Pink & Main Bonus For A Friend

Earlier this year I shared a card with you that I made for a friend who is battling cancer. I decided to send regular cards to her to show my support throughout her journey.  When my first design team parcel from Pink & Main arrived, one of the stamp sets was a lemonade theme. As soon as I saw it and one of its phrases (when life gives you lemons) I thought of my dear friend and wanted to make a card for her with that stamp set. Here's the card that will soon be winging its way to my friend:

The lemon is stamped on paper covered self-adhesive chipboard and coloured just to give the card some dimension. I added distress ink to the back of the vellum mason jar with a water brush to look like lemonade. I had to perform some surgery on the stamp in the set to get the ice cubes. The cubes were inside a jug so I cut them out so I could use them alone on this project. I stamped them in grey on the back so they weren't too prominent.

The inside reads as follows: Drink Lemonade with a Friend (stamped)
Under that I wrote: OR chuck them back and demand a cocktail!
(I saw this alternative saying on a sidewalk chalkboard once and have never forgotten it)

Although I had the stamp in mind I did browse some challenge sites to see what their current themes were and this helped my card come together very easily. This card is being entered in the following challenges:
Inspiration Emporium - Everything Goes. The details are here
Southern Girls Challenge - Words. When Life Gives You lemons counts as words, right?  The details are here
Simon Says Stamp Work It Wednesday - Yellow (I added yellow ink to the background of the vellum mason jar and added a hand coloured lemon).  The details are here
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.  The details are here
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Anything Goes.  The details are here
Not sure if I am allowed to load the same card to both Anything Goes challenges at Simon Says Stamp

Materials: Stamps - Pink & Main; Card - American Crafts, Paper - Alison Kreft for Echo Park, Heidi Swapp; Cardstock - DCWV; Chipboard for Lemon - Quikutz; Ink - Ranger, Tim Holtz; Die - Unknown; Vellum.

Pink & Main - Speech Patterns Greeting Cards

Forgot to share this blog post from March 5th on the Pink & Main blog! Oooops.

There have been so many fabulous stamp sets in the mega release and I am trying to play with all of them. This week I decided to focus on Speech Patterns.

First off  I made a general greeting card with a repeated stamp pattern. I made a panel in vanilla colour card and stamped it with the speech bubbles in the Speech Patterns stamp set in 3 colours. On a separate piece of card I stamped one of the speech bubbles in green ink to match the background card and coloured the edges in with a black stamping marker and stamped miss u in black ink. I also applied the other two colours of ink to the background.  After cutting this speech bubble out, I adhered it to the stamped panel with foam tape.

After making the first card I wanted to try another card using the same repeated stamping technique. This time I used a vanilla card as my base and stamped the speech bubbles repeatedly using the same 3 colours. I chose one speech bubble and used blue embossing powder on the phrase 'hello'.  The other speech bubbles got stamped in black ink. A little inking of the edges and you're done!  It is a plainer card but still effective.

I really love the patterned speech bubbles in the stamp set. I could have kept making more and more cards with the different phrases.


Below is the Speech Pattern stamp set I used:

DT Amanda

Materials:
Stamps - Pink & Main, Ink - Ranger, Stampin' Up!; Card - American Crafts, Other; Embossing Powder, Foam Tape.

Pink & Main Mister: His n Hers

This week I created with one of the new releases from earlier in the year called Mister.  I challenged myself to create two versions of the same card : one masculine and one feminine.


To start with I made the masculine card:

I stuck with my traditional, go-to colour for masculine projects - brown. I created the background pattern with brown ink on cream card with the herringbone swatch in the stamp set. Then I adhered a patterned paper panel and cardstock panel with stamped elements. The glasses were stamped on white chipboard so they would be three D. The cardstock panel was adhered with foam tape. Lastly I added the brads, pearls and sequins.

Next up is my feminine version:

For this feminine version I turned the layout on its side and used the obviously feminine colour - pink.  I created the same patterned paper look by stamping the herringbone swatch on the cream background again, but with pink ink this time.  In this version I made the rectangle a pennant with patterned paper. On the pennant I embossed the crown in gold and embossed the same phrase I used on the masculine version, but in terracotta this time.  A bow made from glitter cardstock finishes it off.

I encourage you to not just limit yourself to the theme of a stamp set; challenge yourself to use them in other ways.

