It’s been a busy month so far for the Ellen Hutson Summer of Stamping, and you may have already caught the collaborations with Catherine Pooler and Mama Elephant earlier this month. There’s one more to come next week… can you guess what company it’s with? My lips are sealed for now.😉
Today isn’t a collaboration launch, but it’s still a very exciting day because we’re celebrating the latest Essentials by Ellen release! I’ve been playing a lot with the new stamps and dies, so I thought it would be fun to walk you through each product, highlighting a few of my favorites. You’ll find a whole bunch of visual inspiration below, and check out the captions for details on some of the techniques I used while creating. Let’s get to it!
Essential Arches and Circles Hot Foil Stamps
The Essentials By Ellen shape dies are among some of the most-used in my stash, and are very appropriately named because they are true essentials! In this release, you’ll find hot foil stamps that coordinate with the Essentials Arches and Circles die sets, and they foil absolutely beautifully! The smallest ones can be used on their own to create bubbles (if you’re keeping with the under the sea theme of this release), or you can pair them with the dies to cut frames and windows as I’ve done in the projects below.
Seaweeds, O-Fish-Al, and Whale Shark Stamps and Dies
These sets work so well together, whether you want to combine just a couple of elements, or build an entire scene. Even if you’re not comfortable with Copic coloring, the cards below will show you that it’s ok – you definitely don’t have to!
In many of my projects, I created under water scenes using either simple ink blending on cardstock, or direct-to-vellum coloring with my ink pads. For the latter, I simply swiped the ink pads along a piece of vellum, then used an ink blending brush to soften the lines between each color. When adding the colored vellum to my cards, I like to let it dry for half an hour or so (that may be overkill – I’m not actually sure how long it takes), then adhere the inked side facing down, just to there’s no risk of any future smudging.
Shells and You’re A Treasure
Solid stamp lovers, where are you at?! It’s no secret that I love solid stamps that layer easily with each other, and that’s exactly what you get with the Shells stamp set. In addition to layered stamping, you can also have fun with texture by adding foil (sans-machine) and embossing as I’ve done in the projects below.
Your Oyster Stamp + Die
This super cute little stamp and die combo is a FREE gift with purchase, while supplies last. The open shell combines nicely with the other images in the Seaweeds and Whale Shark stamp sets, or you can just keep things simple and use it on its own, with the large sentiment. I decided to do the latter, creating one shaker card and one clean embossed card, layered over an ink blended panel.
You can check out the full release here in the Ellen Hutson shop, as well as all of the products used in my cards below. Finally, in case you haven’t yet, be sure to pop over to Instagram for details about today’s hop. You could win a gift card for ellenhutson.com, just by commenting on each stop of the hop. I’ll see you back here soon, and in the meantime, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for ya!
