Day 4: "Blessed is the Season" and "Versatile Verses"

Last day of peeks, get ready to party!! First up we have a "Christmas in July" set for you from Gina K, called "Blessed is the Season". I have to say the last two years of making my Christmas cards months ahead of time made sending out almost a hundred cards when December finally rolled around pain free, a lot less stressful than past holiday seasons! I chose to use the bold dove inked up in light blue and then kissed this awesomely funky, spectacularly detailed snowflake* she has in the set onto it in Vivid Inky Blue (and adding a little olive marker to the leaves) before stamping, doesn't that look cool?!
One of my main requirements for holiday cards is that they look fancy but be pretty quick to assemble when i need to make a lot, so after die cutting the image, I layered it centered over the "Fun Year Round" frame stamped in light blue on Pure Luxury White, then matted that over Pure Luxury In the Navy (although it looks really dark in the photo, it is navy blue not black!) and Little Boy Blue to match. I added a few punched ferns from Grass Green behind the popped up focal point emphasize the little branch the dove is carrying and a tiny rhinestone to the branch's berry and the little "a" in "peace". The "peace" is part of a larger greeting I inked up with my marker and stamped into the middle of a circle in the frame. I love this clean and simple look, the circles behind make me think of ornaments or snow...

Next we have Gina' s newest Free with Three set "Versatile Verses", and it's one of my favorite "Free with Three" sets ever! The split label is a perfect fit for the Oval Nestabilities and the large and small greetings are work great inside it or separately, it will be an extremely useful set! I made this card for a friend who just had a bay, although she had a girl, her nursery is powder blue and chocolate, which I think is a very elegant combination! I used Chocolate Brown, Little Boy Blue, and White for my card.

After die cutting my oval greeting, I used my new "Fun Year Round" to make these colors look a little more feminine by creating the border with the flowers and button images on the background and envelope, adding four white dots to each of the buttons centers with an Inkssentials pen and then carrying the sewing theme throughout: adding a real button over the Marvy punched flowers (Jumbo and ExtraJumbo) and white paper flower to match, and then one of Tami's new "In Stitches" trim in Vivid Coffee Bean around the sides. I mounted the mat at an angle to give the "HOORAY" (which I added some white circles to the o's) even more energy!

For even more samples with the stamp sets being previewed tonight, check out these designer's links:

• Gina Krupsky *illustrator of Blessed is the Season and Versatile Verses



• Jessica Fick



• Theresa Momber



• Melanie Muenchinger
  
  
• Nina Brackett



• Cathy Tidwell



• Lee Murphy



• Carolyn King



• Donna Baker



• Kurtis Amundson
  
  
• Emily Giovanni



• Erika Martin



• Asela Hopkins

We'd also like to invite you to attend our Release Party tomorrow night starting at 7 pm central on StampTV. There will be challenges, contest questions, and more samples from our designers on all the new stamp sets being released this month. See you then for all the fun!

* I stamped these snowflakes all over the envelope flap to match, but the pic didn't turn out, sorry!