I recently participated in a demonstrator swap for the July – December mini catalog. I signed up to create a sample with the Cottage Wreaths set and a sample with another set that I’ll share soon. Since I was making the cards at the end of June, I really didn’t feel like making a Christmas or Halloween card. So, I went for a Spring-Summer wreath featuring colors suitable for the season. The images in this bundle are obviously great for Fall/Halloween/Christmas projects, and I wanted to challenge myself by doing something different. You can check out the full Gingham Cottage Suite Collection here – the suite has some really great products! I also used the Leaf Fall 3D embossing folder to add some texture to the background matted layer.
I do have a tip to share for this bundle. I found it to be a pain in the neck to line up the stamped wreath with the corresponding die. There aren’t any guides on the wreath stamps, but there are guide arrows on the dies (picture to the right). So, I decided to add my own guide to the stamps so that I have an easy time lining them up in the future. Once I had the alignment figured out, I added a small arrow with a Sharpie on the back of the stamp. This way I can orient it on the paper to make it easy for me to align the die once I have the image stamped. It’s a small thing, but it does save some future frustration so I wanted to share it with you.
I used this past sketch from the My Favorite Things blog. I’m not allowed to share anything about competing stamp companies, but I do really like their sketch challenge layouts that they share. I always start looking on the Freshly Made Sketches blog, but sometimes I find inspiration in the MFT sketches.
Since the wreaths in this stamp set aren’t super-big, this sketch seemed to be a great way to show off the circle-ish image of the wreath and also highlight other products. This also allowed me to use a piece of the Gingham Cottage DSP. And I have A LOT of that paper because the pack is HUGE, so it was great to use some here.
 |  |  | |
 |  | ||
 | |||
