You're Invited! Gina K. Designs Illustrator Hop (and a video!)

Good morning!  Welcome to our Gina K. Designs illustrator hop today, sharing inspiration for all our new sets releasing tonight and making sure you put tonight's party down on your schedule! 

As always we'll have contests, chatting, prizes, and full reveals of the new stamps and projects made with them from our fabulous design team!  

Here is a quick card I made with my new A Year of Flowers 2 set.  In this set, you get all the same types of flowers, leaves and stems (plus a few more!)  that are so versatile for building designs for all the different holidays and seasons from the first A Year of Flowers set, but this time drawn in a more stylized, sketchy way. I think you will love being able to change up the look this way, or really enjoy it if more whimsical images are your preference (or your recipient's) over realistic ones.  They certainly lend themselves to the same techniques as the first set, as well as some others!

Also, if you are a fan of my previously released Pressed Flowers bold set, you'll be happy to know how well those images work two step stamping style paired with these new line art ones.  A sketched  image layered over a more realistic solid image is such an easy way to add color to your projects as well as being a fun, trendy look!  The sentiment here is from Tami's new All Occasion Tags 2, and with the script font and year round sentiments, it is just a perfect match for this year round floral set!  This card uses just two markers, one pad and 2 colors of cardstock, how's that for economical?

After tons of requests from my readers and our StampTV fans of how I do certain techniques since Gina started sharing videos on STV, I finally made a short video for you, of how I colored the card above. Go easy on me, it's my first!   A bit of trivia, this video is just over 5 minutes long but I had to check watching it: the flowers took me only 1 minute and 20 seconds to color! And that's with talking and pausing! Soooo fast and easy! Love it!

Let me warn you,  I didn't notice until afterwards that I called my Copics "Memento markers" (ack, so different!! but at least I listed the colors correctly), presumably since I'd just mentioned my Memento pad*, trying to be all like Gina, ya know,  listing "all the products and tools needed to complete the project", hee! So *please* don't email me that those are Copics in the video. Yes, I know, lol!  Hopefully you saw my notation at that point. My next video will be better!

Anyway, goofs aside, I  hope this conveys how ridiculously quick and simple it is to get beautiful results with your markers and the new images from A Year of Flowers 2! :)

  Supplies used:  Gina K Designs Pure Luxury Black Onyx and Sandy Beach cardstock, A Year of Flowers 2 and All Occasion Tags 2, Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad, Copics R05 and G99.

See you at the party tonight! 7-9 PM CST on StampTV

Now be sure to check out samples from our other illustrators today who are reviewing their new sets! Be sure to leave a comment on each blog for more chances to win a fun prize pack from Gina K:  a package of Birthday Hoot patterned paper (to match the free owl image with any purchase this month!) and coordinating cardstock pack!

 Happy hopping!

 Gina K.

Becky Oehlers

Beth Silaika

Debbie Corbari

Melanie Muenchinger- you are here!

Tami Mayberry

Theresa Momber

*Although I didn't even call it a Memento pad, the name from the lid just burned itself into my brain!