...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!

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

 It's my first blog hop as a member of the GKD team! So excited! There's a lot of pics, grab a cuppa! Here's what you need to know:

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 Therea Momber and Melanie Muenchinger. 

The first set we are featuring is Country Roads 2 by Theresa Momber. Theresa has created a second set to her popular Country Roads collection. Whether you are a country lover or an animal lover, you will be making creative and fun projects with this wonderful set. 

The second set we are featuring is Fill It with Flowers by Melanie Muenchinger. Melanie has done it again! She has created another wonderful set that is incredibly versatile and fun where the possibilities are endless for making beautiful cards for any occasion.

Enjoy the gorgeous inspiration samples from the team and then 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 we go with my Country Roads 2 cards:

I made this cheery Happy Birthday card with the Country Roads 2 set - I brushed the large floral stamp with bottled inks and stamped it - it comes out all watery and splotchy, but when it dries you can stamp the image again with proper stamping ink and it gives this artsy painterly look, I like how this turned out.

This is what the image looks like stamped in the bottled, liquid inks.

Once it dries, I stamp again with black ink, the detail shows up nicely over the 

artsy look of the dried inks.

I used the smaller floral image from Country Roads to create these little notelet cards, 4 inch square, the fine detailing lent itself to a simple card layout.

If you were at the release party at Stamp TV you may have seen this card - 

I decided to take one of the silhouette images from the set and do something a little different with it. Instead of using it as a silhouette, I stamped it in a very pale shade of grey and then used some colouring pencils to add some colour directly to the stamped image. There's some how-to pics below, you can try this with other silhouette images. It can be a great way to extend the range of your stamps.

And now for my Fill it with Flowers cards:

I loved this milk glass style vase from Melanie's set, I paired it with some of the oversize blooms and coloured with copics. I stamped a few extra flower heads and trimmed out the flower heads and some single petals. I used an embossing tool on the backs of my trimmed-out images to create a little dimension and then I stuck some of the extra petals to the flower heads to give the arrangement a little more depth.

The butterfly was fussy cut from some of the patterned papers in the Sending love Stamp TV kit, it was just the perfect size! The lovely gingham paper is from the kit also. Have you seen the kit? It's here.

For my second card I used the paper wrap stamp and paired it with the hydrangea stamp. The paper wrap is an ideal stamp to paper piece - all the patterned papers on this card are from the sending love kit - it's a great kit. I used copics again to color the flowers and I sponged a little behind the main image to ground the bouquet a little. Couldn't resist another little butterfly.

I sure hope these tickle and I can't wait to see what you folks get up to with these sets - also tomorrow I'm looking forward to showing you some more creations, there's another hop!

If you are ready for more inspiration today, just click on the links below for more from Gina and the Cast & Crew:


Gina K

Theresa Momber – Illustrator for Country Roads 2

Melanie Muenchinger – Illustrator for Fill It with Flowers

Allie Gower

Beth Silaika

Cathy Tidwell

Claire Brennan

Donna Idlet

Karen Hightower

Kendra Wietstock

Laurie Schmidlin

Sheri Gilson

Silke Ledlow

Susie Moore


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.

Thanks for popping in!

... Were you at the party, did you see the new stuff?

So did you go to the Stamp TV forums last night to see all the new sets at Gina K's? This was one of the cards I posted at the party - it got a little crazy and I was having trouble keeping up with all the posts, but it was so exciting to be a part of the release! Big news for me was that five former WMS sets re-released at Gina K's last night, have you seen them?

If you have not already seen the new releases, you can pop over here to Gina K Store and see all the new goodies in one go.

Also there are blog hops planned, so stay tuned, I have LOADS to show you from this release!

One of the sets revealed was Fill it with Flowers by Melanie Muenchinger, and I used it for this card - I literally filled the large cup image with a flower, lol. I love to try and find unexpected ways to use stamps and I cannot tell yo how good it feels to be creating again!

It was a simple job to make a reverse mask for the mug image but cutting the mug OUT of a sheet of paper and setting the hole over the stamped image. I just stamped the flower within - couple of how-to pics here.

You get the finished, decorated mug.

Next thing was to make a mask of the mug and taggy shapes, I use post it notes. Easy to cut and stick themselves down.

Then I did a little sponging because I never got around to buying air canisters for my copic airgun...

Et voilà - a nice background to highlight the white mug. All that was left was to punch a wee hole for the tea bag string and slit a tiny opening at the top of the mug and feed the string through. I scored the frame in a trellis using my scorpal. Hope it tickles!

...It's tonight!! The Gina K Stamp TV Release party!

It's tonight!!! There is going to be such a lot of fabby inspiration, I've seen some of what the DT folks have done...wow!!! So this is YOUR personal invite to the party, which will be at STAMP TV tonight! You can't say you weren't asked....

Here's a peep at one of my cards, feels so great to be making again!

...sneaky peeks at Gina's and How to party at Stamp TV

Gina 'peeked' these two sets on her Facebook page today, these are two of my 5 existing sets that will be released tomorrow. Can't tell you how fabby it is to be working with Gina.

The big release happens tomorrow, and I believe the Ning site is now working again and so I look forward to seeing you all at the release party - Have you been to a Gina K party before? Maybe you have, but if not, here's how to take part: Sean, the DT coordinator made up this handy graphic, it explains so much, so I'm just gonna go ahead and swipe that from his FB...

So go ahead, get yourself over to Stamp TV and make yourself at home, get a wee grove worn into your seat so's you'll be all comfy for tomorrow's release! See you there!

...So what's happening? New stuff - that's what's happening!

There's a New Gina K release this week - and I have been busy making some cards - now that I'm on the DT I get to actually make stuff!!! I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. I am especially excited to be making cards with stamps that I didn't even have to draw! LOL, it is ridiculous how happy this makes me. Now don't get me wrong, I love drawing stamps, but I have had a blast working with three sets this week that come from Gina's super talented crew, it feels more like fun than work and I'm just gonna hold that thought, because it's been a while since I had some genuine crafty fun.

Have you seen the sneak peeks - if not here they are for you:

 Here is sneak peek #1 of our May release! If you have lots of beautiful flower stamps, this set will be a MUST-have! Melanie Muenchinger's new Fill it with Flowers gives you all kind of containers, vases, paper wraps, decorative bows, twines and even a few new flowers! WAIT until you see this set!

 Sneak Peek #3- Bethann Erin Silaika has another new adorable set to add to her collection of whimsical characters! Meet Sophie! Whether it's a get well card, a birthday wish, a gift card holder or just a little love, Sophie Pig will make them smile.

Sneak Peek #2- Theresa Momber has create a sister set to her best selling Country Roads stamp set! Country Roads 2 features gorgeous peaceful images and greetings perfect for masculine cards or for anyone who loves the country lifestyle.

Also there might be a few former WMS sets in the offing on Thursday also, (*cough Planner Basics Frames cough), you never know what you might find, I'd strongly advise a wee trip to Gina's. :)

So pop the date in your diary - the new release goes live on Thursday, 7 PM, May 26th! Hold fast for more details, The party 'should' be on the Stamp TV website, but I know there are a few gremlins over at the Ning site right now, but I will post again tomorrow to let you know what the plan is!