DT Amanda

Pink & Main Planner Card

This week Jessica and I decided to work with the same stamp sets to show you how versatile they can be. We both worked with the new planner stamps: In the Budget and Planning Work. Jessica will show you a great calendar layout and I challenged myself to make a card with them.

For my card I combined the new planner stamps with the stamp set that comes free with a qualifying purchase this month: Caught A Bug. I also used a stamp from an earlier release: Latte Love.  All of the modern icons in the Planning Work stamp set fit perfectly in my Tim Holtz viewfinder die - I was so happy when I discovered that! I combined the modern icons showcasing how we connect in this modern age with the "let's catch up" phrase from Caught A Bug.  Finally I fussy cut a teapot from Latte Love.  This is how they all came together:

To put it all together I sprayed a doily to match the colour scheme and added some blue and silver splatters to my card base. I also added some tiny die cut shapes in the corners to help the circle elements blend better on a square card.


DT Amanda

Pink & Main - A Trio Of Cuties

When I saw the March release stamps from Pink & Main I thought that they are all perfect for colouring in. They are absolutely darling aren't they? I know three little girls who love to colour in so I decided to make colouring-in notebooks for them. I even tried personalising the front covers to look like each of them.

To make the colouring-in notebooks I took apart some plain, unlined notepads I had and stamped the images on the pages. I stamped the images for the cover on white cardstock and coloured them in.  After cutting them out I added them to kraft covers with a matching watercolour pool for them to sit on.  I also added a few drops of perfect pearls just to dress them up a little. Then I bound the pages and covers together with my cinch.

Because they are small in size they are perfect for their Mum to pop in her purse for those moments when they need to be entertained


DT Amanda

Quick Planning with DIY Stickers

This year there has been an explosion in the planner industry and I will admit that I have caught the planner bug. Just call me #plannernerd. Did you know that Pink & Main has planner stamps? They even have a section dedicated to planner stamps on their website. If you, like me, are into planning I strongly suggest you check it out.

This week I wanted to share with you a tip that I use for my planning: creating planner stickers. They are so simple and quick to make. I stamp up everything I need and have them on hand for when I don't have time to dedicate to decorating my week in my planner. It means I can still be organised and decorate with little effort. The other great thing about using stickers is that you don't get ink bleed-through like you do when you stamp directly in your planner.

Credit Alert: I first saw this idea shown by Jennifer McGuire

All you need is some office label stickers, alcohol ink pens and your favourite planner stamps. First you colour the labels in with your alcohol ink pens:

Easy right? The second step is to stamp away with the stamps that fit your plans and life. I stamped words from Life Tasks in black archival ink on the coloured labels:

One of the things I have started doing in my planner is adding a space for gratitude on every day. Because the word Gratitude or Thanksgiving is too long for my stickers; I got inventive with my Pink & Main stamps. The Lucky Charm stamp set has a phrase Lucky You. I cut the words apart and used the word Lucky on my stickers as my daily gratitude marker. When I want to use the phrase as a whole later I just need to add both words to my stamping block. Here's my Lucky stickers:

Lastly, put those stickers to use in your planners:

As you can see I am using a standard spiral bound planner.  I like to decorate the week using supplies I have on hand. I may add leftovers from other projects, diecuts, stickers or pieces from recent purchases.  I also like to stamp positive sayings each week - in the week above I used the washi tape as my positive focus for that week: smile.  It is very handy that the new March release stamp set called Rose has a fancy script word Rose on it. I have a regular appointment with someone called Rose so I will use this a lot.

The reason I am focusing on planner stamps/stickers this week is because there may be a few 'developments' in the planning area here at Pink & Main.  I'm not at liberty to confirm or deny this rumour (that I'm starting) but let's just say I'm super excited. Just because there may be things 'developing' you still need the basics to start out with so don't forget to check out the other planning sets on the Pink & Main website here.

Life Tasks was my first purchase from Pink & Main and it gets used a lot in my weekly planner. I have added the other planner stamps to my collection but I just focused on Life Tasks for the Pink & Main blog post.  Below are some other stickers I created with Life Icons:

Life Icons is great for reminding me of my goals like Bible reading (books) and Saving ($ signs) as well as weekly tasks like Dog Walking (paw), Shopping (Cart), Photos (camera) and Emails (Envelope). The icons are great too for Meal Planning or Tracking Food Intake if that is something that you do. The coffee cup icons are food café dates.


These are the two stamp sets I used for my stickers on the Pink & Main blog this week:

DT Amanda