We have been busy stamping and scrapping all year and before we take a week off, we are going to show you what we have been creating for our friends and families.

Hoping you will find a last minute inspiration for a card.

by Jolene Johnston

by Jaine Drake

by Els Brigé

by Agata Pfister

gift card holder by Sue Sykes

card and details by Wendy Morris

cards by Linda Abadie

by Marsha Valk

by Janet Zeppa

by Isolde Pyncket

We wish you and your families a peaceful and very merry Christmas and a happy and crafty 2012. Keep stamping!

Best wishes from the myStamp BOX team,

I always love the idea of taking some stamps and making something else with them. So this time I took the Abundant Blossoms set and stamped some flowers, then cut them out and arranged them to create a wreath.

Then I’ve added some smaller flowers to fill in the spaces, red Stickles to flowers’ centers and of course a sentiment!

While playing with my cut out flowers, I had another idea of a one layer card, perfect for mailing! Here it is:

You could stamp the same thing in blue and red to obtain the  Nordic look which is so popular right now.

OK, so here’s my challenge to you. Take some non-Holiday themed stamps and make something very Holiday-ish with them. And most of all, have fun!

We love that you can use many stamps that are not directly topic-related and make them work for a specific project. Stamp are so versatile that way!

Let us know which project you would like to duplicate and you may win a myStamp BOX stamp set! All you need to do is leave a comment on this post until Sunday, 23th October and check in on Monday, when we announce a winner!

The picture shows the front and inside of the card by Janet Zeppa

Layout by Marsha Valk

Card by Jolene Johnston

Journal Page by Jaine Drake

Card by Els Brigé

Card by Linda Abadie

Layout and detail by Isolde Pyncket

Friendship Card by Agata Pfister

Artist Trading Cards by Wendy Morris

Thanks for leaving your comments!

Happy Stamping!

Love,

Janet: My grandnephew Evan had a Super Hero theme for his birthday party so I made him a cute card with a caped crusader on it. I used the star stamp from the Pennants set to make the background on the card. My tip is to not forget about the envelope. I used the same star stamp and decorated both the front and back of it therefore making it a cohesive set.

Bettina: Similar to Janet I like to use more than the front of my cards for stamping. I often stamp the card before folding it so that part of the design spills onto the back. The flower cards are both done this way. On the bottom card I added stamped and cut paper petals as well. I love to used large stamps and stamp them closer to the edges so that only part of the image shows. This makes them look even larger.

Some sentiment stamps are fairly long. These are ideal for bending into different shapes. In this card I curved the stamp to make use of the white space and to add more dynamic. You can use any long and narrow stamps this way, borders, stitches… Try a curve, wave or even a circle…

I hope you found some useful ideas in our stamping tip series!

Let us know which ones work for you!

Happy Stamping,

We hope to inspire you with these ideas for backgrounds!

Jolene Johnston used the cheesecloth stamp from “Repeat after Me” to create the background on the striped blue paper. The sentiment is from “Oval Office”.

Jill Hildebrand used the “Abundant Blossomsl” to create this cool diagonal backdrop on her layout. Some of the stamps were not re-inked to create more dimension.

Jaine Drake stamped a flower field background, partially white embossed, with the “Funky Flowers” and spritzed the inked paper with water to create a mottled effect. The sentiment is from “Wishing you Sunshine”.

Maryfrances Fabbri used a sentiment stamp from “Everyday Lines” to create a 2/3 background on this white card. This allowed the flower to be the centre of attention while still getting the message across. Stamping your sentiment repeatedly allows you to custom “colour” your paper or card stock and create the shades you like.

Melissa Wright used the “Graphic Borders”  for this background. The sentiment is from the “Pennants” stamp set. Melissa used two of the stamps, cut them out and layered them.

Join us next week for a showcase of patterns. We have created a variety with several different stamps!

Happy Stamping,

Love,

I loved the soft pattern and halo effect around the upper portion of the ad, the green band across the bottom and the diagonal focal point of the fork. Those were the elements I tried to recreate on my card.

