SSS Beutiful Moments Blog Hop, Printmaking Clovers Take 2

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Today I'm hopping with Simon Says Stamp, celebrating the Beautiful Moments release. You should be arriving here from Mindy Eggen's blog. The full hop list list is at the end of this post is if you need it. As usual, there are prizes at stake. One lucky commenter at each stop along the hop will receive $25 to spend in the Simon store, and any Beautiful Moments purchase this month will receive the above stamp set free. 

My cards today feature my new Printmaking Clovers set. I shared a couple of basic cards on Thursday featuring the set, and today I'm stepping up my cards a bit.

For my first card, I stamped the clovers on chartreuse cardstock using Fairway and Field for the first two layers, but gold embossing the third layer along with the sentiment.  You need to make sure that you fully dry the panel with a heat gun before you stamp the embossed layer. You can see that I have a few stray embossed speckles because I rushed it a little.

I also added some inking around the edges of the panel using Fairway ink and a blending brush. This just gives your panel a gorgeous glowy effect.

Next up, I pulled out the coordinating dies. I stamped two sets of leaves using Pawsitively Saturated Ink Trio 2 (Celery, Limelicious, and Pearfection), stamping the Celery layer twice to ensure good coverage/brightness.

I then die cut the two sets of clovers, and adhered them to a panel of chartreuse cardstock using foam tape in a grid formation.

The sentiment, from the set, was stamped with Versa Clair black ink and popped up with an additional layer of foam tape.

For my final card, I stamped the clovers using Pawsitively Saturated Ink Trio 8 (Sprout, Fairway, and Field), and die cut.

These were then arranged in a wavy line across my card, and finished off with another sentiment from the set.

I added a green mat that shows just at the top and bottom edges of the clover panel to accentuate the horizontal flow of the card.

Hope this gives you some other ideas for how to use this set. Your next stop on the hop is Alberto Gava, and don't forget to leave a comment here to be entered to win the $25 credit.  The full hop list is below as well. Enjoy the hop!

Simon Says Stamp Blog
Nina-Marie Trapani
Heather Hoffman
Suzy Plantamura
Cathy Zielske
Jennifer McGuire
Laura Bassen
Amy Rysavy
Mindy Eggen
Miriam Pranter
Alberto Gava
Kath Stewart
Betsy Green
Mary Reiner
Nicki Baxley
Savannah O'Gwynn

SSS Beautiful Moments, Printmaking Clovers

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

It's been a hot minute since I've posted. I've been busy, but am really excited to share with you my newest Printmaking set, Printmaking Clovers, which is part of Simon's new Beautiful Moments release.

Because there are only three stamps which create the clovers, this is a perfect set to use with the Pawsitively Saturated ink trios, no thnking required!

Today I have some pretty easy basic cards using the set. For this first card, I used Simon's Pawsitively Saturated Trio 8 (Sprout, Fairway, and Field). I did stamp twice with Sprout to get a brighter, more vibrant color.

The sentiment, from the set, was stamped with Versa Clair black ink. I added a green mat, and that was it.

For the next card, I used Trio 15 (Spring, Dublin, and Lucky), along with another sentiment from the set.

These came together in a jiffy, especially because I treated myself to an Altenew Stampwheel on Black Friday. You can fit all the images on the wheel, stamp, turn, stamp, turn. So easy!

Head over to Simon to check out the full Beautiful Moments release. I'll be back Saturday with some more ideas for this set, see you then!

January 2026 in Books

Not as many books as I was hoping to finish this month, but a really good mix of subjects and genres. Check them out:

Family of Spies - Christine Kuehn - nonfiction - five stars - This was a really interesting book. When a screenwriter contacted Kuehn about her family's story, she was horrified to learn that her grandparents and aunt/uncles were Nazi spies/supporters. It takes her. many years to want to research and then get the full story of her family. They were recruited in Germany to work with/for the Japanese, and then sent to Hawaii, where they played a key role in gathering intelligence for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The crazy thing is that they really were not punished for their roles in the attack, ended up just getting deported back to Germany. Also sadly Kuehn's father, who was born in the US and had no knowledge of his parents and siblings activities essentially lost his family. He served for the US during the war, and held onto the secret until very late in life when confronted by his daughter.

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern - Lynda Cohen Loigman - fiction - five stars - Augusta Stern has finally retired and moved to a retirement community in Florida. Who else lives there? Irving Rivkin, the boy who broke her heart years ago. The book jumps back and forth between the past and the present as you find out what went wrong all those years ago. It's a really cute story and I loved all the characters. Quick, fun read.

Yes Please - Amy Poehler - memoir - five stars - This was my audiobook for the month. It was a fun, listen/read. I really enjoy Poehler, and her wit comes through in the audiobook which she narrates, along with some audio cameos from others in the business. It was interesting to hear how Poehler started out, and all the other things she has done. I was really only familiar with her television career, so the other stuff was pretty interesting. Comedy is apparently a pretty collegial/small world, so it was interesting to see how her life/career has intersected with others. I definitely recommend listening to this one vs reading.

Buckeye - Patrick Ryan - fiction - four stars - There was so much hype around this book that maybe I had unrealistic expectations for it. It was good, but not as amazing as I had expected. It's the story of Cal and Becky as well as their complicated relationship with Margaret and Felix and the couples' sons. The storyline follows them from childhood to adulthood/death. I found the book compelling as a read, moved through it quickly and it kept my attention, I just didn't really like the characters. This was one of those books where I got annoyed with them all, what they were and were not doing. 

