Life is a Circus

Welcome to the next stop on the Essentials by Ellen blog hop! Now that you’ve seen all the gorgeousness that Carissa created with her card making magic, I am welcoming you into the (cute) crazy that is the circus!

I seriously couldn’t get enough of playing with this set of new friends, so I’ve got lots of fun cards to show you today.

I’m an elephant girl through and through, and this little guy, with his trunk extended, perfectly perched, made it so much fun to stack and balance away with some of the accessories. I decided, of course, that I wanted to try him a couple of ways. First up, I’ve got him balancing the sentiments, stacked ball style, being perfectly pleasant in pink. What’s better than a pink elephant cheering you on?

Of course, he’s adorable in gray, too, and perched against a bold red stripe using the new background set also releasing today, he doesn’t need much color anywhere else to absolutely pop!

No matter which way you turn them, these stripes add so much fun to the background.

Speaking of stripes, I decided to play with some wonky hand drawn ones, too, imagining old circus tent fabric. Drawing lines across white cardstock with Copic markers, I built this simple patterned paper, cutting it into tent like shapes and adding it to my base. Little bits of embroidery floss (the perfect use for the scraps you have left over from all your felt play), and before you know it, theres a pop of a tent on your card!

I love how that little monkey’s tail wraps around the floss, but what’s even better s that he can use that tail to hand from the swinging bar, or other monkey tails!

I mean, what’s cuter than a chain of little monkeys hanging on to each other and swinging into the day? Monkeys, like these, that you don’t have to manage! When work is getting crazy, or the grocery store aisle feel like a free for all, just remember, and then share that reminder with a friend, “not your monkeys, not your circus”.

Still need me to seal the deal on this set? This one steals my heart every time - that little nose!

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a stack of cards from me if I didn’t share some pattern building. I couldn’t help lining up these cute zebras for a little black and white card with a pop of color. Not only does the black and white against the pops of color create a cool effect that’s a lot easier on your time, it’s also a great way to show a visual representation about how unique the people in your life are, one teal zebra a time.

Clearly, this circus is one I want tickets to, and I’m hoping you’ll join me, too.

Ready to see more of the goodness in this release? Before you hop over to Kelly, don’t forget that we’ve got something fun up our sleeve:

We’ve got super fun prizes!!! One random & lucky commenter will win $25 to the EH shop and one will win the whole March Essentials by Ellen release!!! To enter for a chance to win, make sure to leave comments at each stop along the hop! Comment before Thursday, March 12th at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be notified by email.

Alright, now go see all the beauty that Kelly has in store and keep hopping!

My Sweet Petunia Mini MISTI Laser Etched Stamping Tool (6-1/8 X 7)

BG23 - Coral Sea, COPIC Sketch Marker

C3 - Cool Gray No. 3, COPIC Sketch Marker

C2 - Cool Gray No. 2, COPIC Various Ink Refill

Solar White - 250 Sheet Ream, Neenah Classic Crest Cardstock

Solar White - 25 pk, Neenah Classic Crest Cardstock

Memento Ink Pad, Tuxedo Black

Life is a Circus by Brandi Kincaid, Essentials by Ellen Designer Dies

Life is a Circus by Brandi Kincaid, Essentials by Ellen Clear Stamps

Stripe Background, Essentials by Ellen Clear Stamps

Y17 - Golden Yellow, COPIC Sketch Marker

R08 - Vermilion, COPIC Sketch Marker

RV13 - Tender Pink, COPIC Sketch Marker

R22 - Light Prawn, COPIC Sketch Marker

E35 - Chamois, COPIC Sketch Marker

Now and Then

This is absolutely a moment I’m taking note of, my last kit for the Feed Your Craft shop, so bittersweet, but heavier on the sweet, because after almost five years of stamps and kits and flair (remember those flair? gah, my heart), I’m just so thankful that I was lucky enough to design for such a lovely lady and lovely shop. I’ve spent all those years pouring my heart into each and every design, and this kit, Now and Then, is no different. It’s so packed with all of what I wish for us in the new decade that I can barely stand it, because we all deserve so much good.

It’s a nod to who we’ve been with a vintage styled hug of sorts, and a little kick in the pants of bright, bold, but earnest colors that say hey, you, I get it, 2019 had some pretty hard moments, let’s show 2020 who’s boss.

I had trouble deciding how I wanted to use the kit first, but them there was one last page protector in my 9x12 album from this year, and I knew that was it.

The file folder card is a favorite of the kit, so even though I wanted to make space for more photos, I pulled it out and got to work making it do a little more for me. A few cuts along the folder lines later, and a few tamped number tabs to add to small photos, I got the best of both worlds.

