Good morning! Today’s my last day guest-designing for CAS-ual Fridays Stamps…if you missed a day, you can find them here and here! I’ve had SO much fun and I’m so thankful to Michele for giving me the opportunity to play with her awesome stamps! I’ll definitely be using all of these awesome stamp and die sets again….ha, plus I’ve got my eyes on a couple more in the shop!
So yesterday, I left this video as a hint for today’s cards:
James Taylor is one of my mom’s favorite singers and I grew up singing MANY of his songs. “You’ve Got a Friend” has always been a particular favorite of mine. So when Michele contacted me and I was looking around the shop I kept coming back to Calm and Gentle. I loved the simple design of the tree trunk and branches and I could see lots of possibilities for the leaves. When the set arrived and I started playing around with it I came up with the idea of doing 4 cards to represent each season. As I chose the sentiment I kept humming “Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there”…and there’s the theme for this set of cards!
To start off, I used my MISTI to stamp the tree trunks from Calm and Gentle in exactly the same place on each card using Studio Calico Doc Brown dye ink for three of the cards. For my winter themed card I stamped the tree trunks with versamark and heat-embossed them with silver superfine embossing powder.
To create the spring card I tore a piece of green cardstock to create the landscape and adhered it to my card front. I stamped the sentiment from Calm and Gentle with versamark and heat-embossed it with white powder. I stamped the leaves with a pale green dye ink and then rotated and offset the stamp slightly before stamping it again with versamark. To create the flowers I heat-embossed it with a glittery pink embossing powder.
I followed a similar pattern for the summer card but stamped the leaves in three different shades of green inks.
For the fall card I stamped the leaves in varying shades of orange, red, and yellow pigment inks and heat-embossed them with clear powder. Then I tore a piece of green cardstock for the landscape and stamped the leaves onto the cardstock with the same inks to create the illusion of falling leaves. I stamped the sentiment with versamark and heat-embossed it with superfine gold powder.
The winter card is definitely the odd card in the set but I think it represents the season appropriately! I stamped the trees on dark blue cardstock instead of white and heat-embossed the tree trunks with silver powder. Then I used the leaves to create snow. I stamped them randomly across the blue cardstock with versamark and then heat-embossed them with white embossing powder. I tore a piece of white cardstock to create the landscape and swiped the top edge with versamark before heat-embossing the top with a diamond glitter embossing powder. The sentiment from Calm and Gentle is also stamped with versamark and embossed with silver superfine embossing powder.
And that’s it! 🙂 I hope you’ve enjoyed my first foray into guest-designing as much as I have! Thanks again to Michele for the opportunity! If this is your first exposure to CAS-ual Fridays Stamps I hope you’ll visit the shop and blog for more fantastic stamp sets and inspiration from her rockstar design team! Thanks so much for visiting and have an awesome day!
What great cards!
Very unique. I really like the seasons and absolutely love James Taylor!