Catherine Pooler's Holiday Stamp of Approval

Hi folks! Welcome to the holiday Stamp of Approval Box Blog Hop by Catherine Pooler! I'm joining some of the Winnie & Walter gals, as there is a fabulous w&w stamp set in this Stamp of Approval Box.

This set, along with most of the other contents of the box, won't be available to purchase individually until sometime in 2016. So if you want it now, you need the box!


 
The cute, candy cane stripe, border stamp makes a great frame for featuring something on your card. In this case, it's an adorable tree with a fabulously scripted sentiment. If you're making a set of these cards, you can pick from 7 different Christmas trees, and 3 different sentiments (peace/love/joy) to really mix it up.

 

I wrapped a bit of a doily on the top and secured the loose charcoal paper with my Tiny Attacher. The paper is curled up slightly to give it more presence. It's a 3D element without the bulk to make mailing easier. So fun to make!

 

Your next stop is Heather's blog, and you won't want to miss her fabulously modern and graphic creation. Here's a list of the complete hop:

• Catherine Pooler
• Maureen Merritt
• Kristie Goulet
• Heather North
• Allison Cope
• Isha Gupta  
• Laurel Beard
• Lisa Harrolle  
• Kay Miller
• Jessica Frost-Ballas
• Lydia Evans for Winnie and Walter
• Vanessa Menhorn for Winnie and Walter
• Kelly Griglione for Winnie and Walter <--- You are here!
• Heather Pulvirenti for Winnie and Walter
• Danielle Walls for Neat and Tangled
• Effie Cho for The Ton 

Two winners will be randomly picked from all the comments throughout the blog hop to receive the Holiday Magic Collection Stamp of Approval Box. Comments must be placed by Friday, noon EST to be considered for the prize.

Thanks for stopping by!
-Kelly

WCMD Challenge: Use a Portion of Your Stamp

Hi Folks! It's challenge time!! Who's up for a fun challenge?
 

 
To help celebrate World Card Making Day (WCMD), winnie & walter are hosting no less than SEVEN different challenges on their blog. You have over a week to go through the challenges, pick your favorites, and start crafting. AND you do NOT have to use w&w products on your cards, so everyone can play along. Isn't that awesome?! As always, w&w will make it worth your while, this time with $50 certificates up for grabs. You can do a lot of damage with $50 at winnie & walter : )
 

 
The challenge I'm hosting is to ink up only a portion of your stamp. It could be a doorway from a house, a specific pattern, interesting lines, a face of an animal, whatever you can think of. In my case I've inked up portions of a chrysanthemum stamp to make an Autumn field for my pumpkins to sit in. Take a closer look at your stamps and see what you can come up with! I'm all about getting more mileage out of our supplies.

Hope to see you on the w&w blog this week!!
-Kelly

Pinecone Fri-dies

Hi Folks! I'm happy to share a sneak peek of the new Pinecones Fri-Die. It's a companion die to the previously-released Pinecones stamp set at CAS-ual Fridays.

 

What fun to bling up some pinecones with a little gold embossing on the tops and some sequins! I outlined each "petal" with a brown watercolor pencil to give them some more dimension. The pine boughs have three different greens inked onto the stamp, again, for more dimension.

So, you obviously know the pinecone Fri-die is great to cut out the pinecone stamps. What about a flower?

If you layer two of the large pinecone dies on top of one small pinecone die in the middle, you get a cute little tulip. Or maybe a rose bud? Either way, it's another way to use your supplies, and that's always a good thing!

Check out the rest of the Ink Squad to see more awesome projects with these stamps:

Julia | Angie | Archana |  Jingle | Joanna

  

Well, that's the end of the CASual Fridays release sneaks. Everything you've seen this week is now available at the CASual Fridays site. Thanks so much for joining us this week!

-Kelly

Lovely Blessings

Hi Folks! Today's sneak peek from the CAS-ual Fridays release is a stamp set filled with sentiments perfect for Christmas cards. Lovely Blessings includes a nice mix of fonts. This sentiment layered on some Christmas-themed patterned paper is all that's needed for a fun tag. Or, you could add a little something extra to the top, like the square flower from Funky Square Tag Fri-Die in a metallic red foil paper.

