamped the largest feather twice in versamark and then sprinkled over some white embossing powder. I curved the stamp a little on the clear acrylic block before stamping, so that the stamped images would create a little focus on my sentiment - 'Let your dreams take flight' Once the embossing was dry, I got out those re-inkers and 'watercolored' with them - I love using re-inkers for this purpose because the colour is much more concentrated than watercolour paints.

For this card, I used the rock and roll technique - think that's what it's called when you ink up in one colour but roll the edges of the inked stamp in anther colour before stamping, love doing that. I love the fine detail in these stamps, I'm all bout detail, I don't mind spending hours drawing the smallest details. I just might have OCD...

There are a selection of 8 different feathers in this set, some solid images, some line art, which makes it versatile enough for any style of project. I combined both types in this card above. I'm particularly fond of that spotty feather.

And finally, because you are really going above and beyond the call of duty by making it all the way down to this last card... "You have earned your wings many times over" 

I really tried hard with this set to come up with original and usable phrases to go with the feathers. Just for fun, I stamped the feathers in a white ink on black cards. Don't know about you, but all my angels have golden wings, Once the ink was dry I shaded parts of the feathers with various tones of yellow and gold colouring pencils, I'll bet this technique has a fancy name, but I forget what that might be... anyhow it makes the images pop and I love this effect - hope you do too!

OK, If I haven't burnt you out and you are ready for more awesome creations, just click on the links below for more from Gina and the Cast & Crew:


Gina K
Beth Silaika – Illustrator for Sophie Pig
Claire Brennan – Illustrator for Old Country Roses and Fine Feathers
Allie Gower
Cathy Tidwell
Donna Idlet
Karen Hightower
Kendra Wietstock
Laurie Schmidlin
Melanie Muenchinger
Sheri Gilson
Silke Ledlow
Susie Moore
Theresa Momber

Don’t forget to pop over to the Gina K Designs Store and check out all of the new products available this month in the “What’s New” section at http://www.ginakdesigns.com.


Hope it tickles!