I made these cards from Stampin’ Up’s paper-crafting subscription kit, Paper Pumpkin. The May 2019 kit is called Hugs from Shelli. Shelli Gardner is the co-founder and former CEO of Stampin’ Up. (Her daughter Sara Douglas took over as CEO a few years ago.) She’s a pretty big deal in the paper crafting world and although she doesn’t run the company anymore, she’s still very much involved with it. The May kit is inspired by her. Anyway, I like the birds. Birds are cool.
The cards in the kit are non-standard size, and since I like to mail bigger cards, I had no qualms dismantling the pretty envelopes and using them on my cards.
First of all, let me say that I love the new In-Color Pretty Peacock. I foresee myself buying several packages of it over the next few years. When I started creating alternate cards, I picked that color first. For this first card, I featured the front of one of the envelopes. I really liked the silver border on the tags from the kit and wanted to incorporate the silver somewhere on the card. I stamped the birds in Versamark on the card base and front and embossed them with silver embossing powder. (I wished I had detail embossing powder to use, because that would have made the images more precise, but that’s a small thing.)
Supplies
Stamps: Hugs from Shelli May 2019 Paper Pumpkin
Cardstock: Pretty Peacock, Early Espresso, envelope front
Ink: Early Espresso, Versamark
Embellishments: Metal bird trinket, twine, flower punch out from kit
Other items: Silver embossing powder, Dimensionals
On the second card, I used the inner part of the kit’s envelopes as DSP. I used the card front with the nest as a focal point. I colored in the eggs and leaves to draw the eye to the nest itself. You probably can’t see it in the picture, but I brushed a little Wink of Stella across the tops of the eggs to make them sparkle. Aside from the sentiment on the inside, this card didn’t require any stamping.
Supplies
Stamps: Hugs from Shelli May 2019 Paper Pumpkin
Cardstock: Pretty Peacock, Petal Pink, inner envelope paper
Ink: Early Espresso
Embellishments: Metal bird trinket, Pretty Peacock velvet ribbon, flower punchout from kit
Other items: Dimensionals, markers
Before the dawn of die-cut rubber and photopolymer stamps, we Stampin’ Up customers had to cut out our own stamps. They arrived on a sheet of rubber attached to foam mount. We used special scissors with tiny points and giant handles to snip out our stamps and then mount them to wood blocks. People sometimes altered the stamps–cutting a sentiment from one stamp and mounting it on a spare wood block. Luckily, we don’t have to snip our own stamps anymore, which is why I forgot about manually trimming until a few people on the PAPER PUMPKIN FANCLUB Facebook page brought up how they used an Xacto-knife to separate some of the shapes from the December kit, Day by Day, to make the stamp set more versatile. This was a fabulous idea. While some people divided their stamps more thoroughly, I only separated this one:
Momster Ink 