Hello Summer

Hello crafty friends!! Please join me for a new challenge at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge. This week the challenge is

Add a Sentiment

We are showcasing Newton’s Nook Products this week. If you have any of these products, we’d love to see them used, but it’s certainly not a requirement to join the challenge.

As always, the generous folks at Simon Says Stamp will be giving away a $25 voucher to one randomly selected winner to shop at the fabulous Simon Says Stamp Store. You can enter 5 times which means you can make 5 different projects following this week’s prompt and have 5 chances to win a shopping spree!! Sounds like a win/win to me!! I’ve linked all of the supplies that I used at the end of this post. Compensated affiliate links used where possible at no cost to you.

Ok, so I’m a tad late on this challenge, but 5 days in the hospital kinda set me back a bit so I’m cutting myself some slack. I had this card half way done so I figured I might as well finish it. Plus, I love Newton’s Nook and I love how it turned out so all in all, I’m happy to share it with you.

I started out with a piece of Bristol Smooth card stock. I used one of the two stencils in the Retro Sun and Palms stencil from Newton’s Nook and I ink blended the sunset. I love that this is in the shape of a circle, it totally reminds me of something I’d see on a t-shirt or something from the 80’s. I used distress oxides starting with Squeezed Lemonade, Wild Honey, Spiced Marmalade, Picked Raspberry and Dusty Concord. The stencil also comes with a second stencil of palm trees and a few birds, but I decided to use a stamp set instead. I used Paradise Palms, also by Newton’s Nook because I wanted to heat emboss the palm trees and I wanted to use these tiny birds.

I didn’t want the palm trees to go outside of my circle so I used a circle die by Simon and cut out a circle using Gina K Masking Magic. It wasn’t quite the same size but I made it work by tearing open the top of the masked circle and lining it up the best I could with the bottom of my ink blended circle.

This stencil is really cool because it has indentations on the 1st stencil so that you can line it up either vertically or horizontally and have it perfectly centered on an A2 sized card stock. I love that some companies are doing this. Maybe it’s not a new thing, but it’s new to me.

I stamped the palm trees with Onyx Black Versafine ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. I stamped the small flock of birds from the Paradise Palms stamp set using the same versafine ink but decided not to heat emboss them. I trimmed my panel down to 4″ x 5.25″ and attached it to a piece of teal card stock that I had in my card stock stash.

Once my background was done, it was time to move on to the sentiment. I used the “Summer” die from an old Simon Says Stamp set called Four Seasons Sayings stamp set and die. I die cut it 3 times using some more of that teal card stock. I’ve been so excited to use the new micro dot sheets by Simon Says Stamp on my thin die cuts and it worked beautifully! Why hadn’t anyone thought of this sooner? I always struggle with intricate dies and how to glue them without making a mess and I’ve tried everything!! I did have to glue a couple of spots, but overall it was a lot less messy and so easy to adhere. Once my 3 layers were glued together, I used a Nuvo Aqua Shimmer pen to give it some sparkle and then went over the whole thing with Nuvo Crystal Glaze to really add the shine.

I used the “Hello” stamp from the Four Seasons Sayings stamp set which I don’t think is available any longer, but there are many stamp sets with the word Hello. I added a few Bora Bora pearls by Studio Katia and attached everything to a top folding card base.