Inspiration Hop, Day 1: "Garden Silhouettes" and "Timeless Textures"

What a release party last night, oh my goodness, that was fun!! Thank you all for turning it out and chatting, there were faces "new" and "old" and it wouldn't be a party without all our amazing Gina K customers and fans! If you missed all or any part of it you can see all the samples, chatting thread, videos and challenges linked on the STV main page! Now, for more inspiration!
Today we focusing on Gina's sets, "Timeless Textures" and the new "Free with Three" set "Garden Silhouettes"! (I love being able to post the full set now that we do our hops after the release, and you are going to love these!) Texture stamps are such great stamps to have in your "toolbox", they are perfect as the focus of a card or a way to add just the right something to make a beautiful design even better! And chunky, bold stamps like these silhouette flowers work for so many techniques, so today I combined the two on my card.

Cardstocks are Gina K Pure Luxury White, Little Boy Blue and in The Navy. I love all the white space on this card! I began by inking up the long "linen" stamp in a pale blue ink, and then inked up the bold iris in Vivid Inky Blue and kissed it all over the inked texture stamp, re-inking each time and varying the height of the flowers by stamping them in different positions. then I huffed on the texture stamp and pressed it onto the white cardstock.

The kissing effect is subtle here, but effective, see below. This texture is so fine that if you used a line art image you would hardly see it kissed, but these bold flowers are just right. :)

Next I did some Direct to Stamp by inked up the different portion of the iris with my Memento Markers, Summer Sky and Danube Blue for the flowers and Cottage Ivy for the leaves and pressed it over the textures on the left, to leave room for my greeting on the right. The bold silhouette really brings out those kissed images on the linen, and that linen block really grounds the solid flower and adds interest to the layout.

I also used the Scor-Bug and Scor-Buddy to pierce a row of holes to underscore the sentiment, skipping around the flower stem. No embellishments on this card! The colors and gorgeous images really stand out beautifully with no distractions.

I decided to go ahead and post this same card portrait style, because I think either layout looks pretty cool! If you send it in an envelope, it'll be up to the recipient to decide which way it goes anyway, and I'm sure most people will have "one" way they see it and one way only, and that's great!

Now let's see what else the team has for us today! :)





• Gina K





• AJ Otto





• Carolina Buchting






• Cathy Tidwell






• Deb Felts





• Donna Baker





• Emily Giovanni





• Giovana Smith





• Janice Whiting





• Jennie Harper





• Jimmi Mayo





• Lee Murphy






• Melanie Muenchinger (you are here, thanks for visiting!)






• Michelle Woerner






• Sharon Harnist






• Theresa Momber






• Tina Gilliland





• Valerie Stangle

• Vicki Dutcher

Hope you have terrific Easter weekend with your family, and our inspiration hops will be continuing for the rest of our new sets on Monday! :)