Blast from the Past Day 1

This week the Gina K Designs team is pulling out some of our favorite sets of the past from every illustrator, which promises to be a week long celebration of "greatest hits"! First up, I chose to use my "A Year of Leaves" set. Although I use these leaves and sentiments year round on masculine and sympathy cards, this set really works overtime when Fall comes, there's nothing I like to stamp and embellish my cards with in late Summer and Autumn than beautifully colored leaves!
Here I just used one leaf image from the set and the simple greeting "Thanks", in one of my favorite fonts of all time! These small greetings are perfect for making tags, and I love how this one turned out, using a Labels Eight die on Pure Luxury Ivory, then punching a border punch on all four sides and stamping the word in the middle! I scored the background in a diamond pattern for more interest and texture and added some stitched ribbon and brads. Base is Wild Dandelion. Popped up, these leaves look like they are gently drifting to the ground...

I also like using them with favorite floral sets, here the same leaves and another greeting take the set "A Beautiful Life" from Spring to Fall...
Drawn in the same style and scale as "A Year for Flowers", these sets are just perfect for mixing and matching!

And just to revisit a few of my faves I've made with the set (which are now coming back around, so to speak!), here is a card and matching acorn and leaf earrings I created that are currently featured in the "Stamping Savvy" section of the newest issue of CardMaker Magazine (p.28-29) These are definitely some of my favorite images for Polyshrink!
"A Year of Leaves" was also featured in the recently released book "Interactive Cards". This is probably one of my favorite projects ever! The little caterpillar image from the set morphs into a pop up butterfly (this butterfly is from "Take Flight", a favorite Gina K set from the past!).

I've also had several designing friends offer to share new samples they've created with some of their past favorite sets of mine, thank you SO much ladies for sharing your talent again with us today!

Brenda Turner

Carla Suto

Carolina Buchting

Geri Utterback

Karen Knegten

Libby Hickson

Linda Payne

Melissa Shultz

Selma Stevenson

Sharri Seffens

Sue Van DeVusse

Tina Gilliland

Next, we have one of my favorites from Nina from last year: "Lord of the Season". I stamped this fall topiary in Vivid Coffee Bean and colored it with with earthy Copic colors inspired by this beautiful Basic Grey Indian Summer print. Those little spots are color are perfect with the tiny details of the fruits, flowers and leaves in the wreath. TIP: when coloring a wreath, select several colors but just use one at a time, putting that color in several different places to balance it out and draw your eye around, so you won't have lots of clumping in just one area, before moving to the next.
Cardstock is Pure Luxury Pumpkin Spice, Chocolate Brown and White, which is sponged around the edges with Wild Honey Distressing Ink. I used a Nestabilities border die and some Pure Luxury ribbon for the bottom. I would have liked to match it to the pink I colored the ribbon in the image but didn't have anything like I thought! good thing there were lots of other colors to choose from LOL! I just love breaking out all these fall colors! It's been a long, hot summer!


And finally more 'Blast from the Past' Gina K Designs stamp sets, check out these participating designer's blogs:

• GinaK


• Jessica

• Nina


• Theresa


• Cathy


• Lee


• Lynn


• Donna


• Emily


• Erika

The entire GinaK Designs team would like to invite you to the virtual Release party we'll be having this Thursday, August 5th on StampTV. It will be a bit different than our usual release party, but we'll still have challenges, contest questions, and designer samples that you won't want to miss out on! More information on that event will be shared by GinaK soon, so stay tuned to her blog for all the details this week!