If you’re not new around here, then you know of my love for vintage office supplies, so it shouldn’t surprise you that I had to find a way to repurpose old mailing and filing labels for us to use in our projects. I won’t admit to how many of the printable sheets I’ve printed and cut to use, but it’s safe to say, I’m so glad this is a digital file that is the gift that keeps giving.

After I urge you to go grab a kit of your own before they’re gone, I want to take a moment to say thank you. For all of you who’ve been a support throughout my time with the shop, all of your encouragement, and getting to see every incredible thing you’ve made with these products, thank you, it means everything to me, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you. I’ve got something new and different coming out in 2020, which both excites and terrifies me, so if you wnat to stay connected, please make sure you’re signed up for my newsletter (there’s a link at the top of my website) because it will be launching very, very soon!

Now it’s time to stop being sappy, and start shopping!

What a Wonderful World

Welcome to the next stop on the Essentials by Ellen November release blog hop!

This release was so fun to design, and even more fun to play with, and I can’t wait to share the ways I’ve added color to the cards I’ve made so far.

I pulled out my watercolors to create a colorful autumnal scene using the Up in the Air set, as well as some vibrant fluorescents to make my florals anything but weeds.

What I love about watercolor is that it doesn’t take precision to make something beautiful. Adding a soft wash of color over these little trees before die cutting makes them pop without having to fuss with all the details.

The same can be said for this colorful garden I’ve stitched to the card base. I love creating a colorful wash with varying shades and then stamping on top of the dry paint to capture some of those great waves and laters of color before cutting.

If you’re not a watercolor person, you can get a similar effect by taking two or three Copic markers in similar shades, and blending them together on the page before or after stamping, like I’ve done here with the butterflies from the Be the Change set.

Of course, I also kind of can’t help myself with those markers, and I have to color in all the stamp’s details, too! For this card, I’ve stamped out a few of the In the Weeds florals, but to save time and sanity, only colored in one, having so much fun with all those details, but not burning myself out, and then pairing that colorful cluster against the clean simplicity of the black and white outline.

I LOVE having the best of both worlds in a card.

Alcohol based markers like Copics also make great rainbows when blended, and a colorful rainbow against faint gray stamping makes my heart happy!

One of the ways I tried to challenge myself to use color this time is so basic, and yet I overlook it ALL THE TIME. Colored cardstock, especially pieces die cut in a similar shape to your stamped image are such a fun way to play with paper and color on a card. I cut a number of butterflies out of cardstock I had on hand, and then colored in my stamped butterfly to coordinate with those. It’s such a simple step, and maybe a bit of a throwback, but I have to say, I just love it.

Whichever way you add color to your cards with these new sets, I hope you remember that you can do anything you want, and have as much or as little as you like. If whitespace scares you, play with brighter pops of color against it, or if you’re a less is more kind of creator, dig out some old techniques like colorful shaped die cuts and play!

Now if only I could spot one of these guys floating in the sky nearby….

Need these sets as part of your stash? Grab them in the shop today!

And while we’re at it, who doesn’t like a giveaway? We’ve got super fun prizes!!! One random & lucky commenter will win $25 to the EH shop and one will win the whole November Essentials by Ellen release!!! To enter for a chance to win, make sure to leave comments at each stop along the hop! Comment before Thursday, November 14th at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be notified by email.

But before you get distracted, there’s more hopping to do! Visit the incredibly talented Ardyth for more inspiration!

A Mighty Dino-Mite Release

Welcome to the last stop (or maybe mid-way depending on where you began) of the Essentials by Ellen September 2019 release hop! I’m still reeling from all of the INCREDIBLE inspiration from everyone participating, but I am so excited to share more with you.

We have so many fun sets releasing this month, but I’m going to move through the seasons to share some of the ways I’ve been putting each of these stamps and dies to work so far.

One thing I don’t ever hide is my love for Autumn. Give me all the cool evenings and colorful leaves any day! Because of this love, it’s no surprise that my newest contribution to the Mondo marvelousness that is Ellen’s collection, is a giant oak leaf and acorn. This set is so fun to paint with all that glorious space, and by stamping and embossing the leaf first, it’s even easier to play with color, but keep things simple.

While paint miiiiight be my favorite way to play with this set, I pulled out my Copic markers, too, and I LOVE the look as well. I am still new to many techniques, so my first trials are simple, but I’ve been amazed by how others are already playing with this one.

If it’s Autumn, it also means that for many of us, it’s Halloween! Ellen has her own Queen of Halloween on the team (hellllooooo, Heather!), so I’ve felt some of these spooky sets brewing (get it, brewing?) for a while. Dress up was already part of the discussion because how can you have so many Leading Ladies, a Leading Gentleman, and littles of both, and not have a great dress-up bin for them to pull from for both Halloween, and more?

I made three Halloween themed cards right away using the Crafty Lady, Party Lady, and the littles, but now my head is swimming with ideas for how I can dress up even more of my favorite Leading friends for other occasions.

