Do Something Creative Everyday! - Atlanta Onstage Swap

By the time you read this, I will be sitting at the On Stage event in Atlanta, with 2 members of my awesome team, the Stamping Campanions! And let me tell you, there’s no way to convey the excitement we’ll be feeling. Because by this time we should have the new 2018-2019 Annual catalog in our hot little hands, lol! It will be hard to keep focused on anything else, but we won’t want to miss one minute of all the info that will be shared, so we’ll have to stay strong and not spend the rest of the event with our faces in the catalog! Getting a first look at new catalogs is just one of the many benefits of attending an On Stage event. SU! really spoils us for the time that we spend with them. We’ll be coming home with LOTS of goodies 🙂

Ok, now on to my swap. I absolutely love it when I can combine stamp sets. I knew I wanted to convey the idea of creativity so our Crafting Forever stamp set was front and center in my mind because that’s the sentiment that I wanted to use, Do Something Creative Everyday! Then I got the idea of adding one of the pen images from the set. And from there I thought, why don’t we let This Little Piggy help out by holding the pen? To finish it all off, I needed a frame for the sentiment, so Painter’s Palette was perfect! I just cut the frame part from the easel image for my needs.

I wanted the background to look like wood, so I used the Pinewoods Dynamic Embossing folder, but I didn’t really want it to be brown. So, I tried several different color combinations and liked how Marina Mist gave a good contrast to the other images on the card. I sprinkled a few of the sequins from the Tutti-Frutti Adhesive Backed Sequins pack, and then because I wanted just a little more BLING, I added rhinestones from our Rhinestone Basic Jewels set to top it all off.

I started off stamping the piggies on Whisper White card stock and using our stamping blends* but that was getting to be a little too time consuming and I was already a little behind schedule completing my swaps (story of my life ). So I switched to stamping on Powder Pink cardstock and using a dauber with Powder Pink ink to sponge a little shading on the bellies of the pigs. That went MUCH faster! Also, you might notice how nicely everything is cut out.

I can’t claim my skills on this at all. I finally purchased a Brother Scan N Cut machine to help with the fussy cutting of images that do not have the matching die sets. And so far, I am enjoying that extra help a lot!!