Gina K. Foil-Mates Day 1: Birthday Essentials and You're Invited!

Good morning! The Cast and Crew for Gina K Designs welcomes you to a very special blog hop celebrating the new line of Foil-Mates products with Gina K Designs and Therm O Web. As of Monday, May 1, the ENTIRE product line of Foil-Mates products are available in the Gina K Designs Store at www.ginakdesigns.com. We are so excited to show you our projects and inspire you to jump into the foil craze!

Creating cards is never more easy and beautiful when you work with this new line of foil products. From beautiful pre-printed Foil-Mates, to stunning colors of Fancy Foils, when you combine them together the outcome is stunning! Discover how many various combinations of different cards and invitations you are able to create with Gina’s Foil-Mates products. With many of Gina’s most popular signature colors now available in foil, coordinating with Gina K Designs card stock and ink has never been easier!

 AND!!  Die sets!!! Ahhhh! 

Join us and discover ideas that you can take away for your own cards and projects! Today we are featuring backgrounds form the various sets and "Birthday Essentials" and "You're Invited" packs.

I'm just gonna say it, FOIL is EVERYTHING right now, and I am a little late joining in the foil game. I bought a couple foil packs  after seeing Gina demo them last October, just a basic gold and a silver, and it was very "wow!", but  I cannot stress enough how amazing and professional this stuff looks in person and how if you are going to delve into foil how much you'll be glad you started with products that ALREADY coordinate with the ink and cardstock colors and motifs you already use and love from Gina K. Designs!  Like, Turquoise Sea foil?!  Yes, please!!!

The strings and dots in this "Dots & Strings" patterned Foil Mate were perfect to suggest a sky full of balloons! Up, up, and away!  I sponged on just a hint of the Turquoise Sea ink for a cloudy sky. I had to use the Circle small set (which are still quite large!)  for this one, too perfect!

 The Passionate Pink foil is SO gorgeous and coordinates perfectly with her ink and cardstock! I snipped some tiny triangles out of the pink and White Pure Luxury to pop up for the "tied parts" of the front balloons.  Foam adhesive is also from Therm O Web. I love how THICK this foam is, creates so much dimension in a snap! 

Here are some different views.

Balloon You're Invited greeting is done with the solid Pink Passionate Foil on the "You're Invited" Foil-Mate. Star pattern on both balloons is the Silver Sequins foil. See how the stars look all rainbow-y and sequined from one angle....?

...and then solid silver from another?!  That is a LOT of look, you don't get all that from just wet embossing! And although it looked black from my top card view, as you can see, the Dots and Strings pattern is ALSO all foiled with the same pink! Yummy!!

Cardstock is Gina K Pure Luxury Passionate Pink, Turquoise Sea, and Wild Lilac.  Foil-Mate background (the white layer) is from Dots and Strings pack and the balloons are die cut with the Circles Small set pack out of the Stars background pack. I sponged on the coordinating Wild Lilac and Passionate Pink inks onto the toner printed cardstock before running it through my laminator with the Silver Sequin Stars foil. 

Next here is a birthday card, I did with *several* foil colors: Wild Lilac, Grass Green, and Turquoise Sea, using just the extra strips that were trimmed from other pieces of foil when I made full mats for other cards! More pics in a sec, but can you see the different colored sections across the bottom in the pic below?

I placed these strips over the Polka Party Foil Mate background, leaving some of the black dotted pattern in between, to mimic the dotted candle pattern in the focal image from the birthday pack, then heated.  I also sponged on some GKD Wild Dandelion ink  to bring in the candle flame color (filled those in with the ink as well) and really make the different foil strip colors contrast and pop.  The candles image looks black from one angle...but then BAM! Turquoise Sea, just like the card base!  I used some of the black gold lined ribbon Gina carries, and tied it to look like a big wrapped package on a card.  The transparent center section of the satin will let all these awesome patterns show THROUGH, so now you have coordinating patterned ribbon, I love that!! 

Birthday Essentials image is cut with one of the new Large Rectangle dies. And, and! How cute are those star die cuts?? They come with this same rectangle set and are perfectly matchy match with the stars in the greeting, ack!!  I own about a hundred nested die sets, (ahem, I know, don't say it, I've been collecting a loooong time) and I think these are the first to include one or more versatile tiny shapes in the center you can use over and over as embellishments to work with so many designs and occasion, I love it!!  And obviously, she planned these to go with the stars she works into her Foil Mates!  Love the thoughtful planning and even more coordination for all of us!

More goodness to come TOMORROW using all the new dies, foil, Foil-Mates and cardstock in ink cube packs from Gina K. Designs and Therm O Web! Truly the start of a bee-you-ti-ful partnership and amazing products that take out the extra time and guesswork, enabling us to get busy creating fabulous works of heart and amazing, pulled-together projects!  Tell me how much you love all this stuff below!! :)  I'll show you how to work in some of our stamps tomorrow and Wednesday, stay tuned! 

Please enjoy the gorgeous inspiration samples from the team and then comment on each blog. We will be selecting one lucky commenter at the end of the hop from a combination of all three days of comments and that person will win a $50 Gina K Designs gift certificate! To see who won, check the Big News Forum at StampTV a few days after the hop. Ready for more awesome creations?! Just click on the links below for more from Gina and the Cast & Crew:

Gina K

Cathy Tidwell

Chris Dayton
Juliana Michaels
Karen Hightower
Melanie Muenchinger  you are here!

Rema DeLeeuw
Sean Fetterman
Sheri Gilson
Susie Moore

Theresa Momber

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!