... Gina K October Inspiration Blog Hop Day 3, don't forget your free cut files....

Afternoon folks and welcome to day 3 of our fabulous blog hop celebrating the new Gina K releases! Today, we are featuring Beth Silaika’s new Ian Moose stamp set and my stamp sets: Nordic Winter, Noel, Festive Foliage and Compliments of the Season.

Beth’s set, Ian Moose is the most adorable moose with cute accompanying images and fun sentiments! Gina reckons my stamp sets are the best in classic and traditional stamps celebrating this holiday season! I'm going to go right along with that and hope you like them too!

First up is Ian Moose - a cracking scene building set - here it is in its entirety:

For my Christmas scene card, I watercoloured a loose background and allowed this to dry thoroughly, then I stamped my Ian Moose scene in memento inks and used copics to colour it in. I over stamped the scene with little tiny snowflakes and filled in their little ends with a white gel pen. I added a red frame using cardstock from the kit and dashed a little stitching in with a white gel pen. Can't wait to see what scenes you build with this set!

OK, I have 4 sets out this release and I went a bit crazy with samples for this one, Nordic Winter. I do believe this may be my very favouritest set ever, it's like choosing a favourite child, but judging by how many times I reach for this set over other sets, it may be the case...

Ever since I first drew this set I've been meaning to get around to making little jumpers with it. I wanted them for tags, for tree ornaments and they look great on the front of a card also! Perfect also for masculine Christmas cards I think? What say you?

The Nordic Winter set is full of images that are made up of individual knitting stitch shapes - look closely and you will see they are actually the correct shape. I know this because I drew every last one of them. This gives them an authentic print, and when you stamp with these, your projects really do take on that knitted look.

 FREE Cut Files

If you fancy making these little jumpers with your Nordic Winter set, it could not be simpler - I have here free for you the template - you can chose the .pdf printable template that you can print out and stamp on to, and then trim out. OR you can chose the .svg Cut files included if you have an electronic cutter. I will do a how-to on this in the next few days, once you see how easy it is, you won't look back.

Simply CLICK HERE to get these files,choose from ether the printable PDF or the cut file in .svg form to suit your needs.

The files are really simple to use, one is the overall jumper shape, in the card below it is cut out in green card. There are 3 other shapes, one jumper body and two arm pieces and you can use all or none. For my green jumper I left off the arms.

For my stone coloured jumper I used both arm pieces and the jumper body on top of the full jumper. I stamped different strips from Nordic Winter across the body of the jumper to create a nice jumper design. My kid says these are quite 'hipster' whatever that means... The sentiment is from Festive Foliage and is a nice relaxed style, which suits these perfectly.

A little trick I like to do is to use a pencil or stylus to score the back of the overall jumper shape, just along the bottom where the cuffs and waistband fall - I make small scratches to suggest the ribbing that you normally see in the cuffs of a knitted sweater - I did the neckband too. I used a little Gina K white pigment ink, just lightly sponged along the cuffs and neckband, this really brings out the ribbing, I swear this could not be any easier, it's so simple I'm thinking of doing a video, I don't think I could mess this up...LOL we will see.

Using the Nordic Winter set creates nearly limitless possibilities for jumper design!

Of course you can make cards with it too, here's a nice tonal one I made with Kraft cardstock, some of the dark brown and Ivory cards in Gina's Kit and matching Inks from Gina's range.

I loved it so much I went and dressed up a baggie to match...which also needed a tag...

I adore these tags... here's another one made with the jumper files!!!

I think it makes a neat 'man' set in these colours! Look how great that Gina K Ivory ink holds out against the darker colours, it really pops!

You can also be brave and try using traditional Christmas colours with Nordic Winter ;) I adore all of the different variations you can make by combining the strips and motif stamps - this little Christmas gift set is one of my faves. I like the Scandinavian design feel you get using just red and white.

OK I'm also meant to be showing you some samples for other stamp sets too so here's the 'Noel' stamp set - a set featuring larger than average Christmas greetings

And a few things I rustled up:

Yep, guilty, I used a single stamp from Nordic Winter on this to create a little gift-able ornament for the front of my card. The sentiment I used is a  fair size and fits the bottom third of a card front quite well on it's own and so I just gave it the chalkboard treatment and let it speak for itself.

I love the chalkboard feel and there seemed no better technique to really show off the typography on these sentiments, here's a tag I made for a little tin gift box:

By curving your large labels you can get them to sit up quite nicely on the top of boxes, nobody ever said gift tags had to be flat...

The smallest of the sentiments is quite fun on it's own also.

Go ahead and churn out a bunch of tags while you are at it, the beauty of large typography is that it doesn't need images if you are short of time. - each of my tags above are the same - I stamped in black which was clear heat embossed onto the simplest of shapes - a circle (- I KNOW you have a circle die somewhere) - and then I had a little fun with the edges. 

I used glue and glitter on the red tag. I dipped the edge of the gold tag in Versamark before dipping it again in gold embossing powder and using the heat gun to set it. Back to glue and grassy glitter for the green tag. Each got matching ribbon and a white jingle bell. The work of moments.

This next card was one I hared at the release party, just popping it up here in case you missed it!

The holly sprig in this card is from the next set:

Festive Foliage

Festive Foliage is full of winter themed foliage - perfect for Christmas and the months either side.

I'm going to be just a little bit sneaky and show you something that Debbie Olson made with Festive Foliage - and the Noel set - which just made my heart go pitter patter:

Isn't that marvellous? I adore that card.

 Since we are already at picture overload, I'm going to slow down a bit with samples and maybe post a couple over the next few days, I know I'm rambling on a bit and you have all the other DT to get to also...

my last set today is Compliments of the Season:

In the spirit of well prepared hosts everywhere, here are two projects I made earlier with the Compliments of the Season set.

 And here's one I made yesterday, and yes that is Nordic Winter...again....can't help it...

I did use the Compliments of the Season set for the interiors, I felt i was the perfect fit for these fun knitted beanie cards - Let it snow! I have my woolly hat on!

Do you fancy having a go at this? If you do, just let me know in the comments, I could easily whip up a template for these also... again, super quick and simple, any colour you like... :)

Don't forget to comment!

OK, I really should be letting you go now, I've held on to you for way too long already, don't forget to leave a comment, I know you're exhausted, but you could 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.

If you have plenty of stamina, you might be ready for more inspiration -   Just click on the links below for more from Gina and the Cast & Crew:

Gina K
Beth Silaika – Illustrator for Ian Moose
Claire Brennan - You are here
Cathy Tidwell
Donna Idlet 

Karen Hightower 

Kendra Wietstock 

Laurie Schmidlin 

Melanie Muenchinger 

Sean Fetterman

 Sheri Gilson 

Silke Ledlow

 Susie Moore 

Theresa Momber

Chris Dayton


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 stopping by!