Gina K. Designs Inspiration Hop: A Year of Flowers 3 and Birds & Blossoms 2

Good morning! The Cast and Crew for Gina K Designs welcomes you to another fabulous blog hop celebrating the new stamps from the February Release Party. We hope to inspire you with some beautiful card projects as you hop along to each of the designer’s blogs!

Today, we are featuring the new stamp set A Year of Flowers 3 (by moi!) and the Birds & Blossoms 2 set by Theresa Momber. Please enjoy the gorgeous inspiration samples from the team and then comment on each blog for your chance to win an awesome grab bag of GKD goodies!!!  To see who won, check the Big News Forum at StampTV a few days after the hop.

First up, A Year of Flowers 3! I am so excited to give you this new set to follow up and complement the most popular set of stamps I've ever released!  While I believe A Year of Flowers will always remain a timeless set for your collection, this new set gives you the same flowers, but in different orientations than front facing, to flesh out even more realistic looking arrangements as well as showing the original seasonal flowers in different stages, form bud to more full-blown.  I love the opportunities for creating more variety in your layouts and representing the life cycle of a flower in this way. If you don't have the first set, like that original offering, these images will work for an entire year 's worth of occasions and all four seasons.  Truly a must have! Mix and match or use it on its own.  In addition to the flowers, you are also going to love the new elements, like more complicated stems, and fillers like baby's breath and ferns. And, it's in CLEAR, woo hoo!!

Here is an arrangement I masked and stamped with A Year of Flowers 3 . I used my galvanized tub from Beyond Baskets. Great containers in that set for these flowers! The baby's breath and ferns are stamped in GKD Fresh Asparagus and Grass Green. I just love these fillers so much!   It's so delicate and much faster than stamping and coloring leaves. I may go through my basket of cards and just add baby's breath to all my previous stamped floral arrangements!  It gives such an airy, fresh-cut feel. Tip: Use two shades of green for your greenery, whether that's two pads or stamped and stamped off, to create more variety and depth. I'll be doing a masking video this week to show you how to mask an arrangement into any kind of container stamp! Cardstock is GKD Pure Luxury White and Powder Blue. Greeting is from Scripty Sayings.

I showed this card at the end of last week's video, but not a close up photo. Base is the gorgeous new GKD Pure Luxury Lipstick and the tulip is colored with Spectrum Noir FL1 and CR11.  Leaves are CG3 and CG4. By the way, how do you like these new long leaves? They are just *perfect* for tulips in both sets!

This card I showed at the party, but wanted to list the colors. I actually stamped the focal point and greeting in Edible Eggplant to match the card base. A nice alternative to black ink for line art images when you are using purple shades!  Spectrum Noir HB1, LV1 for the petals and GB8, CG2 and CG4 for the eaves and centers. The lotus is collage stamped all over the Lovely Lavender layer in Wild Lilac, and then sponged with Wild Lilac and Edible Eggplant. I love this smoky look! I can demonstrate a card like this but with different flowers and colors in a video if you like.  This is one of my favorite types of coordinated backgrounds to make.

A Year of Flowers 3

Lots more videos and samples with this set in the coming weeks! Be sure to scroll down to the previous posts if you have not see the other samples I'e shared so far with this set. 

Next we have Birds &Blossoms 2 from Theresa Momber. So many different looks you can get with this set!

I stamped the cherry blossom branch on this 4 1/4" square Pure Luxury White card in GKD Charcoal Brown and colored with Spectrum Noir markers.  I stamped the large flower, colored, then cut out, cutting in between the petals towards the center so I could mold them with my fingers for extra dimension and popped up on a foam square.  Last I added some stamped and stamped off leaves with GKD Grass Green, like a soft breeze blowing through, before adding the sentiment. I love having stamped sentiments in one of my besties own handwriting! :)

 I shard this at the party. Cardstock is Pure Luxury Powder Blue, Fresh Asparagus and White. All stamped images and sponging were done with GKD Fresh Asparagus.  I cut out a second flower to layer over the first at an angle to give a fuller look, with more petals.

Finally, I love this sentiment! I stamped the solid leafy branch over and over with GKD Fresh Asparagus, full strength and stamped off, to create the tree top, then added the birds in Black Onyx. Honestly, I didn't mean to add so many flying birds, but I dropped the stamp and had to cover up a smudge (rather than start over!) The simple colors and layout remind me of a sweet children's storybook. Cardstock is GKD Pure Luxury White.

Birds & Blossoms 2

Fabulous set, Theresa, welcome back!


While shopping, don't forget Scripty Sayings (free with $75 order or more, for a limited time only!)

Ready for more awesome creations?! Just click on the links below for more from the Illustrators and Design Team!!

Gina K

Melanie Muenchinger – Illustrator for A Year of Flowers 3

Theresa Momber – Illustrator for Birds & Blossoms 2

Allie Gower

Beth Silaika

Cathy Tidwell

Karen Hightower

Kendra Wietstock

Laurie Schmidlin

Sean Fetterman

Silke Ledlow

Susie Moore

Don’t forget to pop over to the Gina K Designs Store and check out all of the new products available this month in the “What’s New” section at http://www.ginakdesigns.com.

Thank you for stopping by!