I won a contest!!

I was so excited to come home from a great weekend of stamping to find that I had won an Angel Company contest! It was 1:30 in the morning when I checked the TAC newsletter online and I actually screamed when I saw my name under the Terrific Trio category. I'm glad that I didn't wake my son!! To say the least I was very excited!

These cards are very similar to the contest winning ones. I forgot to take pictures of the ones that I entered before I mailed them to TAC and these are slightly different because I changed the contest entries to match the contest rules. The category that I entered was Terrific Trio and the only rules are to use only 2 TAC stamp sets on a series of 3 cards. To see my cards that won you can click here.

The stamp sets I used were the Jubilee Hostess Set "Forget Not" and the word set "Soft Spoken". The patterned paper is Rustic Chic (a TAC exclusive paper) and the cardstock is Matchmakers & the Brown Bazzill cardstock pack that TAC carries. On these cards pictured on my blog I also used the "So Splattered" Jubilee Hostess set and the "Swirly Background" stamp.

To make the little tag on the discover flower card at the top I cut a small rectangle piece of cardstock, stamped the word "discover" on it and then used the corner rounder that TAC carries and rounded the corners of two of the edges. Then I used TAC Burnt Umber Palette Ink to distress the edges of the tag. Last I attached the brad and glued the tag down with Designer Dries Clear glue.

These were fun to make and you could customize the flower/leaves with any patterned paper & color combination that you like!

Fun Words With Letter Stamps & More

Think out of the box when using your letter stamps and the possibilites of what you can do are endless! Try using shape stamps in place of letters stamps on your cards. Here are some examples of what I am referring to:

Use the giraffe from the TAC Wild Animals set in place of the letter "A" for a cute & fun baby card.




Use a stem & flower for the letter "i" to spell hi. The "H" is from TAC's Alpha Grunge set and the stem & flower are from TAC's Tip-Toe. The paper is the from the TAC Genevieve collection.

Use a flower in place of the letter "O" when spelling love. The flower in the example on the left is from TAC's Pretty Posies set and the alphabet stamps are from Alpha Grunge in the Fall Supplement. The paper is also by TAC and is called Uptown Girl.

You can even try this with smaller alphabet stamps--just use a smaller flower for the "O".

There are lots of other options as well. Here are some ideas:

For the letter "O" use:

Flower, snowflake, Christmas ornament, balls, hearts

(words: love, joy)

For the letter "A" or "a" use:

giraffe, Christmas tree, pumpkin, balls, stars, angel

(words: baby, ball, fall)

For the letter "L" or "l" use:

Tall, Skinny Stamp

(words: hello, love)

For the letter "I" or "i" use:

Tall, Skinny Stamp

Bat or hockey stick stamp

wrench or screwdriver stamp

candle stamp

(words: hi, big)

For the letter "r" use:

hammer stamp

For the letter "s" use:

Snake or worm stamp

For the letter "t" use:

cross stamp

These are just a few ideas for the thousands of possibilities out there! Look at your stamps a new way and see if you might have a stamp that you could use in place of a letter the next time you are stamping. It's a lot of fun!!