Spring Fever with Market Street Stamps

If you are looking for the TAWS/3 Girl JAM hop, please scroll down one post. This is my second day of guest blogging for Market Street Stamps, and I couldn't be more thrilled.  I want to thank Jorge, Angela, and Steph for the opportunity.  It's been darnright FUN getting out all my MSS stamps and getting them inky.  I've loved the experience.

It's still very much Winter here in NW Wisconsin, but there are some hints of Spring in the air.  I've been looking for robins, but there's still way too much snow on the ground for them to return, I'm afraid.  To bring a little Springtime into our home, I made this small 3D birdhouse on my Silhouette, and decorated it with the Market Street Stamp Set Birds of a Feather".

 I used Fancy Pants Hopscotch 12x12 papers on this, because they were just the cheerful colors I wanted.  Inks were Close To My Heart in Sorbet and Cocoa.  The hearts were punched with a Creative Memories heart punch.  The "Birds of a Feather" stamp set was perfect for this project because it has birds (of course), but also sentiments and hearts. 

 Above, it the back side of the birdhouse.

And, the other side of the house you haven't seen yet:

 Here's a close up of the bird on the nest.  I used a rock and roll technique to get several ink colors on the image.

Next, I've got a card that used 5 different Market Street Stamps sets.  I used two background stamps, a butterfly stamp, my all-time favorite stamp, and a sentiment set. 

I started it with a piece of 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 desert sand card stock folded in 1/2 for the card base.  I stamped the front of the card with the background stamp "Sweet Lace".  If you have never used Market Street Stamps background stamps, they are wonderful -- big, easy to stamp with, and beautifully patterned.  They take paper from ordinary to extraordinary in one stamp.  Next, I used my all-time favorite stamp.  Now, I have many doily stamps, and many, many, many stamps.  But, I absolutely adore this "Doily" stamp from MSS.  It stamps so cleanly and crisply every single time.  Perfection! After I added the paper strip wrapped in twine (that came packeaged with Market Street Stamps so I don't know the brand), I went to work on the butterflies.  I used the "Two-Step Butterfly" mini, another favorite of mine.  I wanted a similar shade of blue to the doily, but not as intense as the Close To My Heart Lagoon ink I used on the doily, so I stamped the butterfly off on scrap paper, then onto the background stamp, "Grace". It was inked with CTMH desert sand ink, the same color as the Sweet Lace background. Once I kissed the two stamps together, I stamped them on white cardstock.  I did this several times, varying the place on the Grace stamp so the pattern on the butterfly would change.  Then I fussy cut them, bent up the wings, and attached them to the card with glue dots.  The only thing left was to stamp a sentiment from the "Simple Salutations" stamp set.

And there you have it.  Two Springtime projects.  Now, if we could only get a little Springtime weather, I'd be happy!  Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and visiting.  I always love your sweet comments. herehere