Verve Divas Inspiration Hop - May 2014

Hi Everyone!

Welcome to Verve's May Diva Inspirations Hop. It's the 5th of the month and that means it's hopping time! This month we've got a fabulous challenge that's sure to put a string in your step! So in addition to a comment prize hidden along the hop, you can play along with the challenge and link up your creation for a chance to win another prize!

Our April challenge is Font Focus:

Fancy fonts are all the rage! Let your inner wordsmith shine and make a gorgeous sentiment (or two or three!) the focus of your card. Whether you draw inspiration from the graphic or take some poetic license of your own, just flash us some fonts!

Every single Verve stamp set could be used for this challenge because Julee is the master of fonts!! I love all the different fonts that she has used in creating all the different Verve stamps! For my project today, I created a card using the beautiful stamp set called Joyful Blooms from Verve stamp sets.

 I love all the gorgeous blooms and the sweet curve of the sentiments in this set. I mixed this set with the sentiment from the Making A Statement stamp set from - I love the  "xoxo" sentiments and stamped them in a line with different inks and ran it in a strip across the bottom of the flowers:

I stamped the inside of the card and colored one or two of the flowers on the inside as well for more of a finished feel (something that I always mean to do, but sometimes skip :) 

Here is a close up of the flowers - I layered the flowers ontop of each other - some were paper pieced from the DP and others were colored in with copics - I love this mix of DP and colors together - feels like spring!!!

Card Ingredients:

Stamps: Joyful Blooms and Making A Statement from Verve stamp sets

Papers: My Mind's Eye

Inks: Memento Tuxedo Black, Rose Red, Bahama Blue and Bamboo Green and copics

Accessories: turquoise grosgrain, bling, foam dimensionals, EK success scallop border, corner rounder and sponger

I loved playing with these stamp sets and can't wait to see what this amazing team has created!!  Need a little inspiration? Check out the blogs linked below to see what the other Divas did with the challenge! It's sure to be a treat, and speaking of treats, we've got a prize for one lucky commenter along the hop! Check out the Verve Blog today for all the prize info and deadlines, and a little bit about our brand new Diva!

	1. Julee	9. Susan
	2. Amy	10. Chaitali
	3. Anya	11. Stacey
	4. Betty	12. Maureen
	5. Karen	13. Marisa
	6. Sankari	14. Andrea
	7. Sarah	14. Charmaine
	8. Sony	14. Christyne

Check out our May special...

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

hugs,

Sankari :)

Taylored Expressions: Sneak Peeks - Day One

Happy Friday Everyone,

YAYAY! Its time for a new release at Taylored Expressions!!!

Welcome to the first day of sneak peeks for the April release of two new stamp sets plus a whole lot of amazing new products over at Taylored Expressions!! I am soooo excited to be able to show you some samples from Taylor's newest release called Fresh Flowers from her Whimsical Wishes line. This set is really an incredible assortment of flowers and containers that are just amazing to color and put together in different ways.

I love the versatility of the sentiments in this stamp set and for today's sneak peek I decided to create my Mother's Day Cards for my wonderful mother and mother-in-law (and if either one of you are reading this - you can pretend to be surprised :) love you both!!) . For both cards, I used the Mother's Day Key Ingredient's kit - this kit is absolutely wonderful and has beautiful heavy cardstock with coordinating Designer paper (double sided) with coordinating ribbon and rhinestones and flowers - it makes making a card so much easier because everything is right there.

A Card for my Wonderful Mother

My mother adores flowers - she just loves loves loves anything that is bright and that is blooming. And she is an amazing gardner - I am always amazed by how she can create a mini greenhouse in our patio at home - and no matter how many plants she gives me for our home here... they invariable succumb to my lack of green thumb-ness :). So for this little card and gift set is for my wonderful mother! I used Julee's beautiful sketch from Mojo Monday#80 for this card .

I also made a little packet of petite marigold seeds with a matching marigold-ish pot (marigolds are hugely popular in India - its such a happy bright and cheery flower isn't it?) I used the same papers from the Mother's Day kit and also used some Flower Soft for the flowers in the planter... it gives such a wonderful feel and texture to the project. I used a little dot of velcro to close the packet.

Here is a picture of the complete little gift set for my mother... I can't wait to see these marigolds bloom... it will be like our gardens in India :)

Card Details: (I will go thru and edit all these with the link to Taylor's store after the release on Sunday)

Paper: Mother's Day Key Ingredients and Choice Buttercream Cardstock

Stamps: Fresh Flowers

Ink: Stampin Up! Old Olive

Accessories: All accessories from the ribbon to the rhinestones are in the Mother's Day Key Ingredients Kit - other supplies include: velcro dot, corner rounder, SU! Scallop punch, SU! Circle punch, flower soft, crimper, Pebbles Pearlescent Chalks, Taylor's Tiny Twinkles and liquid pearls

Special Ingredient: Flower Soft on the planter on the seed packet (more on that on Sunday!)

A card for my wonderful Mother-in-Law

My second card is for my wonderful mother-in-law who I love to eat chocolates with! It is just so much fun to snack on a few pieces here and there as we chat and have some tea - its always funny to see how bar of chocolate suddenly disappears :) So for my gift set to my mother-in-law who also has a beautiful garden - I thought I could create a little card and coordinating gift set full of her favorite sweets: maple fudge! YUM!

I used Taylor's beautiful sketch #42 for this card and had a lot of fun putting together some more of the elements in this awesomely versatile stamp set into this card:

Card Details for the Card and the Gift set:

Paper: Mother's Day Key Ingredients Kit and Choice Buutercream cardstock

Stamps: Fresh Flower stamp set from Taylored Expressions! Woo-hoo!!!

Ink:Old Olive SU!

Accessories: All accessories from the ribbon to the rhinestones are in the Mother's Day KeyIngredients Kit - other supplies include: corner rounder, SU! Circle punch, vellum paper and liquid pearls

I cut out all the window frames in the window set and then put a piece of vellum behind it for the look of transparency. I cut out all the flowers and adhered them with dimensionals. The window and the window box were also popped up on dimensionals.

Here is the little gift set that I created for her using the matching coordinating papers and ribbon from the Mother's Day Key ingredients kit. You have to check out all the amazing Favor Boxes that Taylor has in her store - they are just amazingly wonderful to have on hand - because they are already cut out and scored - they can be assembled and decorated quickly and in just minutes you have a coordinating gift set :)

I have to tell you that it was hard to create this little set and not eat all the yummy goodies in it!! I might have to refill it before Mother's Day! Lol!!! Here is a picture of the Mother's Day gift set for my mother-in-law:

Well, I hope you had fun checking out these samples as much as I did putting it together !!!!

And speaking of awesome - you have to go and check out my amazing fellow DT members from Taylor's Baker's Dozen:

Ana Wohlfahrt
Donna Baker
Jodi Collins
Jen del Muro
Dawn Easton
Laura Fredrickson
Karen Giron
Charmaine Ikach
Denise Marzec
Karen Motz

and of course! Taylor VanBruggen

Thank you for visiting me in my litter coner :)
sending you all LOTS of sunshine!!!

Sankari :)

PS - My fellow DT member Laurie Schimdlin is sick with the stomach flu and was unable to play along with us for the sneak peeks - but I know she would love it if you stopped by and wished her a speedy recovery!

PPS - Head on back over here tomorrow morning for Day Two of sneak peeks! All I have to say... is this next set is just awesome!