Your Next Stamp Blog Hop

Hello everybody! Thanks for joining us for another fun and fabulous Your Next Stamp Blog Hop! YNS just released a new Fhiona set (Fitness Fhiona) and a bunch of Cute Little Buggies and Animals so the Starlets (and 2 awesome guest designers!) have whipped up some eye candy using many of the new images.

If you came here by way of Lana's blog, then you're on the right track! If not, please go back and start at Karen's blog because you won't want to miss a stop - one grand prize winner will be randomly drawn to win 6 of the new releases of their choice!! To qualify, you need to comment at all the blogs on the hop with the answer to this question: Which new release stamp/set is your favorite?

Here's the hop order again in case you missed it:

Karen
Lana
Maureen (you're here!)
Maylee
Jen del Muro (joining us for FUN - yay!)
Simonne
Amy
Angela - Guest DT for December
Kerri
Cabio

One last thing before I get to my projects for today - Karen is offering a super special while the Hop is on (Dec. 10 - 14 at midnight EST) - a FREE stamp or stamp set of your choice from the YNS store with a purchase of $55 or more!!

*****And now on to the show!*****

For my first project, I have a clean and simple card using one of the new animals, the adorable Sammy Squirrl:


I colored Sammy with Copics, then cut him and the mat out with Nestabilities. The tree paper is from Upsy Daisy Designs and I made the sentiment myself using 2 different alphabet sets (the smaller one is from Papertrey Ink and the larger is Close To My Heart). I finished it off with some sponging, light distressing, and a couple buttons tied with twine.

For my second project, Karen challenged us to make some form of gift wrap, box or bag. I was inspired by projects from Cindy Lyles and Val Stangle to make a gift box of notecards:


I used the new super cute Bee Stings and some really old Imaginisce paper. On the box, I popped up an extra head for the bee for dimension, but I left all the notecard images flat for easy mailing.

Here's a shot of all the notecards and a matching envelope:


I computer generated a sheet with the sayings placed so that they would end up where I wanted them (it took me many tries to get it right, but now I have a template I can use whenever I want!). After printing, I just had to do a little trimming to get them down to the correct size. If you're interested, the sayings are Don't worry, bee happy!, Buzzing by to say hi!, What's the buzz?, and Just bee-cause!

The bees were all colored with Copics and I added Stardust glitter pen on the wings. I embossed the yellow strips with the Birds and Swirls Cuttlebug folder and stitched buttons to the box. Thanks so much to Cindy and Val for the inspiration and especially to Val for the great project and tutorial!

Just a quick reminder - there's still time to enter the YNS Challenge #5 - make a birthday project with hearts. The deadline is December 15 and all the details can be found on the YNS Challenge Blog.

I hope you liked my projects and thanks for hopping along with us! Your next stop is the incredibly talented Maylee.