A Second Helping of Sweet!

Are you ready for this?  No, I mean are you really ready for this?  This release is not for the faint of heart because it will inspire lots of gasping and "oh my goshing".  Seriously, when these sets arrived in that happy little envelope from Nicole, I was so stupefied by awesomeness that I just stared at them with a crazy goofy grin on my face.  The look only got crazier and giddiness only increased as I got to play with them.  In all actuality, these stamps should come with a warning label.  **May induce extreme happiness and giddiness.**  I will also warn you that they may distract you to the point of abandoning all household chores to play with your new stamps.  I had to do 10 loads of laundry yesterday and I blame it all on these stamps.  So, consider yourself warned!

I had the extreme pleasure of playing with both Happy Birthday and Balloons this month.  Aren't I lucky?  Yup, I felt that way too!  Check them out:

They are totally as cute as they look!  So much fun to be had.  Ready to see what I created?

First up, a cute card for a creative kid in my life.  I wanted to create something for my youngest who is a purple lover and obsessed with drawing at the moment.  He got a hold of a pad of Post Its the other day and I'm still finding them stuck all over the place with little scribbles on them.  He just loves to share his art!   I used Artsy Fartsy with Happy Birthday to create this fun card for my budding artist.  I wanted a little pattern on my background so I embossed it with a chevron embossing folder.  The "birthday" portion of the sentiment is embossed in white to make it pop.  I colored the crayon box with copics and added a little extra bling which I'm sure my guy will LOVE.  A simple card but super fun with such an awesome sentiment set. 

This next card was inspired by a card I saw on Jennifer McGuire's blog awhile ago.  My balloon card was cut by my trusty Silhouette Cameo and made the perfect backdrop for the banner from Announcing.  I chose a fun combo of text styles from Happy Birthday to stamp onto my banner and finished the whole thing off with some fun puffy stickers, enamel dots, and bling.  This card was one of the 100 cards I made for my church to mail out for birthdays.  I made 25 of this design and I have to say, they were super simple but looked like WAY more work.  I will totally be going back to this design.    

To show off Balloons, I went right to my pocket scrapbooking cards.  This card has been sitting on the corner of my desk for months just waiting for the perfect stamp set to inspire me.  I loved how it looked like the sky but wasn't so obvious.  The little bit of banner at the bottom was just the perfect spot for my balloons to rise out of.  I masked the banner with a bit of post it (after I tracked down the rest of the pad) and stamped my strings.  I stamped a TON of these balloons and colored an entire sheet of cardstock worth of them for my Brother Scan and Cut to take care of the cutting for me.  Love this machine and I blame it all on Nicole's video for talking me into it.  ;)  I wanted to color the balloons in a soft almost translucent sort of way and I liked how they all turned out.  I especially liked not having to fussy cut each and every one.  I popped them up on their strings, layered the card on a banner I created with some cork patterned paper and finished it all off with some bling and cork asterisks.    

My last card uses a 4x6 journaling card for the center portion of the card layered on some glitter paper.  I used a 3x4 journaling card to create the frame for the Balloons to be floating out of.  I stamped the Balloons on fun colored vellum.  I'm still working on my vellum stamping technique.  I am not the steadiest stamper in the world but they turned out really well in spite of my shakiness.  ;)  I layered my balloons in the frame and arranged them on the background.  I finished it off with a strip of paper with my sentiment and three little pearls.  I love how the vellum gave the translucent look I was going for but I wish I would have added some stings.  I think that would have really finished it all off.  Either way, I love the colors and feel of the card and I hope you do also.

I hope you enjoyed my creations with these awesome stamp sets.  You can pick them up at the Sweet Stamp Shop and for today only, you can use this awesome coupon code:  MR210.  It will get you 10% off the new release so you can play with Happy Birthday and Balloons yourself.  Have fun shopping and thanks so much for stopping by!