New Bud and Vases Set by Melanie

Have you had a chance to see the sneak peeks of the new, fabulous set by Melanie Muenchinger for Gina K Designs? It is fabulous!

Melanie Muenchinger is releasing a companion to her "A Year of Flowers" called "Buds and Vases", a die cut stamp set filled with brand new flowers and containers, this Thursday night, September 30, at 10 PM CST from Gina K Designs! Be sure to check out her sneak preview of the set on her blog and enter for a chance to win the set!

Here is just one of the beautiful creations she made for the previews. Isn't this gorgeous? I love the bright colors and great coloring she did on this.

This is a must-have set because it goes with so many other sets. The possibilities are endless! Take a look at all the fabulous samples on Melanie's blog and then take a quick hop through the design team's sneak peeks. 

Enjoy!

CSS Alumni Inspiration Blog Hop

You most likely came here from the blog of Karen Knegten so you know that the Center Stage Spotlight Design Team Alumni are having an inspiration blog hop tonight. (If you didn't come here from Karen's blog and would like to jump on the blog hop from the start, go to here on Stamp TV to join.) The inspiration for the hop is this delicious photo!

Don't those cupcakes look divine! Made me hungry the whole time I was looking at them for this hop! Yum! I didn't eat the photo but I did make this card.

As you can see, I was inspired by the colors and the swirls. It wasn't until I was uploading the photo of the cupcakes tonight that I realized the photo was called "brown wedding cupcakes," which is a coincidence since my card is a wedding card!

Here are the ingredients for the card:
Paper: Gina K Designs Pure Luxury Chocolate Brown, Innocent Pink, and White
Stamps: Grand Damask and Fanciful Tags
Cuttlebug Embossing Folder: Textile
Spellbinders: Fancy Tags
Ink: Stampin' Up - Pirouette Pink and Memento - Rich Cocoa
Miscellaneous: Ribbon - Stampin' Up; Pearls - Gina K Designs; Lace Punch - Martha Stewart

Now hop along to the blog of Melissa Cash to see what inspired her from the photo. Enjoy! Thanks for stopping by!

Gina K Design Team Challenge

The design team challenge over at Gina K Design's tonight is to create a card based on a favorite fall memory. I love fall and all the things about it -- the colors, the smells, apples, pumpkins, and the mood to bake again. (I don't like to bake during the summer months when it is warm but fall snaps me right back to it!). For many years when my kids were little we ventured out to the apple and pumpkin farm just a little way south of where we live. We would pick apples and then let the kids pick out their pumpkins for Halloween. When my youngest son was about two years old he thought pumpkins were the best thing ever! I'm not sure why they intrigued him so much, maybe it was the color or their round shape, but he adored them. There was one small problem, however, he couldn't say pumpkin! He called them "kumpkies" and to this day we still call them that at our house! It was so adorable to hear him call the pumpkins "kumpkies" and when we went to the pumpkin farm he was just thrilled to see so many of them in one place. We have picture of him sitting in a farm wagon filled with pumpkins and he is just as happy as can be! What a sweet, precious memory of my boy who is now on the verge of becoming a teenager. Despite being almost 13, he still enjoyed going apple picking last weekend and is waiting to go back for a pumpkin or two!

Here is the card I made to go with the "kumpkie" memory.

Supplies used for this card include:

Paper: Gina K Pure Luxury Ivory for the base and focal image; Pure Luxury Chocolate Brown and Pumpkin Spice.
Patterned Paper: Imaginisce Apple Cider
Stamps: Gina K Designs: Pumpkins - Signs of Autumn and Leaves - Autumn Beauty
Ink: Memento Cocoa Brown; Ranger Distress Ink Spiced Marmalade; Copics
Miscellaneous: Flower Soft Autumn and pop dots

I hope you enjoyed my fall memory tonight and I hope you are making lots of autumn memories of your own during this beautiful season.

