Essentials by Ellen October Release Blog Hop

Happy Sunday, friends!  I hope that you had a wonderful World Cardmaking Day yesterday!!

Today I am getting the privilege to do something I haven't before...I am participating in a blog hop featuring the latest Essentials by Ellen release!  There will be 4 mini hops throughout the week, and today marks the start of all the fun!  I think you are going to LOVE these new stamps & dies....they are amazing!!

You should have arrived here from Svitlana Shayevich's blog.  If you have gotten lost along the hop, or happened upon my blog and want to start from the beginning, then head back to the Ellen Hutson LLC blog.  I will link your next stop on the blog hop at the end of my post! :)

I decided to mainly work with the Thistle stamp set, and pulled my sentiment from the Snailed It stamp set.  Both of these stamp & die sets were designed by Julie Ebersole, and they work beautifully together!  You are going to love using them...I know that I did!

I have been hearing amazing things about distress oxide inks, and I'm excited to use them - but they haven't arrived yet!  So - I used the Ranger distress inks (all colors are linked below) I have on hand, and created a really beautiful background.  The colors are a bit nontraditional, but they have a lovely fall feel when paired with the gorgeous thistle stamps!  Once I was done with the inked panel, I spritzed it with white Heidi Swapp Color Shine, and it added a gorgeous layer of shimmer to the front!  You can kind-of see it in the photographs, but there is so much more pretty shimmer in person.

The sentiment is heat embossed on a banner cut from dark purple cardstock.  In order to keep a good exposure on the rest of the card, the purple cardstock photographed a little dark - so I just wanted to let you know the true color!

I had every intentions of there being some green in this card!  I inked a very subtle green onto the upper left & lower right corners, but because there was already some other color in both places - it turned more of a greyish brown.  And you know what?  I think I prefer it the way it is!  That is one of the things I love about cardmaking - it doesn't always go exactly as planned, and often works out better!

As always, feel free to let me know if you have any questions in the comments!  All of the newly released Essentials by Ellen products will be linked below, along with the other product I used to create this card for your shopping convenience.

Your next stop on blog hop is to Jennifer McGuire's blog!  Happy hopping, and have a wonderful Sunday!

For your shopping convenience, all products used are linked below.  {Includes affiliate linking where possible - this allows small compensation for me at no cost to you.  Never fear - I will only ever link to products that I truly love & use!}