Mark's Finest Papers July blog hop day 2

Hello! Welcome to the July 2011 MFP New Releases Blog Hop!

This week's new releases are: Little Birds With Big Mouths, Planted with Love, Lilacs in the Summer, and Adirondack Summer.For your convenience, all these sets are available TODAY at Mark's Finest Papers.

So, do you want to WIN today's Featured Stamp Set: Planted With Love? (If you don't want to wait to win, you can always purchase the sets right away! We'll substitute a set from NEXT month's release if today's winner has already purchased this set!)

For your chance to win: Comment on the following Design Team members' blogs TODAY before midnight EDT. There will be ONE random winner chosen from the comments on today's Blog Hop blogs. That winner will win Planted With Love. We will announce the winner's name on tomorrow's blog post.

Lois
Vicky
Dawn
Anne
Peggysue
Connie
Emily
Karen
Patty
Roxie
Vicki
Liz
Geri
Lynn
Mark’s Finest Papers

I made a card last week with this set and tried using the ink-spray-smash technique to make the background look like the outside of the watermelon. I think this one turned out even better. Usually when I do that technique I try to smash the colors together so that there aren't stripes or blotches of one color, but this time I tried to be extra careful so that there would be distinct stripes. I also embossed some vertical lines on the base.

I love the title of this set... planted with love. So many times we need to plant love to see it grow and bloom. It may start out as a little seed and with care and nuturing grow to a big love.

This set made me think of my first time planting a garden. My family had just moved to Illinois and we had the opportunity to start a garden. My kids were all giving input to what we should grow. Pumpkins and watermelons were on their list. In my inexperience I did't know that pumpkins and watermelons shouldn't be planted near eachother because the cross pollinate. We ended up with watery pumpkins and really gross tasting watermelons.

Sneak Peek - Watermelon card.

This is for Splitcoast Free for all challenge to make a card that represented SUMMER to us. When I was little I remember eating watermelon at my grandma's house in the summer. She would cut us pieces and give us knives to eat the watermelons with. My great grandma, who lived to be 99 years old would always cut out the heart of the watermelon. She always said, when you have lived as long as I have you can do what you want. This watermelon stamp is a sneak peek at a set that will be released next week, by Mark's Finest Papers, called Planted with Love. I combined it with the checkerboard strip from another Mark's Finest Papers set called Snowman Country. The green panel, I ink spray smashed. I tried to get it to look like the outside of a watermelon. The checked paper I made using Excel. I made the cells square and colored them in a checkerboard pattern.

1" circle punch. Red and Green

Star punch for "BITE"

I put glue on back of red piece and glued off center to green piece.

I used a MS border punch as a mask for the seeds.

See how the leaves of the flowers kinda look like seeds?

I placed the mask over the watermelon.

I colored in the leaf area with black colored pencil.