Another CSS Alumni Blog Hop

Once again it is time for another blog hop featuring Stamp TV Center Stage Spotlight Design Team Alumni. I am hoping you arrived here from the blog of the super talented Karen Knegten. I'm sure you were awed by the gorgeous creation she shared tonight!

Since you came from Karen's blog you probably already know that our "challenge" for tonight's blog hop was to create our cards using fall colors since that beautiful season is fast approaching! The colors for tonight are Orange, Red, Brown, and ONE Neutral Color from the following: White or Ivory. I chose to use Gina K Designs Pure Luxury cardstock in Pumpkin Spice (I love that color!), Cranberry Tart, Chocolate Brown, and Ivory. I had a piece of designer paper in my hand to use on this card but decided that I would go more simple and just use the beautiful colors so here is the result.

The images are from the beautiful fall stamp set by Rupa Shevde for Gina K Designs called So Grateful. I colored the images with Copics and sponged around them with Distress Ink in Rusty Hinge. The sentiment is also from that set. The piece of Pumpkin Spice cardstock is embossed with the Sizzix embossing folder from Stampin' Up called Square Lattice. The cool Jute Ribbon is from Gina K Designs -- isn't it just perfect for a fall card?

I'm really enjoying making cards with fall stamps and colors as the first hints of autumn are beginning to appear here in Wisconsin. I think the fall colors are among my favorites to work with when I'm making cards; how about you?  While you are thinking about that, hop on over to the blog of Melissa Cash called Inklinations -- isn't that a clever name?! I'm sure she has something beautiful wating for you!

Thanks for stopping by tonight! Don't forget to visit StampTV when you are done hopping to see what other great inspiration you can find.

Center Stage Design Team Alumni Blog Hop

Tonight is another blog hop of the Stamp TV Center Stage Spotlight Design Team Alumni organized by Carolina Buchting. Carolina challenged us to create cards for tonights hop using only the following items:

• One Neutral color for your card base: White, Ivory, Black, Brown or Kraft 
• Two different colors of card stock
• One patterned paper
• Three buttons
• One color of ribbon
• As little or as many images as you'd like

Here is the card I created (and now that I am posting it I think I goofed and used one extra color of cardstock! Yikes! Does the ivory layer count since my images are on it?! Oops!)

Well, despite the fact that I guess I didn't quite follow the rules, I hope you like it! It got me in the mood to start making some Christmas cards. Maybe I'll actually get my cards done early this year!

Supply List:

Paper: Pure Luxury Cranberry Tart, Moonlit Fog, Chocolate Kiss (base of card) and Ivory

Designer Paper: Cosmo Cricket Jitterbug

Buttons: Basic Grey Sultry and Sugared

Ribbon: Stampin' Up Chocolate Chip

Stamps: Gina K Designs Spirit of Christmas and Holiday Greetings

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Rhubarb Stalk, Rich Cocoa, London Fog, Bamboo Leaves and Distress Ink Antique Linen

Spica Pens in Gold and Lipstick were used to decorate the tree.

Now hop along to the blog of Melanie Muenchinger to see her creation for tonight's challenge (and see if she was a better rule follower than me! LOL!). Melanie always has fabulous cards, not to mention the gorgeous stamp sets she creates. Check out her latest set at Gina K Designs (after you finish the blog hop, of course!).

Thanks for visiting!

Design Team Alumni Blog Hop

All of the alumni from the Gina K Designs Center Stage Design Teams have been invited to participate in blog hop challenges and tonight is the second one. Thanks to Carolina Buchting for organizing these challenges and hops for us. Tonight she shared this photo with us and challenged us to use it as our inspiration for a card.

How fun is that?? I love all the great colors and the yummy treats! I'd love to get that box for my birthday! 

Here is the card it inspired me to create.