I mean, how cute would this magical fairy be for a birthday?

Okay, okay, there’s more to share, and the season isn’t over, so i just have to say, while it’s fun to dress up our leading friends, you know what’s also fun? DRESSING UP DINOSAURS! Who knew?

So okay, sure, there’s actually two sets of dinos and their accessories, but what I love is that they working together, and with the Dress-Up set SO, SO WELL. Friends, I like to get the most life out of my sets that I can.

And while we’re here, can we just take a moment to giggle at “Squad Ghouls”? I mean.

Halloween or Christmas, birthdays, or really, everyday, dress up a dinosaur and let the fun begin.

And now that we’re talking about Christmas, let’s take a break from dress-up, but stroll down memory lane. Who remembers those bowls or ribbon and cut candy at your family’s house (or, if you’re me, still at your house, maybe even today, when it’s only September)? Still with me? Who remembers Dolly Parton crooning about tough times during the holidays, and how she’d be fine and dandy anyhow? And lastly, who dreams of beautiful glass apothecary jars full of treats? If you’ve answered “Me!” to any of these, my Hard Candy Christmas set is for you. I had so much fun playing with this set, and I have been thrilled to share it.

I played with watercolor and opaque white embossing, as well as stamping on transparency and making a “glass” effect. Here’s what I know - this set is going to be much more than a Christmas set for me. The combination of what you put in the jar is really endless. I keep thinking about some of those fun accessories from previous Leading Lady kits, or OH!, a best and eggs from Backyard Birds.

Spoiler alert, playing with this set WILL make you want to stop and have a candy snack, though.

Last, but not least, we’ve made it through Autumn, and the Halloween season, to Christmas, and now we can rocket right out of here with the last set I want to share: Space Out.

I knew right away that all of the amazing creators using this set would put all the bits and pieces to use in incredible ways, so I went clean and simple with my cards, and I am so glad I did. I loved seeing the ways that this set can be used, from full-color detailed scenarios, to bold, simple ones like these. I used a marbled paper I had in my stash from a local shop, but you could use alcohol inks to create your own, or one of the awesome marble background stamps from Ellen’s shop. For the other background I used the AMAZEBALLS new constellation die, and I’m in heaven. Look at those details!

Love. Those. Details.

Want to win prizes? Of course you do! We've got super fun prizes!!! One random & lucky commenter will win $25 to the Ellen Huston shop and one will win the whole September Essentials by Ellen release!!! To enter for a chance to win, make sure to leave comments at each stop along the hop! Comment before Sunday, September 15th at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be notified by email.

If you’ve made it this far, it’s time to head back to the start and visit the lovely Ardyth, or head to get your shopping done in the shop!

Clear & Cloudy

There’s nothing a little sea air won’t cure, right? Or if you’re nowhere near the sea, the colors of the sea and air can’t cure? Clear & Cloudy, my latest kit for Feed Your Craft releases today and I am so excited to share it with you.

The stamp set was so fun to design, because besides a few good, simple phrases that I could use from day to day, I knew I wanted to create a few patterns and buildable stamps to allow for a little more play.

I used the diamond frame stamp to create a ton of label stamps to grab and use whenever I need (I LOVE LABELS!). After a bunch of simple black and white ones, I just had to keep playing with a little tone on tone colored ink and paper to create a rainbow to have on hand, too.

This kit is packed with color and life, and I can’t wait to see how everyone puts it to use, but for now, here’s a few of the spreads I’ve used it for so far:

You can grab your own kit here. Thank you for all your support and enthusiasm over this one!

Audacity

I thought it would be louder. When I chose ‘audacity’ as my word for 2019, I pictured a kind of bold bravery that wouldn’t be able to help but shake off all the dust from previous 730 days, a kind of fervor for life that would remind me what it means to be alive after loss, would push me forward instead of comforting me here, feeling stuck. Just as I’m wrapping up the six month of this lens for the year, there’s one thing I know for sure: audacity can find you in many more ways than its often larger than life usage would suggest, and one of those ways is through slowness, and silence, and it’s been the quietest gift I ever could have given myself.

I stopped saying “fill-in-the-date” was a hard year, because I grew weary and annoyed with myself that they seemed to be stacking up. I was exhausted with defining it all as being tough, but also unwilling to paint it pretty and pretend it’d all been okay, so I think I thought that after a year of ‘grace’ in 2018 - a year of reminding to be a little kinder to myself and the world, that carrying audacity close would, as my mom would say, help me to “buck up”, at least just a little. I needed a good swift kick in the rear to reset things a bit, and a word this weighted with power and varied usage was just the thing. I needed to be reminded of who I was beyond the neat checklists I’d been gathering and tallying these past few years, and what better to get you outside of your own head than a word defined as “a willingness to take bold risks”?

