Sweet Strawberry - Ink Stamp Share

Hello and welcome to another Ink Stamp Share blog hop.  Grab a cuppa and hop around with us; we have 26 hoppers and lots of fabulous projects to share with you.

This month we are sharing inspiration using items from the Spring / Summer and Sale-A-Bration brochures.  I will be using a new stamp and punch bundle called Sweet Strawberry for my project.

If you have hopped over from the fabulous Dana Sullivan or you are starting here with me at Craftyducky HQ, welcome - we have some fabulous projects to share with you this month!

Isn't this the sweetest bundle in the January to June mini catalogue?  It's full of juicy, plump strawberries and all occasion sentiments that can be used all year round.  It makes me think of lazy Sunday Summer picnics by the river - ooh my mouth is watering already!

Sometimes less is more and, as I was short of time a quick and simple project was called for.

Here is my project:

The colours I used:

Cherry Cobbler

Granny Apple Green

Poppy Parade

You will need:

14.5 cm x 16 cm Basic White Thick (BWT) - scored at 8 cm

7.5 cm x 14 cm BWT

Small piece of BWT for stamping/punching

The Strawberries:

I have not had a chance to play with Sweet Strawberry before today so I decided to have a bit of an experiment with the strawberries.

I stamped and punched out two strawberries.  One using just Poppy Parade for the outline and the infill (right), and the other, with a Cherry Cobbler outline and Poppy Parade infill.

At this point I preferred the all Poppy Parade strawberry but I decided it did not look juicy enough.

Then I had a lightbulb moment!  I decided to heat emboss the strawberries with clear embossing powder.

Dab each strawberry with an embossing buddy to make sure the ink is dry and then stamp the infill onto the berry with Versamark ink.  Heat emboss with clear embossing powder.

WOW is all I can say - they look so juicy and shiny!!  Very difficult to photograph but they look even better in real life.

Once embossed, I preferred the strawberry with the Cherry Cobbler outline and this is the one I used for my project.

You will also need to stamp and punch out the stalk for the strawberry using Granny Apple Green ink for both the outline and the infill.

This stamp set is a 'distinktive' stamp set - the  dimension and texture on the stamped images is stunning and looks very realistic.

Top Tip #1

Clean the infill stamp before inking up with Versamark ink otherwise you will have a very dirty inkpad!

Top Tip #2

If you are planning to heat emboss a strawberry don't punch it out first!  I used a pair of tweezers to hold the strawberry but it got a bit hot!

To assemble:

Stamp the sentiment with Memento ink on the BWT panel and adhere the strawberry in the bottom corner with dimensionals.

Adhere the stem using tiny dabs of Tombow on the two bottom leaves only.  I then used a black gel pen to draw a wavy frame around the panel.  Adhere with dimensionals to the card front.

The inside/envelope:

I used some of the Berry Delightful DSP to decorate the inside of the card and the envelope flap.  

This lovely DSP is a level 2 Sale-A-Bration free item that you can choose when you place a qualifying £90 order.

You will receive a full pack of DSP and a stamp set called Berry Blessings which coordinates beautifully with the Sweet Strawberry stamp set.  For some reason I could only find an image with a German stamp set but it is definitely available in English too!

The completed project:

I love the quirky size of this card - I found the envelopes in my craft stash so I have obviously had them for quite some time (pre SU).

Although this is a quick & simple project it just goes to prove that sometimes less is more!  

Once I had finished this project I got a bit carried away and started stamping out lots of fruit.  If I get chance, I will assemble some more cards and share next week.

Thank you for hopping along with us - I hope you are enjoying our projects; don't forget to leave comments as you hop around (we like that)!  Next up is Laura Mackie, I can't wait to see which products she has chosen to use.

Details of the products I used for this project can be found below along with a list of hop participants just in case you get lost along the way!

Happy hopping!

Susan xx

Roll Call

Laura Mackie

Libby Fens

Sue McDonald

Nicole Mahler

Sue Allen

Karen Egan

Rebecca-Jo Unwin

Stacey Marsh

Mo Rootes

Kim Price

Cindy Mitchell-Clark

Sharon Dalton

Tracie St-Louis

Alison Carter

Tricia Butts

Gez Carpenter

Jill Chapman

Rochelle Laird-Smith

Jo Blackman

Donna Coffman

Deb Naylor

Donna Lester

Victoria Littlewood

Annette Elias

Dana Sullivan

Susan Simpson

Thank you so much for looking at my Blog today, if you don't have a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator and you live in the UK, I would love to be yours!  

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