SSS Hop To It Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to my blog! I am so happy to take part in the Simon Says Stamp Hop To It blog hop, in celebration of the new release of Hop To It Simon Says Stamp Exclusive products. This release is so much fun and perfect for many different themes: spring time, children, sunshine, flowers, Easter and more. The design inspiration behind the new release is to inspire. I find inspiration everywhere, sometimes in quite unexpected places. What inspires you? Don't miss all the inspiration and there is a prize to be won on every stop of the hop.

I made an art journal page and a card. The journal page is a stepped out tutorial as well. 

I love the Watercolor Friendly Flowers set and the coordinating dies and immediately wanted to make a watercolour flower garden in my journal. I enjoy making these types of happy looking journal pages and they can help brighten up any day. You can of course use the same techniques for cardmaking, tags, or scrapbooking layouts.

These are the stamps and dies from the Hop To It collection that I used for my art journal page: Watercolor Friendly Flowers Set, Handlettered Encouragement, and Crosses.

Start by die cutting a circle from Simon Says Stamp's fabulous Masking Paper Label Sheets, using the circle die in the Crosses set. The Masking Sheets are wonderful and works great for so many techniques. Today I used it to mask out a sun on my page.

Ink up a Sizzix Cutting Pad with Distress Inks, by simply pressing the ink onto the plastic. I used this order: Salty Ocean, Tumbled Glass, Crushed Olive, Shabby Shutters and finally Peeled Paint.

Mist a generous amount of water on the inked cutting pad. I just love the look of those inky droplets.

Press the inky cutting pad into your journal, use scrap papers to prevent getting ink on the opposite page. The inks will blend in sometimes unpredictable ways and create a landscape background. When the ink is dry, carefully remove the mask. 

Ink up the three flowers in the Watercolor Friendly Flowers set with pink, purple and red Distress Inks, using two colours for each flower. Mist the stamp about 4 times with water before stamping on watercolour paper. The inks will blend and form pretty watercolour flowers. Do the same with the stems, using Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint. 

One of my favourite aspects of the Watercolor Friendly Flowers set is that there are two stamps for each flower, one bold and solid and one outline stamp, great for lots of fun techniques. When the ink is dry, stamp the outline flowers with Watering Can Archival Ink. The grey ink gives a softer impression than if you would have used black. Do the same with the stems. 

Use one of the flower center stamps and white emboss centers in each flower.

Die cut all the flowers and stems. I made too many flowers, since I had such fun combining the different Distress Inks, and will have some leftovers for another project.

Stamp the sun from the Color and Sunshine set around the masked circle with embossing ink and white emboss. Softly ink the sun with Scattered Straw.

I wanted the background to have a little more texture and inked dots with Iced Spruce, using the Falling Snow stencil. Later, I also decided to add some Texture Paste hearts, applying the paste with a palette knife through the Falling Hearts stencil. The sentiment was stamped with Watering Can ink.

Glue the flower stems and flowers to the background, overlapping them slightly.

Once you start stamping these flowers in different ink combinations, you'll see how hard it is to stop. You'll never get two flowers that will look exactly the same.

The last part of the sentiment was stamped with the Life's Journey set.

I also made a card:

I just had to use this fun Umbrella Shaker die, and it works great together with many of the sentiments in the Handlettered Encouragement set. The background was watercoloured with Distress Inks (Salty Ocean, Tumbled Glass, Cracked Pistachio).

I die cut the frame of the umbrella from white cardstock and die cut it twice more from Simon Says Stamp Burnt Orange and Fog Gray cardstock, using only the inside pieces from the latter two. To give the umbrella a rainy look, I applied Ranger's new Clear Texture Paste through the Falling Snow stencil. The raindrops were die cut from Soft Navy cardstock, glued to the background and coated with Glossy Accents.

I stamped the sentiment with the Soft Navy ink, which coordinates with the Soft Navy paper used for the raindrops and the cardbase. The card was finished with a piece of twine.

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today!

Remember that Simon Says Stamp is giving away a prize on every stop of the hop, just leave a comment for your chance to win. The random winners will be drawn on 23 February, and Simon Says Stamp will contact them.

Your next stop on the hop is the wonderful Yoonsun Hur.

If you get stuck somewhere along the way, these are all the stops on the blog hop.

Simon Says Stamp Blog  

Shari Carroll  

Kristina Werner 

Jennifer McGuire 

Debby Hughes 

Laura Bassen

Nichol Magouirk 

Lucy Abrams 

Kathy Racoosin 

Yana Smakula 

Wanda Guess 

Anna-Karin Evaldsson (you are here)

Yoonsun Hur 

Don't miss the fabulous inspiration!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

Simon Says Dies and Stamps WATERCOLOR FRIENDLY FLOWERS	Simon Says Stamp UMBRELLA SHAKER	Simon Says Stamp CROSSES	Simon Says Clear Stamps HAND LETTERED ENCOURAGEMENT	Simon Says Clear Stamps COLOR AND SUNSHINE
Simon Says Clear Stamps LIFE'S JOURNEY	Simon Says Stamp Stencil FALLING HEARTS	Simon Says Stamp Stencil FALLING SNOW	Simon Says Stamp Premium Dye Ink SOFT NAVY	Simon Says Stamp Card Stock 100# BURNT ORANGE
Simon Says Stamp Card Stock 100# FOG Gray	Simon Says Stamp Card Stock 100# SOFT NAVY	Simon Says Stamp MASKING PAPER Label Sheets	Dyan Reaveley SMALL CREATIVE JOURNAL Ranger	Ranger WATERCOLOR PAPER Inkssentials
Tim Holtz DISTRESS WATERCOLOR CARDSTOCK	Neenah Classic Crest 80 LB SMOOTH CLASSIC CREAM	Ranger Wendy Vecchi Archival WATERING CAN	Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK SALTY OCEAN	Tim Holtz Distress Ink TUMBLED GLASS
Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK ICED SPRUCE	Tim Holtz Distress Ink SEEDLESS PRESERVES	Tim Holtz Distress Ink TATTERED ROSE	Tim Holtz Distress Ink VICTORIAN VELVET	Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK SHADED LILAC
Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK PICKED RASPBERRY	Tim Holtz Distress Ink VICTORIAN VELVET	Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK BARN DOOR	Tim Holtz Distress INK SHABBY SHUTTERS	Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK PEELED PAINT
Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK CRUSHED OLIVE	Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK SCATTERED STRAW	Versamark WATERMARK ink pad	Ranger Embossing Powder WHITE	Ranger TEXTURE PASTE TRANSPARENT GLOSS
Ranger TEXTURE PASTE	Hemptique TOPAZ Natural Hemp Cord	Tim Holtz Idea-ology CHITCHAT STICKERS	Sizzix BIG SHOT MACHINE	Sizzix MAGNETIC PLATFORM
Tim Holtz Tonic CRAFT PICK	Ranger MINI ROUND INK BLENDING TOOLS	Ranger Inkssentials GLOSSY ACCENTS	Ranger Inkssentials US HEAT IT CRAFT TOOL	Dina Wakley Ranger PALETTE KNIFE
Tim Holtz Tonic PAPER DISTRESSER	Ranger Large 2 oz MISTER BOTTLE	Ranger Inkssentials Non Stick CRAFT SHEET

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