Shana Gaff
(260)897-3911
stressfreestamping@gmail.com
Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator

Sunday, March 16, 2014

The Stamp Review Crew: The Open Sea Edition


I am so glad to be back participating in another round of The Stamp Review Crew!  This week we are creating with one of my favorite sets for a masculine card.  It is so versatile and can be used for many other occasions as well!  I know the crew will inspire you greatly with The Open Sea!

For my card, I was inspired by the colors at Colour Me!
I tend to ALWAYS use colors from the Regals Collection when using this stamp set, so I was excited to take the challenge to use Tangerine Tango, a bright.  I don't think I would have ever thought to use these two colors together if I hadn't seen this challenge!
I knew right away what technique I wanted to use for this card in order to make it look like water, so I got started on the background first.  We are currently using the Caught in Crystal technique over at Technique Time Tuesday.  It is messy, but oh so fun!  I started by stamping all of my nautical images on a Window Sheet with Black StazOn ink.  I then flipped it over and covered the back with Crystal Effects and dropped on some Midnight Muse reinker.  Then I mixed it all together so it was covering the entire window sheet and covered the back with some wrinkled up tissue paper. The final step for the background was to put the entire thing down on a piece of Whisper White cardstock.  There should be enough Crystal Effects that it will glue down itself, but if not you can add some more in between your layers.  Now, the impatient part of me wanted to continue the rest of my card immediately, but this is a technique that you MUST be patient with because if you put this in your paper trimmer before it is dry, Crystal Effects will ooze all over!  Even worse, this would have been Midnight Muse CE, making an even bigger mess to clean up! lol So if you are repeating this technique at home, PLEASE be patient and wait for it to dry. :)

I just got an order in last week with Starburst Sayings and I thought this sentiment was perfect for my card! I stamped the world image in Tangerine Tango and then stamped then stamped the sentiment right over the top in Midnight Muse.  The ribbon is wrapped with some Baker's Twine from one of the card kits in the Occasions Catalog. Sometimes I forget that I can use up those embellishments on other projects too! :)

I hope you enjoyed my projects. You can clink on the links below to continue on with the rest of the blog hop. Happy hopping!


Blog Roll:


  1. Heidi Baks  runningwscissorsstamper.blogspot.com
  2. Cindy Beach stampspaperandink.typepad.com/
  3. Tanya Boser   tinkerin-in-ink.blogspot.com
  4. Mike Funke    stampin-style.typepad.com/
  5. Shana Gaff   stressfreestamping.blogspot.com
  6. Holly Krautkremer  rubberredneck.typepad.com
  7. Yapha Mason   yaphamason.com
  8. Mary Rindal   maryrindal.com/ 
  9. Dawn Tidd   tiddbitsfromdawn.typepad.com
  10. Lisa Young   addinkandstamp.blogspot.com/
  11. Kerry Willard Bray  kerrywillardbray.com
  12. Paula Wright  paulastamps.blogspot.com/
  13. Rita Wright  ritascreations.blogspot.com/
  14. Jill Coleman  jillstamps.com/
  15. Betty Traciak  kittystamps.blogspot.com

18 comments:

  1. Wow! Great card! I love the technique you used too. The colors do look great together.

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  2. Such a fresh and modern take on using this stamp set! Very fun card!

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  3. These are really fun colors to use with this challenge! I love the look of the CE technique on your background too…really fun.

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  4. Great male card. Love the sentiment.

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  5. The background is fantastic - love the technique and the color combination. And I love your idea to wrap twine around the ribbon. Fun card!

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  6. Very fun background technique! I love how you expertly layered the stamp images and the colors.

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  7. Fun colors and great texture Shana. Love all of your elements.

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  8. What an incredible technique! I love how your card came out, It is really amazing! Thanks for all of the details.

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  9. Shana what a great idea for these colours, one of my favourite sets for sure!!! Thank you so much for sharing with us this week at Colour Me...! We sure hope to see you around again soon!!!

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  10. I LOVE the way you did your background. I couldn't figure out how to use all the stamps - that darn globe was too elusive for me!

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  11. That is quite a technique. But it looks fabulous on this card.

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  12. Hoping my comment doesn't show up twice. That is quite a the technique! It looks fabulous on this card.

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  13. Beautiful background... well worth the wait:) And very cool stamping the sentiment stamp over the map image!

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  14. I love the depth and detail of your background. Thanks for sharing this technique, it's new to me!
    Tying the world stamp with the Starburst sayings sentiment= genius!

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  15. What a cool technique! Thank you for the directions :) It is so fun to stretch our creativity by using challenges, and it really paid off this time, they are great colors together. I really love how you stamped the sentiment tight over the Tangerine world stamp too!

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  16. what a fun background technique... perfect with the color combo! thanks so much for playing along with Colour Me!

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  17. Wow Great card, and very creative technique. TFS Jess

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  18. I love your background! I haven't seen this technique before. Definitely one I want to try. Very nice card.

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