Hydrangeas and Bees

I'm joining in again with A Blog Named Hero's Challenge—Stretch Your Stamps. I decided to stretch my Daisy and Bugs Stamp and Cut set by using one of the little bees as a background for my purple Large Hydrangea Hero Arts stamp. 

I don't think I've used this bee before, I was always kind of focused on the daisy and the ladybug stamps in the set. They have matching dies, but since I used him as background paper, I didn't need to die cut him.

I looove Hydrangeas in real life and have two shrubs that pretty much just take care of themselves and give huge blooms each year. I colored this one purple, but mine are more pink, though they can get a little purple. It depends on the lime in your soil, but since I'm a lazy gardener who does more dreaming than pruning, I haven't really done anything to the soil.

I used Prismacolor pencils on the flower, with Stickles in the flower centers and on the bee wings, but it's hard to see at this angle. I also added Moonstone bling from Honeybee Stamps, which is totally appropriate for this post, doncha think? They have some great Nuvo products on sale btw. The inking on the panel and the card are Distress Inks in Squeezed Lemonade and Salty Ocean.

Hope you'll stretch your stamps and join me in this challenge, you have until September 10th.

Happy Friday!

Chark

Taylor Made March Kit

So I love Monica Taylor's videos that show us how to create fabulous vintage projects and so I was Super Excited to be asked to guest design for her March kit release from her shop, TaylorMadeCards4U. I got to use the Vintage Passport Kit with tons of beautiful vintage images.

I'm usually more of a cutesy designer, but I love vintage images and ephemera and want to be more vintage chic than I am. If you like Tim Holtz, you'll like this March kit. And, if you're like me and can't always pull off that look, you'll still like it! You'll notice I snuck in a red glitter heart and some Glossy Accents on the bees on this gift tag I created.

I printed out the collage sheet, trimmed down the rose panel that says Birdie Darling and then fussy cut the bees and added hearts. I just printed them on my inkjet color printer on regular paper because I knew I would be adhering it to a cardstock tag.

For this card, I used a dotted paper I had for the scalloped frame die cut and then trimmed and layered a lot of the images from the March kit. There's a lovely clock, vintage ads and a page from a  beekeeping book. Again, I just trimmed out two bees to add on the tag. This time I didn't use Glossy Accents on them, but I did add a little strip of rhinestones. 

I would say this hive syrup ad is one of my fave images from the kit. I enlarged it and printed it on kraft cardstock in black and white and then colored it with white Prismacolor pencil. I added some other colors on top of the white pencil and then white gel pen to the hive. The flower and leaves are Prima and the butterfly and clock are from the kit, trimmed out as accents.

There are a lot more images to play with in this kit and I'm looking forward to using the honeycomb and yellow floral papers in another project. You can head here to the shop to see what digi kits and physical stamps/ephemera are in the shop, or head here to watch the videos from Monica.

Thanks for having me this month, Monica, love this kit!

Happy Tuesday!

Chark