A*Muse Blog Hop + giveaway!

Please join me in celebrating the 9th birthday of a super special, super delightful stamp company: A*Muse! Their stamps always make me — and the recipients of my cards — smile!

So you can imagine how honored I was when Heather asked me to join in the A*Muse 9th birthday celebration + Everything’s Rosy release blog hop. But then, when I got the stamps in the mail I jumped up and down with pure joy — they remind me of a prairie rose scrambling over an old wooden fence — so sweet!

I just love solid stamps like the Wild Rose and the Wild Rose Branch because they’re perfect for adding shading with good old colored pencils. You just can’t go wrong — it’s so simple.

Stamp the wild rose and wild rose branches with ink — I like to use chalk inks for this technique (full supplies for everything listed below).  Then start adding red and brown pencils to the parts of the petals that you want to be the darkest, then blend with pink and white.

Then for the leaves, start out by adding a darker green and then go over it with a lighter green and white.  Everything will be rosy in no time at all. :)

Supplies: A*Muse wild Rose, wild rose branch, and merci stamps, white pretty pearls, green kitchen paper, red petite gingham paper.  The faux bois paper in the background is also by A*Muse — love it. Prismacolor pencils in white, pink, scarlet lake, moss green, apple green and brown.  Tim Holtz distress ink in antique linen and tea dye (to add the distressing to the edges).  Spellbinders large labels Nestabilities die cut.  Colorbox rose petals chalk ink for the rose, chestnut roan for “merci”, and Hero Arts grass green chalk ink for the rose branch.

Now then, it’s A*Muse’s birthday, but they’re giving away presents to all of YOU! How sweet and generous is that? To win the Wild Rose and Merci stamps, just leave a comment on this post. A random winner will be announced on on Monday, May 10th on the A Muse blog.

Now, on to the next stop in the hop — the talented Lexi Daly! Pssst, she has a giveaway too, as do all the gals in the hop!  So the more blogs you visit, the more giveaways you can enter = the more chances you have to win!  If you have any problems hopping around you can always head back to the A*Muse blog for a complete list of direct links to all the participants

Happy hopping, and mega HUGE Happy 9th birthday hugs to Linda, Heather, Julie, and everyone at A*Muse!

Merci,