                                    

When I saw the picture of the treat box with the big spots of different colors, it immediately made me think of Melanie Muenchinger's latest stamp set from Gina K Design's Fun Year Round. I pulled it out and stamped the main circles image on Pure Luxury Sweet Mango cardstock in Memento Tuxedo Black. Then I stamped some of the circle designs inside the circles with Memento Tangelo ink. I punched circles from various paper scraps (I think they were SU Bermuda Bay, Pure Luxury Bubble Gum and Grass Green. I stamped designs on each of those as well. 

The cupcake, candle and party hat are from another set of Melanie's from Gina K Designs called Candles on Your Cake. I stamped them and cut them out, added some glitter and then popped them up on pop dots. The greeting on the white circle is from the Gina K stamp set called Holiday Greetings that I stamped using Memento Tangelo and SU Bermuda Bay inks. The buttons are from Basic Grey and the ribbon is SU Bermuda Bay as is the card base.

What a fun, cheery card to make, and I hope someone will enjoy receiving it as well. Enjoy the rest of the hop by moving on to Linda Payne's blog to see what beautiful creation she was inspired to make.

Thanks for stopping by!

Gina K Designer Challenge

Tonight's design team challenge is to think of a favorite summer time memory and use it as your inspiration for creating a card made with one (or several) of the stamp sets released in May. For all the specific details on how to enter your card in Gina's Design Team challenge, please visit GinaK's blog.

I made two cards for tonight's challenge. The first card was based on all of my childhood memories of going to the lake when I was a kid. There was nothing better than having long, sweet summer days to dig in the sand and swim. We did a lot of camping and visiting my grandparents' cottage when I was growing up and that was the epitome of summer for me, especially since I endured the long winters of northern Wisconsin! While I don't camp anymore, I still love the beach and I still feel like that is the height of summer when I can sit in the sun at the beach (not to mention it makes a pretty good respite in the middle of winter when I can get away to warm, sunny beaches!).

I made this card with Pure Luxury Red Hot paper as the base. The fun patterned paper came from the April card kit that came with the Gina K Designs stamp set Quite a Catch. I used a piece of the new Pure Luxury Grass Green paper and another piece of the Red Hot paper under the focal images. I stamped the pail with the shovels and the beach ball, colored them with Copics, and popped them up on dimensionals. The waves are pieces of designer paper that also came with the April card kit onto which  I put some Frosted Lace Stickles to give the waves some sparkle. The "sand" is Flower Soft. It is called sand and it definitely looks like sand. I colored the sky with pencils and OMS. The sentiment is stamped on Pure Luxury Wild Dandelion and cut out with a nestability scalloped circle.

The second card I made is a simple, sunny and summery card. Flowers and bright sunshiny colors have always meant summer to me. My grandmothers and my mother always had a lot of flowers in their yards in the summertime. I suppose since we lived in northern Wisconsin they filled their gardens with as many flowers and colors as they could since the summers were short and they wanted to cram as much brightness as possible into the brief warm months we had! So, my card is based on the memory and joy of summer flower gardens, which I still love!

The card is made with Pure Luxury Sweet Mango paper and then layered with a really yummy, sparkly patterned paper from the DCWV mat stack, Citrus. If you haven't looked at the mat stacks from DCWV, take a peek; you will love them! This one has some papers that are glittery and, oh, they are gorgeous! The flowers and the sentiment are from the Stamp TV Kit - Enjoy the Sunshine. I used Twinkling H20s to color the flowers. It doesn't show up on the photo but the flowers have some shimmer to them from the H20s. I don't use them very often but when I do I always like the results and wonder why I don't pull them out more often! LOL!

Thanks for stopping by my blog tonight. Now stop by these participating GinaK Design Team member's blogs for their projects for tonight's hop:

• Jessica Fick
• Nina Brackett
• Theresa Momber
• Melanie Muenchinger
• Tami Mayberry
• Cathy Tidwell
• Lee Murphy
• Donna Baker
• Kurtis Amundson
• Carolyn King
• Emily Giovanni
• Erika Martin