Topflight Stamps 4th Birthday Blog Hop

It's Topflight Stamps 4th birthday! I'm joining in the celebration along with a group of fabulous designers to share handmade birthday cards that showcase many of the unique products available at Topflight Stamps (including my stamps and embossing powders!) I hope you'll enjoy my cards and tutorial and then continue to hop along with us to see the variety of fantastic products from this talented bunch. (And make sure to stick around to the end to find out how you can win a gift card.) Updated... winner is on the bottom of the post!

If you're following in order then you should have arrived here from Rachel Greig's blog, but if not - no worries! Get the full list of participants and links to their blogs at the bottom of this post.

For my contribution I've used my stamps from PaperArtsy and my Boho Blends embossing powders from Emerald Creek to make a pair of mixed media birthday cards.

I put together a little tutorial to show you how I made these and which products I used to achieve the various effects. Ready to get started?

​Step 1: I started out with Neenah Extra Heavy folded cards and used Lavinia Acetate Circle Masks along with Prism dye ink from Hunkydory and a blender brush to put down three circles of ink on the front of my card.

Step 2: I traced the Lavinia masks onto plain copy paper and cut out the circles to create masks for my stamps (the acetate masks will work too, but they're a bit thicker and so it creates a bigger gap between the stamp and the edge of the circle when you stamp over the mask. The thickness of the acetate is perfect for inking, though.)

I laid the paper masks over top and matched them up with the inked areas, then used designs from my different PaperArtsy stamp sets, stamping repeatedly, to fill the inked circles with pattern. (The set in the photo is my EGL10 set - Japanese Patterns. I also used EGL11 - Suzani Florals as well as my new EGL13 set, Botanical Illustrations.) I stamped with a combination of the Prism Dye Ink Pads as well as Hero Arts Ombré pads.

Step 3: I took the Prism Glimmer Mist in Glamour Gold and instead of spraying, I opened the bottle and used the tube for the sprayer as a skewer and drew rough outlines around my circles with the gold ink.

Step 4: I used bits of washi tape along the edges (two of the designs by Tracy Evans for AALL & Create) and then cut circles from the Colorful Circles washi from l'Encre et l'Image and adhered them onto the card (I used a glue stick since handling them during cutting takes away a lot of the stickiness.)

Step 5: For each of the cards, I chose one of the frames from my new EGL14 (Ornate Frames) stamp set and stamped on watercolor paper with embossing ink and then used some of my Boho Blends embossing powders to heat emboss the images. (For this piece I used Kano Green and Moroccan Sun.)

Step 6: I added sentiments to the birthday cards by using a small alphabet set to stamp my words, then I cut out my frames and edged them with more Prism ink (I used Smoked Paprika here) and then adhered them onto the card with Hunkydory Finger Lift Double-Sided tape.

Step 7: To finish, I added some self-adhesive rhinestones (Hunkydory Diamond Sparkles Glitter Gemstones - Gold Sparkles) onto the main frame to highlight my stamped sentiment and then just used a regular pen to scribble borders and add a few marks.

Voilà! Completed mixed media birthday cards. I love the look of layering ink, stamping, embossing, and washi tape all mixed together to highlight the celebratory sentiments and I'm excited to have these ready and waiting for the next time I need a birthday card :)

I hope you enjoyed both the cards and the tutorial... here are a few more close-ups so you can see both of the completed cards.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a birthday celebration without prizes! Topflight Stamps is giving one lucky winner a $100 Gift Certificate to the store!

But wait, there's more. Each stop on the hop has an additional $25 Gift Certificate up for grabs for some lucky commenter. For a chance to win, make sure to visit every stop on the blog hop and leave a comment by March 29th. Winners will be announced on the Topflight Stamps blog on March 31st. 

Updated with the winner - congratulations to Mary Herman!
Please contact me or Topflight Stamps to get the code for your $25 gift certificate.

If you want to follow along and see all of the posts in the hop (and comment on each to enter to win one of the gift certificates!) here's the list of participating designers:

• Topflight Stamps
• Lisa Hoel
• Jennie Atkinson
• Cornelia Wenokor
• Karen Bearse
• Dina Kowal
• Kathi Rerek
• Connie Mercer
• Ericka Strange
• Jenny Marples
• Autumn Clark
• Rachel Greig
• Gwen Lafleur <-- you are here!
• Annette Allen