Simon Says Stamp Dear Friend Blog HOp

Hi and welcome to my blog! I am so happy to take part in the Simon Says Stamp Blog Hop to celebrate the new Dear Friend release. If you are following along in the hop, you should have come here from the creative Keisha Charles.

Please note: this post has affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.

The Dear Friend release is full of wonderful new and versatile stamps, stencils, dies, ink and sequins. You can find the entire Dear Friend release here. 

I made a tag, which you can easily turn into a card if you want to.

In the Dear Friend release there are sheets of White Foam, which is so much fun! I haven't fun foam for years and think the last time that I used it was when helping to decorate the stage for a pre-primary school show of my eldest. Fun Foam is very versatile and great to use with thin dies. You can get the same kind of dimension as you could from chipboard. 

I started by die cutting Simon Says Stamp Fancy Hello from the White Foam Sheets five times. The die cuts through the foam like it was butter.

Glue them to the background with Matte Medium and add another layer of medium on top. 

When dry, cover the background with gesso.

When the gesso is dry, paint the tag with Distress Ink and mist heavily with water to blend. Let dry (it may take a while).

Next, I added Sizzix Ivory Luster Wax around the edges and on the words. Next, I added Moon Dust Stickles Glitter Gel to the words. It covered up the wax to some extent, but you can still see the pearlescent shine.

Stamp one of the sweet images from Caring Thoughts on watercolor paper. The images on this set are so sweet and I also really like the sentiments.

Dear Friend comes with two sets of Pawsitively Saturated inks, with six inks in each set, Pink Blooms and Gray Skies. I used three from each set to watercolor the little mouse, as well as two green inks. Smear the ink on a non-stick craft sheet, mist with water and use a paint brush to watercolor. 

Die cut the mouse with the coordinating die.

Stamp and die cut hearts and stamp two sentiments.

I thought the white paper that I stamped the sentiments on was too stark, but instead of restamping on cream paper, I coated the papers with the Sizzix Ivory Luster Wax. It is hard to photograph the effect, but in real life, it now looks like pearlescent paper. The touch of pink was caused by me having pink ink on my fingers.

I like the effect of the repeated fun foam words in the background. Since it is fun foam, it hardly added any weight to the card and the words have a nice soft look and feel to them. 

The image was watercolored loosely, leaving some of the white paper for highlights. It was adhered with Simon Says Stamp Pawsitively Perfect Foam Tape.

I also added Peony sequins from the Dear Friend release. I use the wonderful new Place and Score Embellishment Wand when placing the sequins down on dots of Simon Says Stamp glue. It works great!

Here you can see the effect of the Luster Wax and the glitter gel.

The ribbon was dyed with two of Rose and Bubblegum Pawsitively Saturated inks from the Pink Blooms set.

Don't miss all the inspiration along the hop. There are of course prizes to be won too, and at each stop on the hop SSS is giving away a $25 coupon, randomly drawn from those who leave a comment. The winners will be posted post on the Simon Says Stamp store blog on Wednesday the 24nd of May.

Your next stop on the hop is Heather Ruwe. Don't miss to see the wonderful project she has created. If you get lost along the way, here are all the stops:

Simon Says Stamp Blog

Laura Bassen

Nichol Spohr

Cathy Zielske

Barbara Tarayao

Mindy Eggen

Keisha Charles

Anna-Karin Evaldsson (you are here)

Heather Ruwe

Alberto Gava

Miriam Prantner

Sandi MacIver

Barb Engler

Jennifer Kotas

For more inspiration, remember to check out the Dear Friend gallery at Simon Says Stamp, and if you make something with products from the range, it is fun if you post it in the galleries too. There are galleries for all releases, and for the card kits, full of inspiration.

This is the second Just For You blog hop, don't miss blog hop day number 1 which was yesterday.

Thank you so much for stopping by here today! 

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

* Please note: the links are affiliate links, for which I receive a small percentage of sales generated by the link, at no extra cost to you.