4th Birthday Blog Hop for Topflight Stamps

Update - thank you to everyone who left so many lovely comments on the entries to the Topflight Stamps 4th Birthday Blog Hop. Each of the designers randomly chose a winner and mine is Clintine Steele! Congratulations Clintine - please contact me at buttonscraft@btinternet.com to claim your prize code.

Hi everyone and welcome. Today is a special day for Topflight Stamps as they reach their 4th birthday!!! To celebrate they are hosting a Birthday Blog Hop, showcasing birthday cards created by a team of Guest Designers using the unique products available at Topflight Stamps. Please hop along with us and see all the beautiful talent from this group of amazing designers! You should have arrived here from Ericka Strange's blog.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a birthday celebration without prizes! Topflight Stamps is giving one lucky winner a $100 Gift Certificate to the store. But wait, there is more, each stop on the hop has an additional $25 Gift Certificate up for grabs for some lucky commenter. For a chance to win, make sure to visit every stop on the hop and leave a comment by March 29th. Winners will be announced on the Topflight Stamps blog on March 31st. Good Luck!.

The birthday card I've created is based around one of the new Sara Naumann stamp sets from PaperArtsy together with an older set and one of her new stencils. A few elements have been layered together on a stencilled background to create a collage with a feel of Spring.

Here's a quick tutorial to show how this card came together, starting with the purple flower in the centre. It's good to keep a stash of Gel Plate prints in reserve when you need to whip up a card and I had one pulled on thin tissue with a predominance of 'Spanish Mulberry' Fresco Finish paint visible. As shown below I stamped the flower collage image from Sara Naumann's stamp set ESN47 onto the tissue with embossing ink and covered those areas with clear embossing powder. Once heat set the tissue was painted with 'Heavy Cream' Fresco Finish paint and rubbed over with damp tissue just before the paint dried; in this way the image of the flower and the script around it could be 'revealed' in a slightly non-uniform way. To remove the shine left by the embossing simply add a layer of clear gesso, then cut away any parts you don't want to appear on the final card.

Moving on to the leaves I pulled another Gel Plate print onto tissue using mainly 'Zucchini' Fresco Finish paint with a dash of 'Seaglass' Fresco Finish paint. Another of the images from stamp set ESN47 was stamped over it before I turned over to the back. Wanting to reverse the leaves I glued some card to the back of the tissue, stamped the leaves (again from stamp set ESN47) and cut them out ready for the next steps. Yet another piece of Gel Plate printed tissue was added to a tea stained blank postcard onto which I re-stamped the flower collage in a deep brown permanent ink. The mulberry flower tissue piece, leaves and a piece of single ply tissue coloured with 'Violetta' Infusions were layered over the top ready for placement on the card with a little hand stitching for good measure (and extra texture).

With lots going on in the foreground of the card it was important to keep the background relatively simple. After brayering and brushing on various blue Fresco Finish paints I applied PaperArtsy Grunge Paste through Sara Naumann's PS219 stencil, and then once dry scraped a little more across the top. Cut into a square the stencilled paper was inked around the edges and distressed before being matted onto layers of complimentary coloured card, with yet another piece of coordinating purple Gel Plate printed tissue added on top. It's easy to pick up on the dotty design below by running a brayer over the top to apply a little white gesso.

To finish the card the main floral panel was matted onto a piece of vellum and dimensional foam tape before being stuck onto the background. You'll see from the close ups below that the little rectangular element in the floral collage was further enhanced by being stamped onto a contrasting piece of card, fussy cut and glued in place. The birthday sentiment, stamped onto more tea stained card, comes from Sara Naumann's stamp set ESN37 by PaperArtsy. After being edged with ink and distressed it was mounted onto a piece of coordinating card and layered over the floral panel.

That's all from me. Follow along with the rest of the Birthday Blog Hop by hopping over to Autumn Clark's blog here and if you get lost you can always start at the Topflight Stamp Blog. And don't forget to comment on each of the blog posts to be in with a chance of winning!

• Topflight Stamps
• Lisa Hoel
• Jennie Atkinson
• Cornelia Wenokor
• Karen Bearse
• Dina Kowal
• Kathi Rerek
• Connie Mercer
• Ericka Strange
• Jenny Marples (you are here)
• Autumn Clark
• Rachel Greig
• Gwen Lafleur
• Annette Allen