My Thoughts Exactly STAMP RELEASE Blog Hop!!!

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the world! If have just stumbled upon my blog, today is a VERY Special day, it's the release of the very first My Thoughts Exactly Stamps! Alyssa and her husband have created some great stamps for you and I have the honor of showcasing them! Can you tell I'm a little excited about it?!? If you have arrived from Jennifer's blog you are on the right track! If you'd like to start from the beginning please hop over to Alyssa's blog to start. Trust me you won't want to miss a thing and there may be some blog candy along the way.

A little about myself first, I'll keep it short you can always read the About Me page to learn more. I am a graduate student about to finish a Master's degree and continuing on to get a Ph.D. I live with my boyfriend and our dog. I love to cook, bake, and of course craft. I craft just about everything, I don't discriminate. However, I love to stamp, ink, and cut paper! I really liked the idea of My Thoughts Exactly Stamps as well as the idea that it was a husband and wife team. I enjoyed seeing all the little sneak peeks that Alyssa has done over at her blog and I knew from the start I just had to be on her design team and if I wasn't...well I was going to be her first customer! I love crafting and I love sharing my knowledge with the world so the My Thoughts Exactly Design Team was the perfect opportunity to combine the two. I have to say I was not disappointed when I got the stamps in the mail, they are better than I could have imagined. Ok now on to the star of the day!

But before I get to my projects, yes there is more than one, I'd like to tell you a little about the stamps. As I am sure you will notice they are sentiment stamps. They are mix and match, meaning there are main words that are big and companion words or phrases that when combined make cute little PUN sentiments. I absolutely love puns so this is very exciting to me. The stamps themselves are cut very close to the image so that you can just line up your whole sentiment and stamp it all at once! No more stamping multiple times and hoping it all lines up. Hop over to the stamp store and check out the two stamp sets (yup there are two!) that are available as of today! Their price point is fantastic and it INCLUDES tax and shipping (international shipping will cost a little more). One other really sweet thing about the stamps, because the main words are on their own if you have the small ink pads like the Dew Drops by Tsukineko you can ink the main word in a different color while everything is all lined up on your stamp block very easily!

Ok on to the projects! Fair warning, you may get picture overload I just love everything about these stamps. First I have a little card I created using the Under the Sea stamp set:

I used the Something Fishy set from Lettering Delights for this card and a few files of my own. I also used Trendy Twine for the fishing line, I just love how it came out. I popped up one leaf of the seaweed, the puffer fish, and the sea turtle to add some depth. I also made the puffer fish look like he was coming through the seaweed. Here you can see how nice it looks to ink the main word in a different color that the rest of the sentiment, doesn't that just make it pop?!? On the hook I attached a little note that has mysteriously lost part of it's message!

Oh, I found the missing part inside. Darn fish got hungry and tried eating it! Here are a few more close ups of the fish.

 
 And a few close ups of the stamps.
 
Just, dropping a, and line are three stamps and the great thing about mix and match is it's easy to put one stamp per line or...
 
as you can see here they can be lined up on one line. Fish and -ing you a (I didn't ink the a because I wanted it on a different line) being two separate stamps.
 

Again a and great day are two stamps that were lined up. The mix and match really does give way to endless possibilities!

My last project is a step card showcasing the Birds and the Bees stamp set. All the SVG files used were created by Jessica over at SVGattic just for the stamp release! How awesome is that?!? Jessica created so many cute little things in the Birds and Bees set, it was hard for me to pick just a few...I know I probably went a little over board but they are just so darn cute!

 

I had everything nicely placed and sized on my mat in Make The Cut so I could write about it all and tell you exactly how to make this card for yourself...thanks to Microsoft update, it's gone. Maybe I'll remember to save my project next time before I fall asleep. At least everything was cut out already! I inked the edges of the tree and clouds just to add a little dimension to the scene. The adorable bee hive and birdhouse are of course hung with Trendy Twine. The daisy 'spikes' in the background are just the daises from the set welded together in Make The Cut. I then glued individual daises over the welded pieces and bent the petals out a little bit to give it a 3D look. It looks much cooler in person, I promise. Ok that green blob thing in the bottom right corner...lets just say me and my stamp block had a fight and it won so I tried to cover up the opps. Normally I would have started over, I'm a little OCD about that kind of stuff but I had everything glued down already...tree top to the rescue ;-) I just trimmed it a little and it kinda looks like a bush...right? I added a little ink to it to try and give it some character, I don't know if that happened but oh well. I wasn't about to start over, my face was just about glued to the table at this point. I thought the sentiments made for a cute little story on this card.

Aren't the bees and the birds just darling, they match the stamp set perfectly!

Here are a few close ups of the sentiments.

I used the a little, bird, y told me, it's your, bee, and -day stamps for these two sentiments. Again you can see how easy it is to put the phrases in so many different configurations because of the mix and match.

The last sentiment I have for you today is four stamps, happy, bee, -day, and the !.

If you are with me still, thanks for sticking around! I hope you have enjoyed seeing my creations today, I know I had a lot of fun making them. Jessica has generously offered a set of her Birds and Bees SVG collection as blog candy! Please become a follower if you have enjoyed what you've seen and leave me some love. You have until 11:59 PM CST on Monday to enter. I will pick a random winner on Tuesday.

Now hop on over to Lenae's blog. Remember if you get lost just come back here or go to Alyssa's blog to find your way again!

The amazing and talented My Thoughts Exactly Design Team is as follows:

Alyssa: http://www.mythoughtsexactly.co/
Bee: http://dare2beecreative.blogspot.com/
Bee (Belinda): http://beeshiveofdrama.blogspot.com/
Jennifer: http://ourchangeofart.blogspot.com/
Jessica: http://craftyrktsci.blogspot.com/ (<- That's me :-D)
Lenae: http://sugargemscrafts.blogspot.com/
Thienly: http://modpaperie.blogspot.com/

Stamp Store!:  http://www.mythoughtsexactly.co/stamps/

Be sure to stop by each one, they are all sure to amaze you, and leave them some love!

Happy crafting!

Jessica