Thanks Jackie

First of all, I need to say Congratulations to my friend, Jackie Smith (check out her blog) as she was published in the "Stamper's Sampler: Catch Up Issue." She is very talented and I am so excited for her.

Jackie and I, although we share a name, are somewhat different when we stamp. Jackie does the most gorgeous intricate cards. There is so much detail and they must be seen in person to truly understand what went into them.

I helped Jackie teach a class recently and so she had come over a couple of times to show me what we were doing. She does this gorgeous background and then stamps flowers and leaves and cuts them out to use as embellishments. The end result was stunning, but more work than I usually put into my cards. So, I played with her technique and did just the first few steps and created backgrounds that I really liked.

For those who know me, they know I tend to do very simple cards. Mostly because I'm lazy and don't have a lot of time to stamp, so I need to be quick and efficient. I made three cards with her backgrounds and so today, I'll show one.

Published

I received a copy of the latest "Stampers Sampler" magazine last week. It's always exciting to get one of those in the mail since I don't subscribe because it means I have a card published.

I actually had two of them published along with some friends from my local stamp club: PMS (Pretty Mean Stampers). Each year, we do a challenge. We choose one stamp and create a bunch of cards using that one stamp and then I send them into "Stampers Sampler" for their Different Point of View Challenge. We've done this for the past several years and as a club, we've been published twice. We've also had several member's cards published too.

I had included 5 of my cards and when I went back to see which ones I had sent, I shook my head as they published the uglier cards of the ones I submitted. It always seems to be that way. They never publish the card I love; it's always the one I don't like. I used to only send in cards that I loved, but now I send anything in because I never know what they will like. I encourage anyone to submit; the free magazine is definitely worth it.

As I'm not allowed to post the cards, I will just post an old card that I really like. I made it for a class I taught a couple of years ago. The background was a simple resist technique and then I just used Distress Inks overtop. I stamped the pear in Chalk Ink and was surprised to find that the Versamark resisted the Chalk Ink too! (Background & Pears by A Stamp in the Hand; Words by Amuse).