Simon Says Stamp MEGA Falling For You Blog Hop!

Hey!

Happy Friday! Hooray for the start of the weekend! How about we kick it off in style with one MEGA blog hop full of inspiration, prizes, an incredible line up (I'm still wondering how I got my name on the guest list) and amazing new products from the wonderful peeps at Simon Says Stamp? Sounds good? Super!

Simon Says Stamp have just released a HUGE amount of goodies as part of their Falling For You! collection. It's all available to purchase NOW! We're celebrating with a good ol' blog hop so you should have hopped across here from the super-talented Mary Dawn Quirindongo. If you haven't, then be sure to start out at the Simon Says Stamp Blog!

I was kindly sent a couple of products from the range and they arrived just in the nick of time to whip up a couple of cards. First up, I fell head-over-heels for the HUGE Falling Hearts 6x6" cling stamp  - it's such a wonderful design! I felt like getting a little arty so I heat-embossed the design with white embossing powder, saturated the piece with water and created a little faux-watercolour ombre look with some Spun Sugar Distress Ink. The sentiment is from the Simon Says Stamp Floral Bookmarking stamp set and co-ordinates perfectly with the falling hearts.

• I opted to heat-emboss the sentiment onto vellum as it doesn't detract from the pretty background that I spent most of my time creating! 
• I added a little more of a distressed look by flicking water onto the painted piece and blotting it with a tissue. The water reacts with the Distress Ink to give a bleaching effect - perfect for an imperfect look!
• If you're going use a heat tool to speed up the drying process be careful not to apply excess heat to pre heat-embossed images. Burnt embossing powder is not a good look! 

Next up, I played with the Circle Dots stencil which features a very cool design suitable for a variety of occasions and recipients.

I figured I'd just let this stencil do the talking with some gold glitter paste  - to put an extra spin on things I decided to stencil the design over this soft, watercolour-style paper from Crate Paper's Kiss Kiss collection. The sentiment is from the Simon Says Stamp Summer Garden stamp set designed by Mama Elephant. I'm seeing this peach and gold colour combo everywhere right now and love it!

Well that's all from me today but before I tell you who to hop along to next, be sure to leave a comment as every blog on the hop has a Simon Says Stamp prize pack up for grabs for one lucky winner! A winner will be drawn at random from the comments on April 28th.

And now it's time to hippety hop across to Lydia Fiedler for some more SSS inspiration! Thanks so much for stopping by here today and have a wonderful weekend! :D