SSS Rose Branch and Basil Leaves, Take 2

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Today I'm sharing another couple of cards featuring my Rose Branch and Basil Leaves dies for Simon Says Stamp.  This is one of several posts I have showing different ways to utilize these dies.

For this set of cards, the dies were cut from watercolor paper, and then watercolored with Kuretake Gansai watercolors.  For the Rose Branch die cut, I used just one color.  For Basil Leavess, I used several colors, a yellow, green, and blue-green.  These were then set aside to dry.

Next, I cut two panels of watercolor cardstock.  On the left, I simply wet a rectangular area with water and then added some black and just a bit of the same color I used for the Rose Branch.

Once the background was dry, I added a bit of gold splatter using my Kuretake Starry watercolors.

To complete the card, I adhered the stem and just a bit of the leaves directly to the watercolored panel using Bearly Art glue.  The reverse sentiment strip was popped up with foam tape.

For the card on the right, I added water to the center of my watercolor paper panel and dropped the same colors that I used for the leaf  into the wet areas.  Then with a wide brush, I turned the brush so that bristles ran up and down and touched paint to the panel half in the wet areas and half out.  This is what created those vertical lines.

Once the panel was dried, the Basil Leaves die was popped up with foam tape as was the reverse sentiment strip sentiment.

That's all for me today.  Hope all of you in the states have a great long weekend!

June 2025 in Books

This one just an OK reading month.  Only one five star book this month, but it was a good one.  Here are the recaps:

The Original Daughter - Jemimeh James Wei - fiction - three stars - This was a disappointment.  It had a promising beginning.  Genevieve Yang's family takes in Arin, the granddaughter of the the Genevieve's grandfather who abandoned the family years ago.  I enjoyed learning about the family, and seeing the relationship develop beween Arin and Genevieve, but then things went off the tracks.  Arin and Genevieve grow apart and frankly it's not even for a real and decent reason and then it's just all not workable.  Genevieve is wholly unlikeable and somewhat unhinged such a letdown.

The Library of Lost Dollhouses - Elise Hooper -  three stars - Tildy Barrows is the curator for a historic library in San Francisco.  She stumbles upon a secret room with two amazingly detailed dollhouses inside, and begins investigating their origins, which have a strange connection to her.  At the same time, the library is facing serious financial difficulties, and Tildy is hoping that the publicity around the dollhouses will help save it.  The storyline bounce between present day and WWI.  This was OK, the historical storyline was very interesting to me, although there were a lot of things that just didn't seem particularly feasible.  

The Bright Years - Sarah Damoff - fiction - four stars - Generational story of a family and how weaknesses are passed down from one generation to the next.  Ryan and Lillian Bright are young, happily married, and parents to a sweet new baby, Georgette.  But life gets complicated, and the family struggles throughout Georgette's life.  Many ups and downs in this one, but a good read.

The Jackal's Mistress - Chris Bohjalian - historical fiction - five stars - Libby Steadman has been running her husband's mill in Virginia as he left to fight in the Civil War.  He has been captured, and she hasn't heard from him in months.  Then she finds a seriously wounded Union soldier, and decides to take him in.  Her goal is to get him healthy enough to travel and then to safety at Harper's Ferry.  This one was excellent.  Bohjalian did an excellent job creating the characters, and the storyline/plot pacing was excellent.  This one is loosely based on a true story, highly recommend.

All Ears (FunJungle #9) - Stuart Gibbs - juvenile fiction - four stars - The latest in the FunJungle series sees Teddy and friends on the hunt for Tanzy, an elephant who has been stolen.  In addition, Teddy's best friend Xavier has been accused of vandalism.  Teddy's racing to solve both cases, but having trouble balancing things.  Another fun episode in the series.

My Name Is Emilia del Valle - Isabel Allende - historical fiction - two stars - This was the worst Allende book I have ever read, which is pretty disappointing because I generally love her books.  Emilia del Valle is a young girl in the latter half of the 19th century.  She has to publish under a male pen name when she gets started, but eventually convinces her paper to allow her not only to travel to Chile to cover the civil war there, but also to use her real name.  This was honestly a weird read for me, it didn't even feel like an Allende book, it's almost like it was a watered down version written for a high school audience.  The only interesting part was her back story, but as soon as she started writing for the paper and headed for Chile, it was a slog.  I particularly did not like the inclusion of her articles.  

