YNS Fall into Halloween Blog Hop

Welcome to the Your Next Stamp "Fall into Halloween" BLOG HOP! I'm sure you've guessed from the title that we're showcasing some fabulous new YNS Fall and Halloween stamps today! These new stamps are available to buy right now from the Your Next Stamp store along with all your YNS favorites.

Not only do we have a fantastic blog hop for you, but today is also the official start of the new YNS DT term! AND it's also a YNS Challenge day too, so we've combined our hop creations with our YNS Challenge #24 creations! Although the DT have used Fall and Halloween stamps, the theme for this challenge is "Anything Goes!"

If you would like to participate in the hop and you didn't arrive here from Chris' blog, please return to the start of the hop at the YNS Challenge blog, as you don't want to miss these fab new releases!

The hop starts today (Wednesday, September 1st at 03:00 EST) and ends on Monday, September 6th at midnight EST.

As always, here at Your Next Stamp, we have some wonderful prizes for you to win! Two lucky winners will be drawn at random to each receive a new release stamp package, but please make sure you comment at every stop along the hop to be eligible to be entered into the draw. We'd love you to join us over at our new Paper Craft Planet (PCP) Group, and so as an added incentive, anyone that becomes a member of our YNS PCP Group will automatically receive a second entry into the blog hop grand prize draw! How great is that? (It's free and easy to join PCP by the way!)

Not only is Karen offering two amazing prizes, she's also going to include a free surprise gift with every order placed at Your Next Stamp during the hop! And that's not all! If you join our YNS Group over at PCP, you'll also be personally emailed an exclusive PCP-YNS-Group-only YNS store discount code! Whew! That was a lot of info - I hope you got it all!

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

I got to work with the super cute Fhiona's Squirrel Friend set. It comes with an adorable squirrel holding an acorn, a separate acorn, and 3 different leaves!

I went a little nuts (hardy har!) with the set and made 3 different cards! The first idea that popped into my head when I saw the set was to make a wreath out of the leaves:


I stamped the leaves a bunch of times on a few different patterned papers and cut them out. I then crumpled up all the leaves and then opened them up without smoothing them too much for texture. I also stamped the acorn a few times on brown cardstock and colored the tops with a brown Copic marker. I then used 2 circle Nesties to cut a ring of kraft cardstock to give me a base for the wreath and then glued the leaves and acorns on. I added a little bow of rustic twine, then stuck the wreath to the kraft base with foam boosters. Finally I stamped a sentiment from Papertrey Ink and added a couple little gemstones.

For my second card, I just had to use the squirrel:



I stamped him right on the kraft base and gave him a little shadow with a W-1 Copic marker. For the leaf border, I masked the area with sticky notes then stamped the leaves and acorn all across. Next I punched holes and hand sewed the rustic twine on either side, knotting the ends on the front for fun. I added two super skinny scalloped strips on either side and a rub on sentiment.

I loved the look of my second card so much, I did another project with all the same materials, but this time I made a gift holder card shaped like a tote bag:


A little shot of the inside to show it really does hold a gift card:


I designed the card myself with my new favorite Make the Cut software and cut it out with my Cricut. The little tag is a Quickutz die and I did the sentiment with a little alpha set from Papertrey.

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