Sneak Peek Day 1: "Gifts from the Sea" and "Oh Boy!"

Thank you for joining us for our first day of Gina K Designs peeks! I am so excited to share my new set, but first let me tell you a little about my inspiration for it. I was born in Galveston while my father was in the Coast Guard, and although we only lived there for a couple years, I grew up visiting the beaches in Texas and Southern California. To me, the best vacations involve a beach, and one of my favorite ways to spend that time is taking a long walk with a loved one along the water in search of "treasure". You talk about anything and everything or just enjoy listening to the waves in the spaces in between as you spy one-of-a-kind shells the sea left there just for you to find. Each is beautiful in its own way. I have collections of them in various containers around our house, and each one is a wonderful memory.

This life-long love of the ocean and collecting and a recent trip to La Jolla with my dad and sons over Spring Break inspired the drawings and greetings in my newest set "Gifts from the Sea". You will love coloring these life-size images and adding them to your nautical and nature themed cards for men and women alike! The images above are stamped in Memento black and brown on Pure Luxury White and colored with Copics.

In this sample I wanted to create a scene that would represent the sentiment "If you want to know how much I love you, count the waves." There are so many ways to create waves on a card, and this is one of the simplest: tearing a piece of scratch paper and sponging turquoise ink above the rough edge, starting at the bottom of your mat and working up. The lighter areas in between look like tumbling surf. Usually I create a horizon line by sponging along a straight edge, but I chose not to have a distinct separation between sky and sea here, it's a little more atmospheric and like the quote, you can't find the end. I know you will be seeing a lot of our newest Pure Luxury color in our peeks and I'll have ample opportunities with this set in the future, so I chose a less traditional "beach" color for my base and sky, Lovely Lavender, which reminds me of sunsets and some of my favorite shells to find in this tender shade of purple! All the White and Chocolate Brown popped up mats create frames within frames that highlight the sentiment and echo the meaning.

Another thing I really love about this set is this long border, made of scallops and sand dollars to create a natural scalloped edge, perfect for creating a quick, coordinating envelope and liner to match the card. A couple other stamps included I know you will find very useful for any project you stamp: tiny birds to make an instant sky on any scenes you are stamping, in two different sizes to give you a sense of near and far, and a speckle stamp, to create sand or beautiful natural texture on any of your neutral or colored card stocks for a natural, "confetti" look. The torn layer of solid colored Soft Sand card stock is stamped several times with the speckles in Vivid Coffee Bean ink, almost looks like sand paper!

This is the same sample but I added some twine and a tiny real shell I got from a pack at a hobby store, just wanted to give you some more ideas for how to add more texture and pump up the volume on this card, although my husband's opinion is he likes the first, simpler version better. Your choice! I can't wait for the full reveal of this set later this week, and sharing more ideas and techniques with it, it it is one of my most personal sets to date and already one of my favorites, hope you love it, too! :)

Next up we have Tami's Oh Boy! set, filled with all the toys for little boys, so they'll get a lot of use in my house! I chose the rocket and stars today to go with my one of my favorite lines from the children's book "Guess How Much I Love You": "I love you to the moon and back." I started reading that story a year before my first child Jonathan was even born, when I was working as a nanny for a little girl and that line at the end choked me up every time, because I loved her but also because I was trying at the time to get pregnant with a child of my own. Jonathan has always loved space, so I added a photo of him to the rocket window below. The sentiment is actually one long stamp, but I stamped it out into three strips of card stock to trail behind the rocket. ( I will just go ahead and say in my original plan this rocket was gonna MOVE had my hand been 100%, and it would have been SO!! cool!! maybe later in the month...!) ;)

Base is Red Hot, I also used Black Onyx and the newest Pure Luxury Color: Turquoise Sea. The moon is half a die cut circle I Cuttlebugged with the Spots and Dots folder. All the stars are stamped onto Lemon Drop and cut out and popped up, I also added some Gina K buttons attached with glue dots for planets and a few adhesive nailheads. Oh boy, this card was fun to make! He came in to my office and saw his pic on the card when I was editing for the blog and said "You love me?" Silly boy, you know I do... to the moon and back... :)

Designers Participating in previewing tonight:

• Melanie Muenchinger - Gifts from the Sea illustrator (you are here!)



• Tami Mayberry - Oh Boy! illustrator




• Gina Krupsky




• Jessica Fick




• Carolyn King




• Cathy Tidwell




• Donna Baker




• Emily Giovanni



• Erika Martin



• Kurtis Amundson



• Lee Murphy




• Lynn Mercurio




• Theresa Momber

• Nina Brackett




• Valerie Stangle




• Geri Utterback - our Center Stage Spotlight Designer!

The Release Party is this Thursday, April 22 on StampTV. There will be challenges, contest questions, chatter, as well as tons of samples from the Design Team members from 7-10 (central time) all leading to the new products being available in Gina K's online store at 10pm. We'd love to have you join us for our monthly party!