Run for the Hills - Kevin Wilson - fiction - four stars - This was a cute book.  Madeline 'Mad' Hill's brother shows up at her farm in Tennessee one day.  Reuben 'Rube' is years older than her.  Their father had a family with Reuben's mom in Boston, and one day suddenly disappeared...to Tennessee where he created a family with Mad's mom.  Apparently, this is his M.O., and Rube is trying to reunite all the kids to go and see their father in California (he hired a PI to trace his father's set).  The book follows their journey across the country as they retrieve their other siblings and confront their father.  I thought it was a unique premise, and I enjoyed getting to know each of the kids.  

Clearly The Jackal's Mistress was my favorite this month, and Emilia del Valle was the least favorite.  I'm looking forward to catching up on some older books in July.  I'll be on vacation, so I've been picking up books from my neighborhood Little Libraries and Buy Nothing group.  I take all the books with me, and then leave them where we are visiting for others.  What have you guys been reading? 

SSS Friend Link You Blog Hop, Ocean Horizon Cover

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Happy Friday!  Today I'm hoping along with Simon Says Stamp celebrating the Friend Like You release.  You should be arriving here from Sandi MacIver's blog.  

As with all good blog hops, there are prizes to be had.  Simon is giving away a $25 store credit to a commenter at each stop along the hop, and, all orders of Friend Like You products this weekend will receive the You 2 set pictured above free.

OK, on to the cards.  Today I'm showing off my Ocean Horizon cover place.  This cuts a frame and all the individual pieces for the design with no webbing between.

My first two cards feature the full design using watercolors.  For this first card, I die cut a panel of watercolor cardstock, and then painted each of the pieces using my Kuretake Gansai watercolors, finishing the card off with a sentiment strip from the Foundations set.

Next, I embossed the cover plate onto another panel of watercolor paper.

Using the embossed lines as guidelines, I then watercolored the panel.  While the lines were used as guides, I did not try to stay within those lines, allowing the colors to mix from section to section.

The white embossed sentiment, from the Beachy Keen set, was die cut and popped it up over my panel.

For these next two cards, I used just a portion of the design.

For the card on the left, I used just the 'sun' portion of the design, cutting the layers from different pieces of colored cardstock, and adhering them to a panel of turquoise cardstock.  The Hello Sunshine sentiment was cut three times, adhered together, and then to the card panel.  

I added a reverse sentiment strip from the Reverse Chill Summer set to round out the sentiment, as well as a black mat to set the panel off  a bit.

For the card on the right, I used three shades of yellow for the sun portions, and three shades of blue for the water portions. As with the first card, I used a sentiment from the Reverse Chill Summer sentiment strips and black mat completed the look.

For this last card, I decided to think outside the box a bit.  I used several of the sun layers to create a rainbow.  The layers were popped up with foam tape, and weren't nested perfectly together, but slightly offset for a more whimsical look.  

I used a sentiment from the Reverse Sunshine and Rainbows sentiment strips for this one.

That's all for me today. Your next stop on the hop is Lorraine Aquilina, and I have the full hop list below.

Don't forget to leave a commenet to be interested to the $25 store credit, and enjoy the hop!

Simon Says Stamp Blog
Caly Person
Nichol Spohr
Amy Rysavy
Debby Hughes
Emily Midgett
Lisa Addesa
Sandi MacIver
Miriam Prantner
Lorraine Aquilina
Kath Stewart
Barb Engler
Carly Minner
Hanh Nguyen
Mary Reiner
Enza Gudor

SSS Friend Like You Release, Rose Branch and Basil Leaves Dies

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Hi friends!  It's release day at Simon Says Stamp!  I have three new dies in the Friend Like You release including the Rose Branch and Basil Leaves dis on today's cards.

I kept things very simple today, pulling out a couple of completed panels from my pile.  I tend to do my 'messy work' in batches.  It's generally a haze of inky fun, so I'm not entirely sure what specific products were used in creating these, but the panel on the left was inked with a variety of Distress Inks, and then spritzed with several Distress Spritzes.  The panel on the right was created by using several Distress Sprays, pretty sure that these included Lucky Clover, Twisted Citron, and a blue.

