I have a cheering squad right here next to me.  My husband Bob appreciates every thing I do.  He critiques carefully... LOL.  He makes me want to keep trying and he tells me that my cards are the "best" even when they clearly are not.  He buys me ink, paper, stamps and more ink, paper and stamps.  He is a wonderful man.

I have my own cheering squad right here next to me.  Thank you Bob!

I attempted this without the embossing powder that they used in class.  I have some colored glitter and a glue pad I had never used so I stamped with the glue and poured on glitter.  I am pleased with the end result but the picture doesn't do it justice.

Day six of Stretch Your Stamps 2 was filled with flower stamping...

I had to make a 6 x 6 card because I wanted it all.  Stamped light and then watercolored using Distress inks because I have no watercolor set here.

I think this is from day two of classes.  I must say I am a bit behind.  This was a background stamp that looks like a bandana.  I put four colors of distress ink on my craft sheet, sprayed water on my stamp and placed it on the ink.  Then I gave a little twist and this is what I got.  The background is a second generation stamping of the first.  Howdy came from my Silhouette and it was a first for me.  Not only did I type the text in and cut I also welded one HOWDY together.  Ahhh... what a good day.

I have been playing around today making a card using the cut up pieces of rainbow background stamped image I created during the first class.  This is what I came up with for card number one.

Day 9 of Stretch Your Stamps 2 taught how to stamp on dark card stock.  I used a deep purple card cut and folded vertically.  Then I embossed an oval shape and stamped all around it using the leaf stamps from the WPlus9 stamp set.  The first thing you have to do is stamp the images using white pigment ink.  Then, you use colored pigment to stamp over the white.  If you don't do the white step you cannot see the color, it just looks like a wet spot.  I used the With Sympathy die from Simon Says Stamp.  Add three little diamonds and voila.  It was a lot of fun and something I had not done before.

Today for class number 9 of Stretch Your Stamps 2 the lesson was, use your flower stamps in a new way.  I totally copied Julie Ebersole's card.  She did use a different stamp set with smaller leaves and flowers but I copied the general idea.  I HATE fussy cutting.  God Bless Die Cuts!!  The smaller leaves would have been better but I think it worked out ok.  I used the WPlus9 Spring Blooms Stamp set available at SimonSaysStamp or EllenHutson.


The second card was an experiment and it came out so so.  I used the same Spring Blooms set but this time I used glossy paper and pigment inks.  

   
Day 8 of Stretch Your Stamps 2 was all about bold graphic stamps.  I have no bold graphic stamps, except for two cats and a tiny heart.  All of my bold stamps are at my other house and so... I made do.  I realize that the reason I did not pack up my bold stamps is because I have always hated them!  Grrr!  I could never get the ink to fully cover the image and it was always blotchy.  I don't seem to have the inks that start out blotchy and dry smooth.   But today or yesterday in class I learned something very important... I can re-stamp over the already inked image if I use my stamp positioner. What a revelation!  I tried it with all of my dye inks and it works like a charm.  I have to go back to class and thank the person who mentioned that technique because it really made all of the difference.  I LOVE these classes.. Online Card Classes