I used the Abundant Blossoms set to create the focal point flower and border effect. The sentiment is from Everyday Lines. We hope you’ll try making a project that’s inspired by this ad. Be sure to link back here if you do. Keep your eyes open – inspiration is everywhere!

Happy stamping,

 Supplies: myStampBOX Everyday Lines and Abundant Blossoms stamps, Tim Holtz Distress Inks, American Crafts cardstock, Graphic 45 paper, Karen Foster Design Scrappers Spools and Sparkly Brad, Fiskars border punch.

First, mount a stamp of your choice the wrong side up on your acrylic mount.

Then, ink this wrong side with the ink of your choice and stamp. I used a chalk ink on this one. You may want to repeat the impression in order to achieve the perfect coverage.

Now, wash the wrong side of the stamp and mount it again, this time the right side up, and stamp using another color.

I just love that effect! And here’s the final project:

Now, as to the how-to of my flower, I made it using the sticky back canvas. And here’s a picture which explains itself pretty well:

Hopefully, you’ll want to try this overall stamping technique! Have fun and share with us your projects!

Are you up for a Color Challenge today? Sure hope so!

I thought that since the month of March hosts St. Patrick’s Day that we’d do a fun green color combo.  I know for many that this is a favorite color of yours.  I actually have a friend who’s birthday is on St. Patrick’s Day and her favorite color is green!

Now my challenge for you is to use 4 of these 5 shades of green. Don’t go hunting for other shades of greens … I want to see if you can stick with these ones here in this color palette. Plus ….you can only add white or black as extra colors. The greens could be embellishments, stamping ink, cardstock, etc.

I decided to use cardstock in 4 of these shades and then I stamped a shape from the Funky Flowers stamp set. I stamped the image four times using Versamark ink.  I then covered the stamped images with white embossing powder and heat them up.  I have to admit that I still love seeing the powder melt and emboss. It’s too fun!  After heat embossing I used a circle punch to punch out the stamped images.

I then adhered these circles to a strip of white cardstock and adhered some punched black border strips on the edges.  I then added this to my card using Core’dinations (one of our Preferred Partners) whitewash cardstock in a green shade.

I finished off the card by adding a sentiment from Everyday Lines.

Here’s my finished card.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with.  So please make sure to post a link here on this post if you take part in this Color Challenge. I’d love to see your work!

Now we would like to show some projects that our team has come up with during the month of February. We did not have a chance yet to share these with you and hope you will be inspired by our many ideas.

Maryfrances Fabbri

by Agata Pfister

by Allison Cope

by Jaine Drake

by Jolene Johnston

by Cari Locken

by Jill Hildebrand

details

by Eva Pizarro

by Melissa Wright

by Stephanie Ackermann

Thanks for checking in today!

Happy Stamping!

I guess the picture speaks for itself.

I believe you already know that empty glass jars make perfect ribbon or button storage:

Those transparent sour cream lids go for cool shaker cards:

And coffe filters… In fact I don’t even use them everyday. I bought this package for this particular project. But by doing this, I discovered a great stamping material! I love how dye inks melt into this texture! Here’s a pic of them stamped before the crumpling:

Stamp sets used: Floating Leaves, Itty Bittys and Graphic Borders

And here’s what I made out of them:

I also love how the light shine through those filters. You could make a garland like this or gather all lights into a bouquet like on the next picture and offer to someone (or yourself ) as a gift:

And here’s my challenge to you: find some unexpected stamping material around the house and up-cycle!

Other sets used for those projects: Deck the Halls, Royal Flush, Pennants, Funky Flowers, Repeat after Me, Everyday Lines

I love sketches. I have a sketch pad on my desk and everything I create is sketched out first. Whether it’s a card, a layout or an altered project I will draw out some ideas and work my way from there.  I often find that creating cards helps my creativity blossom especially when I’m stumped on a layout or other project.

