July Stamp of the Month Blog Hop: Bear Hugs

How about a big bear hug of a welcome to the July stamp of the month blog hop?!?  This stamp set is adorable, and you're going to get some fabulous ideas along this hop.  (If you're already hopping then you've probably arrived from the talented Becca's blog.  From here, you'll visit creative Krista next.)

With both of our girls in college this fall, I decided to make some cards that I can mail to them.  Nothing like a little happy mail, right?  Both use the Into the Wild collection.  For my first card, I used the masking technique to stamp the flowers around the bears.  Here's a quick review of this technique:

Remember that you have to stamp the foreground first.  Stamp the bears on the card panel and then onto a sticky note (Post-It).  (I used Charcoal ink.)

Cut out the sticky note mask, trimming along the edge of the stamped image.  (I made sure the sticky side was at the bottom of the image.)

Place the mask on the original stamped image.

Cluster the flowers and then stamp along the bottom edge of the card panel.  (I used Fern ink.)

To color my flowers, I used my Shin Han Twin Touch Golden Yellow for the centers and a combination of Lavender and Marina Blue to better match the Sapphire sentiment and thread.

 My second card uses Into the Wild and the July stamp of the month plus the frame from the Sweet Girl- Cardmaking set (stamped in Fern).  I fussy cut the bear pair and made a little pennant for the sentiment (both in Charcoal ink).

I added a little texture paste to the bear tail.  Unfortunately it pulled color up from the stamped image, but a few swipes of my Shin Han Twin Touch Warm Gray marker made the tail look much better.

Thanks for letting me share my cards with you!  I'd love a comment before you click on over to Krista's blog for the next creation!

{Click HERE for all the hop participants and their blogs.}