love-a-duckie: Lotus blossom

At last I have had a chance to play with some of my new stamp sets this evening.

This beauty is one of the sale-a-bration collection and the only way you can get your hands on it, is as a free gift when you place an order of £45 or more. Between now and the end of March, every time you place a qualifying order, you can choose one of the lovely gifts from the sale-a-bration catalogue - and they are beautiful.

This stamp set is a three step stamp set. There are three stamps that you stamp on top of each other, either in different shades of ink, or with different intensity of ink.

I have used rose red ink for this card. I inked up the smallest image and stamped that onto a piece of white card. I then took the second stamp, inked it up, but then stamped first onto scrap paper before stamping over the first image (this is called stamping off). For the third stamp, I stamped twice onto scrap paper before stamping over the image. Each of the stamps has a little tab on it to help you align your image. The stem is a 2 step process and I used garden green ink for mine and followed through by stamping the sentiment again in garden green ink.

You can have endless fun with this stamp trying different colour combinations. Facebook and Pinterest is already full of lovely examples of cards people have made and Stampin' Up have produced a video, so you can see the process in action. Check it out here.

I finished my card by inking the edges with rose red ink before matting onto garden green card. I then used my new happy heart embossing folder from the seasonal catalogue to emboss a mat of rose red card. I tied a length of linen thread around the side of the mat and tied a bow before attaching this to a crumb cake notecard. I finished with the lotus blossom topper. This image really doesn't need much more. That doesn't mean to say you couldn't stamp lots and create a bouquet - perhaps another day.

I think this stamp is going to prove very popular and there are so many beautiful things in the new spring summer catalogue, that finding £45 of goodies for a wishlist isn't hard - and if your wishlist reaches £90 then you can have 2 things!