So today I’ve created a card sketch for you to play along with. If you do play along I’d love for you to post a link so that we can see your beautiful creation.

Here’s the sketch that I created.

And here’s my card.

I wanted to keep the color combo simple & elegant so I stayed basically with white and added a bit of color.  I embossed the middle section using a Sizzix embossing folder and all cardstock is from Core’dinations.

I then used some Versamark and clear embossing powder on the top & bottom portions of the card along with a flower stamp from Funky Flowers.

I stamped the sentiment (using Everyday Lines)onto vellum a brown colored dye inkpad. Love the softness that the vellum adds to the card.

So I hope that you will have fun using the card sketch for inspiration.

Enjoy!

…I started wondering what is it all about!

Hello everyone! It’s December, already! I truly can’t believe how fast that year came and went! I can still remember the beginning of it, how hard it was for me to start making a non-holiday projects and here I am, making the Christmas ones again!!! Speaking of which, what’s December all about? For me, it’s the most beautiful time of the year and the most beautiful holiday, remembering Christ’s birth. Sharing that joy with others means for me sending a huge amount of Christmas cards, tokens of friendship,wishing everyone a happy holiday season. This year, I started really early, my first card was made in August!!! But even now I’m still short of some cards! So I need to make quick cards. Here are some ideas for you.

For the first card, I timed myself – 20 minutes. It’d be faster if I haven’t searched for my scissors for a while.

In fact, I finished in 18.5 minutes but then decided to jazz it up a bit and added some shiny touches with a Stardust gel pen.

The second one took only 15 minutes and is easy peasy. Could be made faster but instead of regular markers to color the hat I used some dye inks mixed with Perfect Pearls and water.

I just love that subtle shine…

For the third one I forgot to look at my watch but it didn’t take long to make it.

Lastly, December is also about gifts. And what are gifts without tags? Here’s an idea for you:

I used a non-holiday stamp sets for this one but I think one just can’t tell…

I feel a bit more prepared for Christmas now. How about you? What’s December all about for you? Anyway, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Stamps used: Funky Flowers, Mention it,  Deck the Halls, Dotty Christmas, Everyday Lines, En cette occasion

I recently found that out — the hard way.   I got half-way through this project and thought…….am I crazy?!?  This is SOOOOOO out of my league.

I wanted to create some gift tags (not specifically for the holiday season), but for gifts in general.  Now……..I always like to “push the envelope” just a bit.  So, I challenged myself in making FABRIC gift tags and using my mSB stamp sets to create images on the background fabric.

Seems simple enough, right?!?  As I began to create the tags, I realized that it wasn’t the actual stamping that would give my brain a workout………..it was the sequence of steps that it would take to create the tags.

So…………in the end — after much thinking about steps & sewing & glueing & stitching & stamping & tying & cutting & embellishing………..I have created 3 Fabric Gift Tags using two mSB stamp sets:  Everyday Lines & Lines of Life.

In order to stitch some of the elements onto the fabric (felt, trim, chipboard), I needed to think through the process.  I ended up putting cardstock between the fabric layers to make the tag stiffer…….more stiff.  I used Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive to attach the ‘final step’ embellishments onto the tags.  I glued/stitched laser-cut chipboard shapes from Magistical Memories as a unique way of attaching the tag onto the gift with ribbon.

Here is the back of one of the tags.  I used a different printed fabric for each tag and used my pinking shears to cut around the entire tag.  I love the little lace trim on the side of this one……..machine stitched between the layers of cardstock & fabric.

Hope you try stamping your own fabric tags for all those special days in your life.  They are certainly a unique way to show someone you care.