The Mademoiselle Alliance - Natasha Lester - historical fiction - five stars - The story of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade who ran the Alliance resistance network in France during WWII. It's a pretty amazing story. Fourcade took over Alliance network when the original leaders were caught. Alliance was working with MI6, and she was known to them initially only by her code name. Her gender was not revealed to them until she took one of the full moon flights back to Britain to strategize with them. While extremely inspiring, it's also extremely sad because of so many of the agents that you get to know in the book did not survive the war. Highly recommend.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1) - Dennis E. Taylor - science fiction - four stars - I hadn't read a science fiction book in a while, and this one got really good reviews, so I thought I would try it, and I'm glad I did. It's about an extremely smart guy named Bob who has contracted for his brain/'corpsicle' to be preserved after he dies so he can essentially be brought back to life once they have figured out the tech to do that. A hundred years later, he wakes up to find that a lot has changed in the world. There are different countries/powers, and corpsicles no longer have rights. He's essentially been put into an interstellar probe looking for other habitable planets since the word is basically dying. He has the ability to reproduce/clone himself, so soon there are lots of different Bobs exploring the universe. There are also other probes from other countries too, and most of them are not friendly. It's a very clever premise. I really liked Bob as well as his clones and the differences between them. This dragged a little bit in a few places, so a four, but definitely looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

Favorites this month were The Mademoiselle Alliance and The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern. What have you guys been reading?

Greetery Thanks

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

I had a little extra time to create a couple of weekends ago, and resolved to pull out some items that I haven't yet gotten to work with. These Thanks products from The Greetery were calling my name, particuarly because I needed a Thank You card.

I really love these products. The stencils can be used on their own for an elegant one layer card, or you can use the dies to add drama and dimension.

I started by inking up the sentiment using Peony and Aster ink. I then die cut the the sentiment using the outline die. This die cut piece was placed on a sticky mat, and then I added the accents using the third stencil and Cookie Dough Lunar Paste.

I pulled out an older piece of Pinkfresh patterend paper, adding some gold splatter using my Starry Colors watercolors. This panel was adhered directly to my card base, and the sentiment was popped up with foam tape.

This was such an easy card to create. Thanks for visiting!

SSS Brushed Pine

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Today's card features the Brushed Pine die from Simon's Heart to Heart release. The set consists of two dies, one base piece, and one which cuts all the individual pine tree layers.

I die cut the base piece three times from dark green cardstock, and the detailed piece twice from white cardstock.

The dark green trees were swiped with my White Pigment inkpad to soften them and give them some texture. I then adhered every other row of the white detail pieces to the trees. Once that was done, I added a little bit of sparkle to those layers (although it's hard to see in the photos) using Frosted Lace Stickles. The trees were then set aside to dry.

For my background panel, I added some light inking with Royal ink, and then stamped the sentiment, from my Stacked Holiday Sentiments set.

The trees were then adhered to my inked sentiment panel. Two were adhered directly to the panel, and the third popped up with foam tape. These were trimmed down to the size of the panel, and I added a white mat as well.

SSS, Swirling Snowbreeze Peace

 *This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

I've got a super easy card to share today featuring the Swirling Snowbreeze Embossing Folder from Simon's latest release. 

To create this card, I swiped a variety of blue Distress Inks over a panel of watercolor cardstock. The panel was sprayed with water, and then run through my diecutting machine.

I then swiped my White Pigment Inkpad across the panel to accent the raised surfaces with white ink.

The panel was adhered to my card base with foam tape.

I cut the shadow for my sentiment from vellum, and the sentiment itself from Matte Silver cardstock. This was adhered to the embossed panel by carefully adding foam adhesive behind the Matte Silver portions of the sentiment.

I think the swirl of the 'a' from the Fancy Peace sentiment goes perfectly with the embossing folder, don't you?

SSS Heart to Heart, Heart City Take 2

 *This post contains affilaite links to Simon Says Stamp.

I've got a couple more cards to share today using the new Heart City stencils. For these cards I'm using just two of the three stencils - not the actual heart stencil, but the parts that create the walls of the heart building.

For this first card, the shapes are facing hte same direction and shifted to create rows of these rounded shapes. The resulting pattern really reminds me of peppermint sticks lined up next to each other. I'm definitely planning to make a peppermint stick card next Christmas using these stencils!

I used just Peony and Orchid for this card, although one set of stripes was inked a little more heavily than the other. 

I also used Peony to ink the cardstock used to die cut my Lovely sentiment. A couple of the secondary sentiments from that set were used to complete the card.

For the next card, it's the same idea, except this time I inked the stencils in the right manner, so they make the bottom part of the heart building, but again I left the heart off, shifted the stencils, and inked again to create a chevron pattern.

I used Marine and Cadette as my colors, alternating them from left to right in the pattern.

Just as in the last card, I used one of my colors, Cadette, to ink the cardstock for my sentiment, the Simple Thanks die. This time, the secondary sentiment comes from the Thank You Basics set and was embossed in white on black cardstock.

It's always nice to be able to get more use out of your products! Thanks for stopping by!