I'm always forcing myself not to neglect the inside of the card, because with all the time spent on the outside my natural inclination is to be done with it. This sentiment is the perfect shape for the inside of your card. If you're mass-producing Christmas cards, it would look good all in one color, but if you're just sending a single card it's fun to ink the words in separate colors. I am lazy and don't mask anything off, I just use the small ink pads and carefully ink each section of the stamp. Perfect to fill the inside of your card!

Check out the rest of the Ink Squad to see more awesome projects with these stamps:

Julia | Angie | Archana |  Jingle | Joanna

  

Thanks for looking, and I'll see you tomorrow for the last day of the release!

-Kelly

w&w Rerun: Moonlight

 

Hi Folks! On the first of each month winnie & walter host a fun feature called "rerun" where a previously released set is featured, and you have the opportunity to win a prize by creating a project using that set. This month the Moonlight stamp set is featured. It's one of my all-time favorite Halloween sets due to all the details included. I'm absolutely sure you could make hundreds of different cards from this set!

 

This card features a spider dropping down to a pile of 31's in Halloween colors. I have no idea what that means, but I thought it just looked like a fun, graphic card. The "spooktacular" banner is stapled and bent into a wave with my fingers.

Same cluster of 31's here, this time with a witch's hat on top. I'm madly in love with the tiny stars included with this set. I think because the points are so skinny. They're just the right little something to add when you'd normally grab some sequins. Or in this case, after you've already grabbed some sequins : )

If you're a proud owner of the Moonlight set be sure to link up a creation to the winnie & walter blog!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

-Kelly

Lovely Snowflake and Noel Fri-Dies

Hi Folks! Well I hope there's no such thing as too much glitter! In this case, I did just spray the entire card with glue and then dump a bottle of chunky glitter on top. Although it's quite something to see in person it does get tricky to photograph : )

This is from a CAS-ual Fridays set called Lovely Snowflakes which will be released on Saturday, October 3rd along with the rest of the sets you've seen this week. 

I really like this sentiment, as it could be used for holiday and non-holiday cards. Plus it goes so well with the gorgeous snowflake, because, let's face it, what's lighter than a snowflake?!

Check out the rest of the Ink Squad to see more awesome projects with these stamps:

Julia | Angie | Archana |  Jingle | Joanna

  

Thanks for looking, and I'll see you tomorrow with more release goodies!

-Kelly

Festival of Lights and Festival Fri-Dies

Hi folks! It's so great to have more options for sending Hanukkah greetings. The new Festival of Lights set from CAS-ual Fridays includes this wonderful, bold sentiment that easily takes the focus on a card. How cool is the "happy" right in the middle of "hanukkah"! The triple line stamp is also fun to fill up a card, especially in rainbow colors. I added some flames to break up the lines a little.

Settle in, because you're going to see this stamp another three more times! It's that good : )

This is the card I started out with. Easiest card ever! Such a great candidate for mass production since you just cut some patterned paper and ink up one stamp. Not everything has to be rocket science, right?! Just because it's easy doesn't mean it can't look sharp and trendy.



What's better than one rainbow card? Two rainbow cards! This time the sentiment itself makes the rainbow. I inked up the "happy" part of the stamp separately and stamped it across the middle. 

The thickness of the letters makes for one vibrant card. I don't have a misti so the sentiments aren't lined up exactly, but I think that's perfectly OK. It's handmade after all!

For the last card I ended up making a menorah using sticky notes for masking and the triple line stamp. On the sticky notes I drew little lines at the middle of each letter so I would know where to stamp the triple lines. The base of the menorah is none other than the Bubble Label Fri-die. I just love how it worked out here!

Check out the rest of the Ink Squad to see more awesome projects with these stamps:

Julia | Angie | Archana |  Jingle | Joanna

Thanks for looking, and I'll see you tomorrow!

-Kelly