Happy New Year and Happy Friday!! I took some time off to enjoy the holidays with my family and I hope you did, too. I did spend time in my stamping studio creating with some of the fabulous new products from the brand new Occasions catalog (which debuted today!!) that I preordered during December - I *love* this perk we demonstrators get!!

This week on the Sisters in Stamping blog we are featuring stamp sets from the Occasions catalog for our Fabulous Friday projects and I just had to share one I made using the new single stamp Blessed Easter (#133212, $11.95) and Hardwood (#133032, $17.95) background stamp. I absolutely love red tulips and wanted to be able to use this stamp for more than just Easter cards so I cut my stamp prior to mounting it to give me more versatility...

I mounted the flowers on one side of the wood block off-set like so with the sentiment sticker...

And the sentiment stamp on the other side with the tulips sticker like so...

Pretty cool, right?! And then I used Fall-to-Layout #203 from the Clean & Simple Stamping blog to design my card...

To take it a step further, I even embossed the tulips so they are raised - it's a little hard to see it in the photo but it is super-cool in real life! To create this look, use the smaller end of an embossing stylus (I just grabbed mine from my Simply Scored scoring tool) to outline what you want to pop (I did the petals of the flowers and the leaves) from the top of the paper on a foam pad. Next, flip the piece over and use the larger end of the embossing stylus to rub inside those lines which actually embosses the image. It is critical that you do all of this on a foam pad so there is some give... the Stampin' Pierce Mat is perfect for the job! To finish off the card, I added some additional texture with the Square Lattice impressions folder and my Big Shot to the Apothecary Accents framelit and some pearls.
I was pretty happy with the way this card turned out... hope you like it, too! For even more inspiration from the Occasions catalog, be sure and hop over to the Sisters in Stamping blog to see what Karla and Rachel came up with this week. Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend! I'll be spending mine at the pool... another swim meet weekend!!
To purchase any of the products used with today's project, please contact me to assist you with your order or place it online via my Stampin' Up! store. All online orders are eligible to choose a free single tutorial from THESE HERE as a "Thank You!"
Products used with today's project include:
Stamps: Blessed Easter, Hardwood, Petite Pairs
Paper: whisper white, wild wasabi, soft suede, real red
Ink: Jet black StazOn, soft suede, real red, wild wasabi
Markers: real red, wild wasabi
Accessories: Big Shot, Square Lattice impressions folder, Apothecary Accents framelits, Ovals Collection framelits, stampin' sponges, stampin' dimensionals, Pearl accent jewels, Simply Scored stylus, stampin' pierce mat