It’s easy, I know now, to confuse and conflate bold and brave with loud and productive. It’s also easy to confuse and conflate productive with purposeful, and purposeful with meaningful, but we’ll get back to that later. What I know is that I wanted a year of being more myself, of taking next steps, and what I’ve gotten so far is exactly that, but my steps have been in place, and my “self” has been very, very quiet, and that doesn’t look anything like I’d planned.

Without meaning to, the permission I’ve ended giving myself this year was to slow down, to have the audacity to, instead of figuring it all out and moving forward, make momentum where I was, where I am; I gave myself permission to find a rhythm in the steps that keep me here, not standing still, but in place. I offered myself just enough slowness that somewhere inside the more patient pace, what really matters to me, my curiosities and creativity, began taking up more space again.

There is nothing more beautiful that when our curiosities and creativity take the space they need inside us, and even more so when they come spilling out.

Making all this possible, the quietness, hasn’t been the easiest, though I’d argue there wasn’t much choice in the matter. When you make your livelihood from what you create, the content you are constantly imagining, making, sharing, slowing down that release puts a pinch in places, and sacrifices were made to make this year possible. Me from a year or two ago would have laughed off the possibility, would have showed you the budgets, the lists, the reasons why taking my time would be a luxury we couldn’t afford, but me from today, six months in, will tell you that there are some things in life you cannot afford to go without, and on the list of food, shelter, and love, I’ve added peace of mind. Sure, it may sound like a privileged list item, because it is in some ways, and an item that not everyone can take for themselves all the time, but when you find something that matters, when you realize that hey, I need my sanity over safety right now (and by safety I mean that cushy form of “here are all of the soft places to land I’ve built up around me to keep me safe from fear, and also trap me in this comfy cave”), suddenly it becomes very important to make it happen, no matter how scary, no matter the cost.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the next six months aren’t going to be as quiet as these first. All of the seeds I’ve planted and watered are growing, the roots have given new shape to my feet as they move, and lately, just over these past few weeks, I’ve been feeling the leaves unfurl and the flowers bloom inside me, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that when goodness grows, there’s no holding it back.

This random dream I’ve had for some time, the one that came to fruition in my mind last year, but wasn’t ready yet, well, it turns out it just needed time. Time! Who’d have thought it? Turns out we don’t need to rush everything, that some things do just need to make their own way, as they are. I guess we’re all a little like that, aren’t we?

I wanted a life this year that could be as big or as small as I needed it to be, and while I assumed that big would be the case, these small six months have meant so much to me. They’ve been uncomfortable and unknown, and I’ve had to metaphorically sit on my hands more times than not when I wanted to default to my quick fix-it ways, but even through all of it, through the feeling all of it instead of fleeing from all of it, I’ve been grateful. The next step, as I knew it would be last November when I wrote out and shared my word, is to let the extravagant hope I’ve been carrying close loose a little; it’s time to to get ready to share.

I’m ready.

Big & Small

Release days are the most exciting and nerve-wracking, but I am SO EXCITED about the Big & Small kit I designed for the Feed Your Craft shop that I’ve decided to let go of some of those nerves and just be thrilled that I get to share this collection with you.

I have so many favorites from this set, and I love the colors so darn much, but right now the car that’s tugging at me the most has to be this one:

And I cannot get enough of these half circle stamps around photos:

I also love the new alpha and number stamps releasing this month! If you grabbed the What Day Is It set with the months and and days of the week and loved my handwritten font, you need to pick these up, too:

I used everything to create a fun, chunky little mini book:

You can grab your kit and stamp sets in the Feed Your Craft shop here!

Grow Wild

I’ve been squealing over here waiting for this day to arrive, because oh my goodness, I LOVE this Essentials by Ellen Hutson release. I might have already stamped those Mondo Wildflowers on EVERYTHING (only a very slight exaggeration).

Indulge me a minute while I share some of my favorite ways I’ve used these new sets?

I can’t gent enough of these flowers, and whether I’m using watercolor, like I have here, and in the tag that follows, or markers, they’re so much fun to color.

Inside the lines, outside the lines - it all works!

Of course there’s more to this release than just flowers, but I did manage to sneak a few florals into both of the other new sets, including the newest addition to the Leading Ladies, the Binge Watching Lady!

I mean, she has floral jam pants, a bowl of popcorn, a bag of gummy bears, and bunny slippers - need I say more?

Her and I could watch a Murder, She Wrote marathon any day!

And while she’s relaxing with Netflix inside, these cute critters are having a party outside! The Backyard Party animals don’t mess around when it comes to cake, ice cream, and party hats.

I shouldn’t play favorites, but this little owl has my heart. Look at those glasses!

You can grab all of the new sets by clicking on the stamp/die image links here, or just pop on over to Ellen Hutson’s site and explore the complete release!