The dies were cut from Ranger Distress Black Heavystock.  This is the blackest black cardstock I have found, so it works really well for silhouette shapes.  Both of the die cuts were adhered with Bearly Art adhesive.  The sentient for the above card, from the Mod Plants set was stamped with Versa Clair black ink and then clear embossed.

The sentiment for the second card is from the All About You set.  Both of the panels were adhered to the card bases with Red Line Tape.

That's all for ne today, I'll be back tomorrow with some more Friend Like You inspiration.  Be sure to head over to Simon to check out the full release!

SSS Happy Cover and Stamps

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

I'm sharing a few cards today featuring my Happy Cover and coordinating stamps.  

This die is perfect for use with Simon's Color Blend cardstock.  For this first set of cards, I die cut the cover plate using a panel of Color Blend as well as black and white cardstock.  For the card on the left, I inlaid the Color Blend pieces into the black cardstock webbing.

Two of the sentiments from the coordinating stamp set were gold embossed on strips of black cardstock and popped up with foam tape.

Next, the Color Blend webbing was inlaid with the black background pieces as well as the white letter pieces.  The secondary sentiment was stamped on white and popped up.

This next card was done in the same way as the first one, the die cut peices from a Color Blend panel into white webbing.

The nice thing about this cover is that the pieces are pretty big (with the exception of one small piece), so assembling the cards is very quick and easy.

For the secondary sentiment, I combined one of the sentiments from the secondary set along with a reverse sentiment strip.

This last card features another of Simon's specialty cardstock panels, this time Holographic.

I was able to use the leftover pieces from the first set of cards that I made to complete this one, inlaying the black letters and the white background pieces.

For the sentiment, I used just the 'birthday' portion of the Birthday Wishes die which was cut from Matte Silver cardstock.

This was cut twice from white cardstock, layered together for dimension, and then adhered directly to the die cut panel.

That's all for me today.  I'll see you back here tomorrow....there's a new release coming!

SSS Bold Flower

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

I'm sharing a couple of Marimekko inspired cards today.  I love their prints/bold florals, so thought i would try and recreate them with my Bold Flower dies.

There are five layers to the flowers in this die set, although you can mix and match and use then in different ways.  

For the card on the left, I used the smallest petal layer along with the larger flower center die to create a bunch of flowers, and then adhered them to a white panel to create a print.  I tried to mix up where the flower centers were placed within the petal piece as well as the orientation of the flowers on my panel.

I added a black mat, and a sentiment strip which was popped up with foam adhesive.

For the next card, I pulled out my old square punch, and cut a bunch of 1" squares using white, dark gray, and black cardstock.  These were randomly arranged on piece of scrap paper that I ran through my Xyron machine, and trimmed down to size.

I created three flowers using the largest flower piece and flower center and adhered these over my background piece, trimming off excess areas.

I again finished things off with a reverse sentiment strip.

These were lots of fun to make and din't involve any stamping!

SSS Poppy Pods

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Today's cards feature my Poppy Pods die.  For my first card, I adhered several die cuts onto a panel of bright yellow cardstock to create a patterned paper background.  I added a bit of black inking around he edges to really make the center of the panel pop.  A black mat also helps to really set off the panel against the white card base.

For the sentiment, I used the Hello die that comes with the Stromanthe coordinating die.  The shadow piece was cut in black as a base, and the sentiment piece was cut from Gold Matte and black.  The black letters were then inlaid into the gold outline over the shadow piece.  The completed sentiment was then popped up with foam tape.

Next, a monochromatic card.  

To start, I stamped one of the large images from the Vintage Blossoms stamp set onto a dark gray cardstock panel several times with Versamark ink to create a patterned background.

I then die cut the Poppy Pods using Shimmer Vellum.  I can't tell you how excited I am about this vellum.  The die cut was adhered with Bearly Art glue, and t's opaque enough that you don't see the adhesive!  

The Basic Box Card Love You So Much was also die cut from teh Shimmer Vellum and adhered to a shadow piece cut from black cardstock.  These were popped up with foam adhesive.  I added a few clear sequins to finish things off.

Thanks for stopping by!