We are taking this day to get inspired by it’s symbol – the red poppy – and to show you a collection of beautiful red projects:

by Agata Pfister

by Jolene Johnston

by Stephanie Ackermann

by Jaine Drake

by Cari Locken

by Jill Hildebrand

by Melissa Wright

by Eva Pizarro

by Maryfrances Fabbri

by Kristen Swain

Last week I made this layout and stamped three leaves from the “Floating Leaves” set on white cardstock. I used yellow, red and green inks. Then I poked around the leaves to make the stitching easier and finally used coordinating thread to sew around the leaf shapes. Then the leaves were cut out and popped up with Helmar Liquid Pop Dots. The paper is from Kiki Art, another of our partner companies. The words are from the the “Passport to Adventure”.

After punching out the little blue accent flowers, I had some left and created a card with them – simple but pretty. The sentiment is form “Everyday Lines”.

Hope you liked my stitching idea. It works for all types of stamps, solid and outline. To decorate a solid stamp, stitch around it!

Happy stamping (and stitching),

Let’s start with something simple and quite obvious. I made the following card using a stem and a leaf from the Funky Flowers set. But is it a leaf? I saw a petal in it!

Let’s continue with the flowers theme. You don’t really need a “real” blossom to make a flower bloom on your creation! Here I used one of the stamps included in the Seal it! set. The stem was created by cutting out a part of the cardstock with decorative scissors. The same leaf from the previous card made it again here and acted in its true part.

If you like huge flowers, you can build up your own using a few stamps. Here I used the circle from Seal it! stamp set (the one from Funky Flowers is on a “editorial” trip ), a tiny flower and a petal/leaf stamps from Funky Flowers. And a sentiment from Everyday Lines to create the background.

Now, let’s take the swirl stamp which can be found in the Funky Flowers set (I guess you can say that this is my all time favorite stamp set!) I believe it was conceived as a trail for the butterfly or the dragonfly. But you can create a fun background with it by stamping it several times.

Tip: when doing this and if you intend to emboss the pattern as I did here, pour the embossing powder on each swirl separately. It will make it easier to see where you’re going. There would be another use for this stamp and it’s my son who gave me this idea. When he saw it, he told me: It’s a snail! I let you play with it…

And a final idea for yet another stamp from the Funky Flowers set (maybe I’ll start calling it the FF set?….) I started making a mini album about our recent trip to Poland. I took notes daily and of course, pictures! Here’s the first page with a handwritten journaling. But I was in a need of leading lines and to make them I used a stem from that set…

I love how those small dotted lines guided my hand to write quite straight!

Now it’s your turn. Put your thinking cap on and look at your stamps in a different, creative way. Who knows what you’ll see in them?

I love this time of year, with its reminders to reflect about things that we are grateful for. This year I made a few cards for friends, celebrating friendship, one thing among many I am infinitely grateful for.

The card below has been made with a chandelier from our product partner “Magistical Memories”. I painted it brown, added gold leaf and gold ink and glued the lamp shades (paper from Stampin’ up!) on. Then I attached the chandelier with a brad. The stamp “Thinking of you” is from the “Everyday Lines” set. Stamped several times, it fits nicely into the open space below the chandelier.

Sentiment stamps get a more “substantial” look, when used several times. They make fun backgrounds, too.

Hope you have a lot to be grateful for too! Share your thoughts, if you like!

Happy Stamping,

The Fall colours are beautiful right now and I got to think about things I am grateful for while driving through the countryside yesterday.

The most important item in my life is my family, which inspired me to do this layout. I arranged the “Thanks” from the “You name it” set and leaves from “All year round” as if they were swirling around in the wind in the upper part of the LO and arranged them more neatly in the bottom part. I added a few hand made photo corners and matched the stitching to the layout: tidy in rows on the bottom and swirly on the upper part. I decided to leave out a big title, as I have  16 mini titles and tucked the journaling behind the largest photo, written on a hand made tag.

I love making everything from scratch and let the stamps speak for themselves. The colours and motion make me think of a Fall hike on a windy day.

And now I would like you to meet our guest designer for the month of October – we are super excited to have Chrissy Lux with us.

My name is Chrissy Lux and I am thrilled to be joining you as the Guest Designer for October!  I live in NC with my husband of two years and am a full-time teacher.

