Friendship Jar cards...using Gossamer Blue kit items

Hello everyone, it' going to be a glorious day.  I slept so well last night, the sun is shining & the snow is melting....it's a chilly 19 degrees this morning but I can feel that Spring will be amongst us soon. And to me that means flowers.  So it's flowers for today's project.  

I compiled this collection of products from the Gossamer Blue March kits.  The colors and patterns here are some of my favorite from the March lineup.  What I really love about Gossamer Blue's kit club is that it offers something for everyone.  It's all about crafting and whatever that encompasses for you.  

Today I'm sharing how I used the kit items with some stamps from my stash.  If you are a stamper I know you have dozens, maybe hundreds of stamps in your crafty arsenal.  The Gossamer Blue kits are perfect to use with your stamps.  It's fun to set up a monthly supply station like I did here and see what you can create.  I selected the supplies you see above and a favorite stamp set of mine, Friendship Jar.  If you are new to my blog, I designed Friendship Jar and and a series of coordinating stamps for Papertrey Ink.  Nichole Heady brought them to life with her wonderful illustrating.  They are stamps that are near and dear to me and it's like reacquainting with an old friend each time I pull them out again.  You can see the entire lineup of Friendship Jar stamps and coordinating dies over at Papertrey Ink here.  

Today I wanted to get a little bit artsy but since I wanted to mass produce the cards I didn't want anything too time consuming.  I stamped my jar and daisy images and then stamped the jars with the polka dot filler pattern.  Then I scribbled some Copic colors in buttery yellows to find just the right colors and then colored my flowers.  I used a grey marker to outline the flowers to make them pop off the page.  

Next I used some of the journaling tags from Elle's Studio that were included in the March Bits & Pieces Kit.  I stamped a sentiment on each tag, trimmed them down and stitched them with my sewing machine. I also created scalloped border strips using the pretty floral paper from the March Add-on Kit #2 + one of the buttery yellow papers.  

Then I decided on a simple card design and went into mass production mode when it came time to assemble my cards. 

I absolutely love the white space and the soft & pretty colors.  Each card is a little different but the basic design is the same.  And except for the base papers, some grid paper, small paperclips and twine, the rest of my embellishments are from Gossamer Blue.  It's such a creative boost to take your kits and challenge yourself to use those items.  No hoarding, the idea is to use up as much of the kits as possible in one month.....knowing there will be new items coming in the next month's kit.  

I also challenged myself to use the Black Color Shine from Heidi Swapp in the March Color Kit.  I love how the tiny sprinkling of ink fills in the white spaces just a bit on my cards.  To get a very controlled area of color, I rip scraps of paper into small pieces and mask off very small areas on my cards.  That way the main image doesn't have blobs of color.  If you want teeny tiny specks, unscrew the spray nozzle from the Color Shine and flick off most of the color onto a scrap piece of paper ( I keep mine in a box to color the overspray)...when there is very little color left then I flick the ink onto my cards.  

For each card, I popped up the sentiment piece with pop dots.  I used a small Elle's Studio tag from the kits underneath + added a small Tim Holtz paper clip for interest.

On each of my cards I also added a tied embellishment to the jars.  I created these using the Mixed Buttons from Fancy Pants and the Chipboard pieces from My Mind's Eye in the March Add-on Kit #2. I absolutely love the stick pins from My Mind's Eye in the March Main Add-on kit.  These are something I probably never would have purchased while shopping online but they were such a fun addition to my cards.  Tiny buttons and enamel dots from other kits were added here and there too.

Oodles of little embellishments and papers that coordinated so well for this batch of cards.  I do hope you give the Gossamer Blue kits a try.

Note:  Most of the the March kits from Gossamer Blue have sold out but quantities will be increasing as Gossamer Blue grows it's number of subscribers.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope you make today a GREAT day!  To all my old Papertrey friends, I do hope you stop in to say hello.  :)