Sneek Peek day 1: A Beautiful Life, Fairy Tales, and Sending Sunshine

Welcome to Day 1 of our sneak peeks! First we have my new set, "A Beautiful Life"! Your response was so overwhelming to my holiday "Festive Frame" set, I just had to create another floral frame that you could use year round, with beautiful greetings for ALL occasions! "A Beautiful Life" features these graceful tulips inside a border and surrounding an oval, to which you can then add your favorite photos, images or the new greetings from this set, and beyond. Tulips are among most people's favorite flowers, and not only for spring, they are the most versatile "occasion" flower, as appropriate for a wedding or birthday as they are a memorial. Creating beautiful cards is a breeze with this set that requires no masking of the images or time thinking about a special layout, it fills up the whole front!
A large "beautiful" greeting is included, that acts as a base for most of the other greetings in the set ((but not all, wait till you see some of the other heart-melting sentiments! I bet we'll spot a few on our hop today!) , just stamp the occasion you want around it and you can wish someone a beautiful wedding or day, to simply "hello beautiful!" You will also love the little bee and butterfly images I've included in this set, they are a wonderful addition to bring all your nature cards "to life" as well as coordinating with all my other floral sets from Gina K Designs, like you just stepped out into the garden! :) I made the borders pop with a white Koh-i Noor pencil and colored the butterfly and tulips with Strong Red, Cardinal Copics, and Willow and Spanish Olive for the leaves. Shadows drawn with Warm Gray 1.

Here I made a Mother's Day card on Kraft CS, making the inside flap a little wider so you could see this punched border on the white liner from the front, just a different way to use this frame! :) I cut out the oval, so you could see my greetings and butterfly on the inside. I doodled on the dotted trail with a pen and added a few pearls...

Now since I have "A Year of Flowers"(heh heh!), I couldn't resist stamping more tulips inside over the cut outs. (You could also make the arrangement on the front even fuller by adding your other favorite blooms from the set to complement the tulips if you wished, enjoy customizing it!)

I cannot wait to show you more projects with this set, it's becoming one of my favorites after stamping with it just a week! (It will be great for mini albums and framing up your favorite Easter photos, too!)

Next we have Tami Mayberry's "Fairy Tales" set, I picked my favorite images and greeting from it to make this sample. The doodling and whimsy of the Sugar Rush paper is perfect with this set and fun, wonky font she used in the quote!

The oval border is from the new Stamp TV kit (you'll see that on Day 3!) After adding the greeting, I popped up Tami's crown, blinged up with rhinestones, and the winged heart below. Now it has kind of a "mirror, mirror, on the wall" effect! (Ribbon and Black Onyx and new Bubblegum Pink CS are also from the upcoming kit.) :) Here is a closeup to show the detail.

I added little white dots to the heart to match the hearts in the DP, and I LOVE what that little bit adds! :) Using the fine tip of your different markers, making the letters different colors (remember doing that in school? LOL!) for the words you want to pop really brings your attention to them and makes it extra "happy happy"...!

My next card uses Theresa's "Sending Sunshine" set. Perfect for Spring, it has several lovely park images, my favorite being this lazy tree and tire swing, can't help but think back to simpler, innocent times! I started with a Kraft base and stamped my tree on Pure Luxury White. After coloring the tree (a wisteria, you can really have fun choosing the colors for your flowers!) I stamped the tire onto scratch paper so I could cut off the rope part of the image (if you want to it's very easy to just stamp it in the spot you wanted, but I chose to make something interactive this time!) and then tied on some hemp twine, perfect for the old rope (here is the jute Gina K sells). The color is perfect with the natural Kraft! Poke a hole through the branch on the tree with a piercing tool and thread your twine through.

Place a sheet of scratch paper over the top two thirds of your scene and sponge in some green ink until you are satisfied with your grass. TIP: Don't worry about getting it completely even, having some lighter areas will create the illusion of beautiful sunlight filtering through the tree and creating dappled patches. Remove the paper and sponge in just a bit of aqua ink, this will create a clear, bright day!


Here you can see the motion (I dare you try not to give it a few pushes if you received a card like this, irresistable, hee hee! wheeeeeee!) ;)

I kept the layout really simple as you can see, adding the greeting (love this clean modern font!), a few Spring buttons and a mat of Vibrant Violet to bring out the purple in tree. :)

Are you ready for even more inspiration?

Start with Gina's Blog

Then, visit these Illustrator's blogs of these new stamp sets:

Melanie Muenchinger - A Beautiful Life (thanks for visiting!)

Theresa Momber - Sending Sunshine

Tami Mayberry - Fairy Tales

Finally, check out these Designer's blogs:

Jessica Fick

Nina Brackett

Carolyn King

Cathy Tidwell

Lee Murphy

Lynn Murphy

Donna Baker

Kurtis Amundson

Emily Giovanni

Erika Martin

Colleen Schaan

Jennie Harper - our Guest Designer for this Month!

StampTV is celebrating it's first birthday and the festivities are in full swing with this month's release! We'll be holding this month's Release Party on StampTV and couldn't be more excited about all that Gina has planned for everyone! The party kicks off this Thursday, March 18th starting at 7pm and ends at 10pm (all times CST) when all the new products will be available for purchase in Gina's online store.

To keep informed of all the party plans and activities, check out this link:

Release Party Forum on StampTV