So far this Stampendous ATB Block hop has been nothing short of spectacular! Every morning I get up and can’t wait to start clicking through the links to see what’s happening on the hop.

Artist trading blocks provide a multi-dimensional canvas for your artistic expression.  It’s never been easier to create, collect and share your style with Stampendous stamps and Essentials!

The creativity of a collaboration provides new ways of designing with the same styles you love from Stampendous and new product partners that complement so well together. Of course, we love playing with new toys so it’s a win-win for all of us.

There is a striking line up of designers posting today and we know that you’re going to love more inspiration so let’s get started “block” hopping through them. Did we mention there are prizes for you hoppers?

 

We have prizes!!!  We’ll choose three winners at random from the comments on all blogs in the hop. Then from those three we’ll randomly pick a GRAND PRIZE winner! Two of the winners will receive Stampendous PenPattern Petal and PenPattern Flutter cling stamps, just like you’ll see on Kristine Reynolds amazing ATB sample. They’ll also receive enough pre-cut, premium matboard from Sizzix to make two boxes of your own, plus some extra pieces for fiddly bits! The Grand Prize winner will receive the stamps as above, a whole package of matboard, AND the Sizzix die to cut your own ATB boxes! Uh, WOW!

If that weren’t enough, eligibility for these amazing prize packages has expanded to include our international fans too!

We’ve extended the commenting time to accommodate designers posting projects that received their Stampendous products through slow mail. So we’ve extended the deadline a whole extra week to give us, you and the designers time to enjoy the collaboration projects from the “block party” hop. The comment deadline will be Sunday, March 8th. We will continue posting links as we receive them from the Inspiration Team, so be sure to keep checking back. You get one entry for every comment, so you don’t want to miss the chance to leave a thoughtful comment on each project. For those who tend to get lost, we’ll post a “cumulative” link list of links so far on Saturday, February 28th and Saturday, March 7th. Then you can check your progress.

Here are today’s participating designers –

Amy Hurley-Purdie

Lea Kimmel

Pam Hornschu

Eileen Hull

Amy Bowerman

Tracy Evans

Lisa Hoel

Nicole Wright

For some reason I could not settle on what I wanted to create- there were so many fun options!  Then time got tight and I decided to just let it happen… so I went down to the studio and started playing around with what was on my desk.

Here’s what I came up with…

The stamps that I received from Stampendous! were a set of houses and sentiments about home. I love houses because when we were growing up, my dad would buy old houses and fix them up- sometimes for us to live in and some to rent out or sell. It was so exciting to go in them and explore- not so much fun as a teenager when your summer job was stripping 16 layers of wallpaper though…

I married a military man and houses took on a new significance which meant moving often and making new friends along the way.

You will find the supplies at the bottom of the post if you want to make one.

• Die cut the block three times from matboard. In one use the Heart Mover and Shaper to die cut the shape out of the block. Leave one strip plan. Cut the third strip, as seen in the photo, for the roof. Use ColorBox Blends (by Eileen Hull!) to color a soft background on the two larger blocks.
• Use this secret weapon to mute colors into a watercolor effect.

• Stamp house images on blocks, taking care to factor in how the block will be oriented when finished. Color cut out heart with Stop ink- love this color!

• For the roof, swipe Flagstone, Nutmeg and Ebony Blends across the strip sideways. Add Spoonful of Rust powder on top in random spots and hit from below with the heat gun. I found it did take a while for the heat to get through the matboard but when it did- WOW! I also added some Frantange embossing powders to mimic snow. The bonus was there were gold flecks mixed in so now it glitters when the light hits it.

•  Die cut 8 hearts from matboard (from another block die). With two of the hearts, notch and make 3D. Add fishing line to the top and bottom by adding a line of glue down the side seam. Place fishing line within the glue and let dry.
• Cut a piece of clear packaging and trim to the size of the finished house and roof. Ink hearts with assorted colors and adhere to packaging, then slip inside house. Save one heart and add white/gold embossing power and adhere to the front of the house.

• To assemble house, run a line of hot glue along both edges of block and set roof evenly on top.
• I added corks to the bottom of the house to give a little more dimension. Kind of reminds me of a treehouse!

Stampendous! and Sizzix are a great combo, don’t you think? Thanks for stopping by … and enjoy the rest of the hop!

Eileen