These are a couple of great cutting dies from Hot Off The Press. In the sample below, we have die cut the wildflowers from white cardstock, and used some Distress Ink in Peeled Paint to colour the leafy stems. The flowers have been die cut a second time from white cardstock, and embossed with a folder pattern before being coloured with Distress Inks. The dragonfly was cut from lavender cardstock and a tight patterned stamp image was stamped in black to create his texture.

You'll find that these flower-heads could be layered up with actual die-cut flowers if you didn't care for these shapes. The Hello Ferns set has the four dies including the 'hello'. In the card sample, we've used an embossing folder with a tight pattern to give the fern on the right some nice texture. Both ferns were cut from green cardstock and Distress Ink was added to create some shadows. Both of these are fun sets for some summer images. If the ferns are done up in blacks, browns and greens, this can make a really nice masculine card.

This is a new kraft paper from Bazzill. The foil lines have a very metallic sheen. The stamps that I've used are quite delicate to balance the heavy foil lines. I've stamped in VersaFine Black and VersaFine Sepia on the kraft. You'll need to stay with fairly dark colours for them to show well. If you wanted to use a salutation on the card, I would stamp it on plain kraft cardstock and border it with black again. Each sheet sells for $2.50.

This will be an interesting addition to your paper stash.

When I think of summer, the beach and Adirondack chairs certainly come to mind. In the card below, we have used the green mottled paper to paper-piece the chair cushion. The sand and the water were created with the blue, brown and white Gelatos. In this instance, we just rubbed the Gelatos into the paper without water. I love that this chair image has the drink glass right on the arm. Of course this is an opportunity to add a punch of bright colour. The shore bird die-set from Impression Obsession include both the beach-walkers as well as the lovely crane which we have used inside the card on the verse panel. I'm very fond of the bold font on the salutation, it almost reads as a command to relax.

 

The towel on the arm of the chair could simply be coloured or paper pieced.

This is an older stamp from Hero Arts. I feel that if you do see just the stamp, that it is hard to recognize what a pretty image this is. This is one of those stamps where the background is the stamp image, not the foreground. In the card below, we have Judikins white embossed the image. On a palette, we used Tombow markers with water and a touch of Ranger's Liquid Pearls to create the pearled paints that we coloured with. The Liquid Pearls soften the colour you're using at the same time that they add a pearled hue.



Keep in mind that although this card looks rather springlike, all you need to do is change the colours for a lovely fall/winter look.

This is the cutest combination of beach images that I've come across. It's a collection from Stampendous and not only have they provided the Adirondack chair, but the water's edge and the umbrella and, my favourite, the beach-fence. The grass cluster is likely the best artwork I've had for grass in a long time. The cloud stamp that was used in the card is from Magenta. I love the natural look of the cloud in this image. The embossing powder we used for the beach is called 'Sand' embossing powder from Stampendous. It is the one thing you'll need to make your beach cards or pages look more realistic.

 

This package has every stamp you'll need to create this great summer card!