Cottage Lane Stamper

 If you've been following me here, thank you so much! I appreciate that.  I've moved to another website, with my own domain   https://cottagelanestamper.com There I will not only have my blog, but a store where I will be selling my completed cards, crafts and retired card making supplies.  There is also a link to my Stampin' Up!© website.  I hope you will check it out! Sharon

What is Stampin' Surprise Saturday you ask?  Well, the 1st Saturday of the month we get together, via Zoom. I love being able to craft with my friends near and far, no matter the weather.  There is not a class fee.  When you have signed up, by the previous Sunday, I will send out a list of supplies needed & the Zoom link on Monday. You have a week to  gather your supplies together, cut and score etc. and then we meet on Zoom that next Saturday.  You choose your colors, embellishments, DSP, stamp sets etc.  I will give a suggestion as to what I'm using and when get meet on Zoom, we put them together.   Today's Stampin' Surprise Saturday is a fun fold.  I love to do fun folds for Saturdays, because stamping and Saturdays should be fun!!!!  And the surprise is you don't know what your card will look like when you are done. For this card I used a base of Basic White, a background layer of Night of Navy and DSP from "Beauty of the Earth" ...

 I absolutely love the papers in the Hydrangea Haven Suite!  I love Hydrangea and last year, when I saw our HOA was replacing our bedraggled shrubs with new planting and some of them were Hydrangeas I was thrilled.  Well the thrill didn't last long because the people across the street got Hydrangeas, and next to me, but in the little garden in front of my house I got some kind of Sedum.  However, they did plant a Hydrangea behind my townhouse, by my deck, which I can't see unless I go down my steps and walk around the little deck wall to look at it.  SIGH.  I even thought about, secretly at night, switching the two around.  But I knew that wasn't the right thing to do so I abandoned that thought.   I found this card on Pinterest by bluerosepapertreasures.  I do like a lot of her work.   I did tweak a little bit and added the little flower from the Hydrangea dies and little rhinestone.   The background is dry embossed ...

 I actually made this second card for last weeks "welcome back" class a while ago.  It uses the Dandy Garden Memories & More Cards and Envelopes.  It turns out this is a benefit to you!  It is being retired and you can now get all the cards and envelopes for $5!!!!! That's a pretty good deal.   I love these cards and envelopes as well as the cards and envelopes in the Kits Collections, because all the envelope are "lined" and coordinate!   The Dandy Garden DSP is also retiring, so make sure you get your order in for this too, soon!  This is a simple card, the only thing that takes a bit of time is coloring the stamped image with Stampin' Blends, but you can do as little or as much as you like. I love that Stampin' Up!© lists the colors used in the DSP!  That's how  chose the Stampin' Blends colors to use. Both of the Dragonflies are punched from the coordinating DSP, but you do have to cut them apart, because they are printed so...

 I must admit when I saw the "Expressions In Ink" DSP I fell in love with the look of it.  So beautiful with the melding of colors in a beautiful alcohol wash and then accented with the gold foiling!  I hope I can bear to cut it up and not hoard it.  LOL I started to do a little poking around on YouTube and found a few demonstrators who showed how to do something similar with some rubbing alcohol, vellum, our Stampin' Blend markers, a paint brush and something to blow the alcohol around.  I used an empty travel bottle So yesterday, for my "Tuesdays At Two" Facebook Live, I demonstrated how to do this, using the things I had around the house.  You will need, at least, 91% rubbing alcohol.  I had some 70% and it didn't work as well. I also used an empty travel bottle, that was fairly soft to squeeze, a pliable chopping mat from the Dollar Store, and an inexpensive paint brush.  The paint brush I used had a fairly narrow brush, I would use one with a...