Essentials by Ellen August Release Blog Hop

Hello, and welcome to the Essentials by Ellen August Release Blog Hop! You may have just come from the "mother" of all these adorable bears, ghosts, santas, etc. .... none other than Julie Ebersole! What a release she's created!! If not, feel free to start at the beginning with Adelina Starace.
 
We've got Halloween!
We've got Thanksgiving!
We've got Christmas!
We've got Bear Ware!!!!!

Want to take a peek?

Not only is there new Bear Ware, but there's an actual NEW BEAR! What?!

Isn't this little guy so cute taking the hand of mama bear (or on his own he'd be able to hold something up, like a birthday cake, or even this pie!) The pies included in this set are fun to use too ... says the person with the biggest sweet tooth ever. 

Having a wagon included in the Bear Ware 4 set is big-time ... all the different things you can put in it make it so versatile. Pets, kids, the top of the little bear, or just all the misc. die cuts from a set, like the gourds and leaves here. It's like a giant invitation to add more to your card.

The sentiment is from the Last Bite set, which is meant for Halloween (think vampires), but it totally fits here with the pies! And then I stamped a few "gobble, gobble's" by our cute little pie-eater. Finally, the border of the card is a strip I cut from the new Rustic Woodgrain background stamp, which you'll see more of later.

Next up is  an adorable Halloween set Happy Haunting with the cutest illustrations by Julie Ebersole. How darling are these two cuddly ghosts?! Just perfect for the sweet sentiment ... You're my Boo.

The Spiderwebs die is such a great addition as a background for any of your scary or cute Halloween scenes. Especially if you cut it with silver glitter paper!

And here's another look at that Rustnic Woodgrain background that you saw as a strip on the Bear Ware Thanksgiving card. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be using this one all the time!

 

Before we get to this card, can we just have a moment to applaud this sassy sentiment? Hahaha!! This sentiment, and the "You're My Boo" sentiment on the last card, are from Pumpkin to Talk About.

Aside from the cuddly ghosts, there are other cute creatures of the night in the Happy Haunting set like this little bat with the jack-o-lantern like grin. Give him a hat from this set, and a broom from the Bear Ware 2 set, and he's now a sassy witch.

The background was made by smooshing the Catherine Pooler inks on a stamping block and dropping water before pressing it onto a paper. The stamping block is what gives it that nicely uneven, but still controlled, rectangular shape. 

Added a few sequins and mounted the panel on a white card base. 

These are just two of the cute Halloween critters in the set ... be sure to check out the others!! And they also have coordinating solid colored stamps if you want to quickly color them in!

Finally, the Holiday Characters are just as cute as the Halloween characters, only there are a lot more of them! For this card I really wanted to give the illusion of a sleigh, so I stamped the presents on the card base first, layered a die cut of The Big Guy, and finally added the reindeer in front, pulling the sleigh.

Love how this looks like a sleigh scene, yet there is no illustration of a sleigh anywhere!

The sentiment is from Retro Holiday Greetings and it's just perfect for the outside OR inside of your card. Often the holiday sentiments I have are great for the outside of a card, but if they're just one line, or on the smaller size, they look a little lost on the inside of a card. This sentiment, along with seven others, take up a perfect amount of space on the inside. 

Here's another of the cute characters and another Retro Holiday Greeting ,,, certainly he's a "nice" elf. These Shipping Tags are also part of the release, and the good news is that they cut FOUR tags at once! This makes it so much easier for mass producing present tags, or even for individual tags to layer them up like on this one where I have a pink woodgrain tag beneath the elf. I always like to have two layers of tags for that extra bit of color and texture you can add. And any personal messages as well.

Again, be sure to check out the Holiday Characters set to see all the different characters included in the set.

PRIZES: We've got super fun prizes!!! One random & lucky commenter will win $25 to the EH shop and one will win the whole August Essentials by Ellen release!!! To enter for a chance to win, make sure to leave comments at each stop along the hop. Comment before Thursday, August 15th at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be notified by email.


I have the pleasure of sending you off to the hilarious Laurel Beard, who is surely the quickest marker-sorter you'll ever meet (as demonstrated at Creativation this year)!

Thanks so much for stopping by!
-Kelly