MFT Stamps - You're Like a Sister to Me

Happy Monday, blog friends! I hope the start to your week has been a good one! My hubby has been on a business trip for a few days, so today he caught an early flight so he could get home sooner. Such a nice treat, considering I didn't think I'd be picking him up until this evening!

Now on to some crafty stuff - did you know that MFT Stamps is having a 2 day sale on their clear stamps?

 It's a great time to grab some sets that you've had your eye on at a great deal! 

I actually took advantage of a sale like this from MFT right before Layton was born, and needless to say...I never ended up getting to use those stamp sets. So today, I broke one of them out for my card. It is a sentiment set called "True Friends", which has already been discontinued from MFT, but I paired it with the newer "Painted Flowers" to freshen it up! {Seriously - one of my favorite things to do. I think it stems from the fact that I didn't have a chance to use my products during my pregnancies & subsequent losses.} I combined the most current MFT sketch & color challenges to create my card (linked below) - check it out!

To start, I cut & folded an A2 card from white heavyweight cardstock. I cut a piece of blue ombre paper slightly smaller, then adhered to the card front with foam. Then a cut  a strip of yellow striped paper & adhered it to the middle.(Just an FYI - the papers are old Glitz Design & My Mind's Eye papers, so they are not linked below. If you want to replicate this card, just use similar papers that are more current!)

Next I diecut the Stitched Tag-Corner Square STAX layers from yellow & white cardstock. Using my MISTI, I stamped the sentiment to the white layer in onyx black Versafine ink. Then I layered the sentiment layer to the yellow layer with foam dots, and adhered it to the middle of the card.

Then it was time to stamp & diecut the flowers & leaves. As you can see, I used a lot of them - I actually used every single floral/leaf stamp from the set, and most of them are multi-step stamps. In order to be efficient, I used my MISTI to stamp everything on 2 blocks of white heavyweight cardstock. To start I lined up the first flower layers & stamped in the coordinating colors (3 sets - 1 of each color.) Then I proceeded to do this with each flower layer. Next I did the same thing with the leaves that had 2 layers. And finally, I stamped the remaining single layer leaves in the leftover areas of the cardstock blocks.

By keeping the cardstock in the same section of your MISTI, you can easily flip the cardstock to stamp another set....then remove and add the second block in to finish. I stamped all of the flowers & leaves in under 10 minutes.

Next it was time to diecut them. I arranged the dies over the first set of flowers & leaves, then added washi tape so they were all stuck together. After cutting them out, I carefully pulled the dies up with the washi tape & layered them over the next. Because I stamped all layers with the exact spacing, it was easy to line up all the dies at once with the washi tape. The final set I cut were the grouping of single stamped leaves.

After everything was cut, I arranged & layered the flowers & leaves to opposite corners of the sentiment block on the card front. There isn't really a science to doing this...just fussed with them until they looked how I wanted. Once everything felt right, I accented them with a couple knots of gold thread & some jewels.

 The final step was painting the flowers with my Wink of Stella clear glitter pen. I took some images in direct sunlight so you can see them shimmer! {By the way = photographing anything in direct sun is a terrible no-no, unless you want to share some shimmer. I would NEVER advise doing this except for this purpose only. As you can see, direct sunlight throws of the color, and creates DEEP shadows.}

That is my card for today! I hope that you enjoyed it, and my written tutorial on creating it. If you have any questions at all, leave them in the comments & I will answer. Thanks for checking out my card today - I really appreciate it! :)

I used the amazing Catherine Pooler inks for my flowers & leaves (all linked below), and if you haven't tried them out...I HIGHLY suggest it. They stamp beautifully, evenly & crisply, and I never had to re-ink & re-stamp...which likely helped with how quickly I was able to stamp them!

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For your shopping convenience, all products 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!

Card Challenges:
-MFT Wednesday Sketch Challenge #375
-MFT Color Challenge #89
-Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Girl Power