Simon Says Stamp: Falling For You MEGA Hop!

Hey hey! I’m so happy to be hopping today in celebration of the new Falling for You release from Simon Says Stamp! This is one heck of a MEGA hop, with so many awesome stampers. I feel so lucky to be among them all and that I get to call them friends.

Simon Says Stamp: Falling For You

If you are just now joining us or you find any broken links, you can head back to the start at Simon Says Stamp. If you’ve been hopping along, you should have arrived here from the amazing Sandy Allnock’s blog — wait until you see what she’s made! LOVE.

Prizes

Before we get going too much further I wanted to let you know that each stop on the hop — yes, including this one! — will receive a Simon Says Stamp Prize pack randomly selected by Simon on April 28. So the more hops you visit, the more chances you have to win. Are they generous or what? And this really is a MEGA hop, too! Wow.

Mega Hug

Since we are having a MEGA Hop, I decided to make a card for Heidi with a MEGA Hug! Heidi is the owner of SSS and she is just the best. Here’s my card:

I thought I’d walk you through my thought process as I made the card :)

I started out by stamping “MEGA HUG” using the new Dotted Alphabet set on regular white cardstock — I gotta tell ya, this set just rocks. And Heidi sent me the matching numbers too — you can buy them in a bundle here.

Then I stamped the cute bunny from the Baby Party Animals set. (Alert: There’s also a matching set of dies! YES.) I used my MISTI to line up the heart — I just got mine and I’m really loving it. I’d heard about the MISTI before but never really “got it” until I had a chance to see one in action and give it a try myself. After that I was sold! Here, I just put the un-inked heart right on the cardstock where it wanted it, closed the lid, inked it up and stamped. That’s what I’m talking about.

See how the lines on the bunny are thicker than the dotted alphabet? Well, I like all the line widths on my projects to be the about the same. So, I decided to make the lines on the dots thicker by watercoloring them. I reached for my peerless watercolors since they stay so vibrant.

If you’ve never used peerless watercolors before, they are a film of pure color that you can pick up with a brush and then color away. I keep mine in a little bag and I love to take them with me while traveling. So far they’ve been to Quebec, San Francisco, all over Texas, Ohio, and points between.

I put white stickers on the front of mine and scribble a swatch of color on there so that I can see them better since you can’t always tell what they’ll come out like just by looking at them.

I also like to scribble a little on a scrap of paper while I’m working so that I can see how much color I have on the brush. Sometimes I can’t bear to throw this little scrap away and I put it in my journals. But this time? Yeah I popped it on the card!

I added a few polka dots with a black sharpie to go with the dots in the letters. I really think we stampers should feel free to add our own little touches to our cards like this — something I learned when I got to take a class with Ashley Goldberg. She’s one of my heroes. See my fangirl-pinterest-board here. :)

And then! The whole theme of Falling for You + dots came together in my mind and I decided to make it look like hugs were falling out of the heart! Kinda like magic pixie dust.

I also added some clear wink of stella to the letters and the heart to give it that subtle little something. It’s hard to capture with the camera but I hope you can imagine it.

Here’s a look back at the finished project. I wanted to keep it clean + simple so I finished it off with some black twine. That was it.

Okay, enough from me — on with the hop!

Hop On

Your next stop on the hop is Lorraine Aquilina’s blog. You all are gonna love this — she made not one but THREE cards! Remember, you can always head back to the start at Simon Says Stamp.

Thanks so much to Heidi for asking me to join in the fun and for all the awesome stampy goodies.

Big huge MEGA hugs all around! xo

Updated: The lucky winners have all been announced over HERE at Simon Says Stamp. My winner is Zubaida, yay! Simon will have your goodie bag on the way. Thanks so much to everyone who hopped along with us and left comments — I really enjoyed reading them, one and all!