Sooner rather than Later: SSS Dear Friend Release Blog Hop

Sunday, May 21, 2023

SSS Dear Friend Release Blog Hop

*This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp.

Hi folks! Today is Day 2 of a two day blog hop celebrating the latest release from Simon Says Stamp, Dear Friend. As with any good hop, there are prizes to be won all along the way. Simon will select one commenter from each stop on the hop to win a $25 gift card to the store. You should be arriving here from Alberto Gava's blog, and I'll have the full hop list below for you.

For today's cards I'm showing off my new Hey Girl die.

For this first card, I started by creating a background using my Stepped Back Blocks stencil. There are four stencils in this set, but I used just two here. The angled top of the block, and then the small block. I used Celery for the angled tops, then shifted the stencil down and inked again with Pearfection. For the small square I used Lemonade. I only inked that one time rather than shifting down because I wanted a bit of white in the design.

Then it was time for the sentiment die. The shadow piece was cut from white cardstock, and then I used a dark and light green for the sentiment itself. The entire piece was popped up over my background with foam tape.

Next up, I wanted to create a nice flat inlaid card.

I started with a piece of the Pastel Color Blend cardstock, diecutting the shadow piece from the center of my panel.

Saving that negative cut, the sentiment die was placed in the center of it, and I die cut again, saving the pieces that made up the two Hey words.

I then die cut the shadow piece from a piece of Matte Silver cardstock, and similarly die cut the sentiment itself from the center of the shadow piece, this time saving the negative space pieces.

Finally, I die cut the sentiment from Matte Gold cardstock, saving the girl pieces.

I ran a panel of printer paper through my Xyron to add adhesive to it, placed it behind the original panel of color blend cardstock, and then inlaid all the different pieces.

To make sure everything was well adhered in place, after placing a clean piece of printer paper over the top of the panel, I ran it through my die cutting machine.

I didn't want all those extra gold and silver pieces to go to waste, so I created another sentiment piece. I really liked the inlaid look, so I cut the shadow die from some teal cardstock, and then cut the sentiment from the center of the teal cardstock. I also die cut the shadow piece from printer paper and again ran that through my Xyron. The die cut cardstock pieces were then inlaid together to form the sentiment piece.

For the background I gold embossed the Hexagon Tile back over black cardstock, and the popped the sentiment piece up with foam tape. I love the Art Deco look this card has!

That's all for me today, the next stop on the hop is Sandi MacIver, and the full list is below. Don't forget to leave a comment to be entered to win. And, if for a chance to win this die, swing over to my Instagram account (@mprantner) where I am giving away a Hey Girl die as well as a set of my new Modern Heart Quilt products. Happy hopping!