Stamp of the Week - Sweet Strawberry

Hey there, stampers! It's week number 1 of Stamp of the Week (SOTW) and our first featured stamp is the luscious Sweet Strawberry! It's a sixteen piece photopolymer (two-step) stamp set and has a coordinating Strawberry Builder punch that you can "bundle" and get 10% off. I'm slowly adding to the 40 birthday card stash for my daughter's birthday, so of course this had to be a birthday card!

Originally I had planned to stamp the entire background with the flowers (Smoky Slate, stamped off), but it looked a little too plain, so I added the Stitched Lace panel and that was enough. Instead of using the filler stamp for the strawberry and leaves, I opted to color with Stampin' Blends. I like being able to add shading to the images.

And, as always, I just had to add some bling! Those Red Rhinestone Basic Jewels are the perfect accent to the red strawberry. And, if you've read this far, I have to show you a funny... I obviously hadn't had enough coffee when I made this card this morning. I kept thinking, "How odd that SU made the strawberry pear-shaped." Yeah, I had a do-over. *smacks forehead* At least I only had to do the berry, not the whole card.

Product List

Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock

Poppy Parade 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock

Tuxedo Black Memento Ink Pad

Smoky Slate Classic Stampin' Pad

Mossy Meadow Stampin' Blends Combo Pack

Poppy Parade Stampin' Blends Combo Pack

Cherry Cobbler Stampin' Blends Combo Pack

White Stampin' Chalk Marker

Stampin' Cut & Emboss Machine

Stitched Lace Dies

Stitched Shapes Dies

Red Rhinestone Basic Jewels

Multipurpose Liquid Glue

Stampin' Dimensionals

Fruit Basket Appreciation

I didn't think I was going to get this bundle when I first saw it. But, as has happened so many times before, once I saw the cute things other people were doing with it, this little bundle ended up in my cart. How did that happen?

I crack myself up, sometimes. Anyhoo, on this chilly day, I thought some strawberries would be lovely. Sadly, the ones in the store aren't ripe and have next to no flavor, so I'll just stick to stamped berries and dream of the strawberry season coming soon.

I don't know what possessed me to make the frames look like that! I'm calling it "twisted frame" LOL. I was going to use just one frame, offset a little bit. It wasn't "enough" so I added the second one. Then I started playing around with the layers, and thought weaving them in and out would be kind of cute and funky. Well, different, anyway.

If you are ever at a loss for color inspiration, I suggest grabbing a piece of Designer Series Paper and using that as inspiration. I started with the Tutti-Frutti DSP and went from there. Real Red, Garden Green, and Lemon Lime Twist do look awesome together!

Product List

Fruit Basket Photopolymer Bundle

Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock

Real Red 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock

Lemon Lime Twist 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock

Tutti-Frutti 6" X 6" (15.2 X 15.2 Cm) Designer Series Paper

Basic Black Archival Stampin’ Pad

Real Red Classic Stampin' Pad

Garden Green Classic Stampin' Pad

Big Shot

Stitched Shapes Framelits Dies

Real Red 1/8" (3.2 Mm) Solid Ribbon

Strawberries...(Copic Creations Challenge No. 8)

... are just about my favorite fruit, along with peaches, blueberries, cherries, grapes, apples, plums, melons, anything citrus.......aw heck, let's just include everything except bananas! :)

So I was delighted when Flourishes released this stamp set, featuring STRAWBERRIES! They look so yummy, and are so yummy to color with my yummy Copic Sketch markers. *grin*

Purely by coincidence, this week's Copic Creations Challenge is Botanicals, and irony of ironies, the sponsor this week is Flourishes! You'd think they planned to get that stamp set in my hands just in time to play, lol.

As soon as I got my order from Flourishes (a few days ago), I stamped out three of these using Memento Tuxedo Black on Stampin' Up! Whisper White cardstock and went to town on 'em!!!

After it was colored, I cut it out with a Nestabilities Large Deckled Rectangles die, then edged it with Copic YG17.

I used the Copic markers on the strawberry charm, purchased from the Hobby House, UK. That is also where I found the Papermania Pearl Brads. The filigree flower is from Flourishes Finishing Touches.

After running the bottom half of the SU Very Vanilla cardstock through the Cuttlebug with the Swiss Dots embossing folder, I added the red polka dot ribbon and "popped" the image using SU Stampin' Dimensionals for some depth. The card base is Stampin' Up! Real Red.

Copic colors used: Y0000, R14, R24, R27, R29, YG17, YG67, G20, W-1, W-3