Paper Garden – S1508 - CTMH Australiasian Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Hi and welcome aboard our Stamp of the month 

Australasian Close to My Heart Blog Hop. If you have arrived 

here from Doris Taylor's Creative Inspirations then you are in the 

right place. If you landed here by accident, no problem, please

join in by following the link at the end of this post.

The September Stamp of the month, Paper Garden, is such a lovely stamp set that you'll use over and over with themes of spring, gardens, the outdoors and weddings coming to mind. I'm sure you'll be able to think of more than that also.

This stamp set is also circuit compatible and uses the Artiste Collection. The red outlines indicate which shapes can be recut by your circuit, ensuring perfect shapes every time!

This stamp set is available exclusively throughout August for $27 - or yours for just $7.50 when you spend $75

Over here in the Midwest of WA it's wildflower season for us and this stamp set gave me the perfect chance to creative a few layouts for some photos that I've been meaning to put onto a page (or 3) for sometime - like since 2011! It also gave me the chance to play with a new technique that I've only recently come across myself ..... painting with our inks!

Yes you heard right - painting with our inks using your acrylic block and your blending pen! You will see from the photos below (feel free to click on any that you want to see on a larger scale) that I chose to stamp the images in whisper ink. The colours I decided I wanted to "paint" with for this occasion were thistle and pear, with further green highlights in topiary. 

I rubbed my block across the ink pad and then used my blending pen to pick up the ink and proceeded to colour accordingly, adding further layers of colour as I saw fit to create the tones in the flowers. Once I was happy with those I then added further highlights to the leaves by changing to the darker topiary ink.

These gorgeous strips became the main highlight of my layout!

Once I had matted them using thistle and pear cardstock I really felt it finished 

the strips off nicely and I decided I really didn't need to add much more.

The title block was created using the Keyboard Uppercase (in thistle) and 

Handwritten Print (in whisper) lettering stamp sets.

Now it was ready for my photos - and there you have it! 

 One page layout capturing the fun my children had playing in the wildflowers of the 

Midwest for the first time ..... they had a ball (apart from the very friendly flies)

Thanks so much for taking the time to have a look around - don't forget that this gorgeous stamp set, Paper Garden, is only available for the month of September from your CTMH Consultant. 

I'd really love you to leave a comment before you hop on over to Vandra's Virtual CTMH Craftroom 

to see the wonderful ideas she has to share with you.