An August Presence

Curiously, August is not only defined as the eighth month of the year.  It also has the distinction of being known as inspiration for dignity and grandeur.  (The things one can learn from Dictionary.com!)  So, of course, we felt compelled to expose our Second Tuesday Stampers to projects worthy of an adjective as impressive as August . . . and just have a look at these!

How could we live up to a month like this one?  Well, we stamped some Pleasant Poppies all decked out in Blendabilities, assembled a bag and a tag with a fringy tissue bloom, and heated up the place with a magnificent and shiny heat embossed Swallowtail. A little snip here and a little snip there topped off with some bling and we are on our way to magnificent.  Wow!  Just wow!  Most papers, inks, and accessories used in these projects are from Stampin’ Up! ™   

Free Handing Pleasant Poppies

When will Frenchie run out of videos?  We hope never!  We found this really simple, but over the top, impressive technique and ran with it.  Our Pleasant Poppies were getting lonely sitting in the drawer, so we pulled them out and teamed them up with Blendabilities.  It just seemed right!

Hand Cut Bordered Poppies Card

We hopped from Pinterest over to Frenchie's You Tube Channel to get a quick tutorial on Free Hand Two Layer Borders along with many other versions of the same.  It was almost too easy to create this really lovely card. Whisper White with some Calypso Coral were teamed up on this card, but the Blendabilities colors provide all kinds of inspiration for a field of flowers. We colored only a couple, but if you're non-minimalist be our guest and color away. Some simple layering, a greeting from And Many More, and some Dimensionals to pop up our hand cut portion got us more than excited about this card and the possibilities using this technique. Our Rhinestones got dolled up with color from our Blendabilities and, to quote one of our favorite women in the business . . . "Voila!"

Metamorphosis

How does this funny little fellow munching fennel in my garden



   turn into this?

  It goes something like this . . . 

And in our stamping world it ends up like this!

Silvery Swallowtail Card

Another true joy of late summer is the gift of butterflies transformed from their little caterpillar selves.  How appropriate that at the same time we were busy creating the metamorphosis from a plain piece of Lost Lagoon Card Stock to a beautiful Swallowtail Card, my garden was playing host to two voracious black swallowtail caterpillers.  What inspiration!  Silver Embossing Powder, a Gorgeous Grunge background, and a liberal sponging of Lost Lagoon, Hello Honey, and Night of Navy Inks gave us this sweet design.  We were frustrated--much like the The Very Hungry Caterpiller--in our attempt to get this just right, but finally settled on a version of a hand cut card edge that opens on the top to showcase our marvelous creature.  All papers, inks, and accessories used in this card are from Stampin’ Up! ™

A Bag, A Tag, and a Posie

Good things come in small packages . . . and in little bags with a handmade flair!  Since August is the month when the "flowers of the sun," start showing themselves in earnest here in Wisconsin, and since we really wanted to share our love for our Fringe Scissors with our fabulous stampers, we topped off our gift bag's tag with a pretty tissue pom pom flower that reminds us of the summer mums showing up all over town.



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Fringy Flowered Bag and Tag

We like Night of Navy with the bright yellow-green posie, but our stampers get to choose from some other pretty colored tissue paper to get just the affect they are looking for.  A Decorative Mask and a dash of ink applied with Sponge Daubers was all we needed to gussy up our White Mini Bag and the Scalloped Tag Topper Punch made it easy to spruce up our fun little Chalk Talk tag.  The ribbon is White Organza colored with Blendabilites.  We stapled the bag shut and our lovely little tag to it.  Adorned with some humble binder twine and pretty pearls, our creation is a little on the grunge side, but oh so impressive.  Most papers, inks, and accessories used in this card are from Stampin’ Up! ™