I have been into paper crafts seriously for about two years now and I really love that this hobby allows me to make inexpensive, but thoughtful gifts for friends and family in a realistic amount of time for my busy life. I have always been into crafts and have done everything from cross-stitching to card making to scrapbooking to quilting over the years.  Needless to say, my office is pretty packed with paper and fabric!

I would describe my paper crafting style as being cute and simple.  One thing that I couldn’t live without is plain, colored cardstock. I almost always make my own patterned paper, so I love having stamp sets that I can use to make interesting and customized designs to work with my cards and projects.  I also enjoy finding ways to use stamps for backgrounds that maybe weren’t intended to be!  (You will see a few examples of this in my projects this month!)  During the school year, most of my crafting happens on the weekend or later in the evenings and I often start with a color or sketch challenge (there are many great challenges online) to give me a jump start. I was very excited to find out that I will be published for the first time this January in CARDS magazine.

Chrissy will share a couple of projects this week. For more of her work, check back next Monday

Over the past year or so, I have been working on building a collection of holiday and seasonal themed accordion tags.  They are cute to have around the house.  When I saw the Boo! stamp set, I immediately thought it would be great for just such a project!

I really like making my own patterned paper using my stamps.  You can see that I made some really cute paper with the spider web circle image, solid circle image (for the pumpkin background) and the jack-o-lantern face circle image.  Whenever I am making patterned paper, I like to have all my pieces cut and stamp each image on all the parts before moving to the next image.  Doing this in an assembly line process makes quick work of your project!

Actual assembly of the tag was really easy – just adhere all the layers together; punch some circles; dip adhesive chipboard letters in ink and add them on top of the card stock circles.  Then punch some holes and finish off with some ribbon!  The tag measures 4-1/4″ tall and each scored segment is 2-1/2″ wide.

Supplies Used:
Stamps: Boo! from my Stamp BOX
Ink: PTI Orange Zest, Fresh Snow, Palette Noir Black
Paper: PTI White, True Black, Orange Zest
Accessories: PTI Orange Zest grosgrain; Heidi Swapp chipboard alphabet letters
Tools: Scor-Pal, 1-3/4 circle punch, 1-7/8 scallop circle punch

Tags can be really fun to make and they are also very versatile – you can add them to a card, a wrapped gift, or gift bag …or just about anything else!  I really wanted to try to think outside the box and use my Boo! set for something other than Halloween … this sure was a challenge, but I discovered the solid circle image in the set can used in many different ways.

One of my favorite color combinations is pink and green.  So, I started by stamping the solid circle image from Boo! in bright pink ink.  Then I cut out the circle, and notched out some triangles with a pair of scissors to create a funky flower shape.  I trimmed a few of these flowers further to vary the sizes so my finished project would be more interesting.

I used the Everyday Lines set to stamp out the “Happy Birthday” sentiment, which I cut out and distressed with ink and an edge distresser tool.

To assemble my tag, I covered a chipboard tag with green polka dot paper and stitched some hot pink ribbon along the bottom – I love this technique.  It’s girly and fun!    I sanded and inked up the edges of the tag to age it a bit before adding the sentiment and flowers with foam tape.  Curling the petals up and adding a few rhinestones in the middle of the flowers really jazzes up the tag.  Finally, I added some ribbon and twine at the top of the tag to finish it off.

Supplies Used:
Stamps: Boo! and Everyday Lines from my Stamp BOX
Ink: PTI Hibiscus Burst, Chamomile; SU! Chocolate Chip
Paper: PTI White, Bitty Dot Paper; chipboard tag
Accessories: PTI Raspberry Fizz grosgrain; Martha Stewart adhesive rhinestones; twine
Tools: sewing machine, foam tape. Heidi Swapp edge distresser tool

I hope you feel inspired to try some very simple cards and add your sewing. It doesn’t have to come out perfect, but it’s SEW much fun!

Happy stamping,

Love,

Bettina