Designer Series: Jenn Biederman

Morning! Jenn, here, and today I am sharing a couple cards I made using the True Friend stamp set. I mixed things up a bit this time by using the gold Heart Stickers in an unconventional way.

I first used the negative space from the heart stickers to act as a mask for the green hearts.

I masked off the outside edges with post-it notes.

I used the Mojito ink and gently inked up the hearts to give them an "ombre" effect. This was done by applying less pressure as I worked towards the top.

The mask should be pulled off slowly as to not rip the cardstock.

After trimming the kraft cardstock down to the desired size, I adhered it to the white cardstock base. I stamped the True Friend sentiment onto the Bold Banner diecut and popped it up with foam tape.

I also created this next card by randomly placing the heart stickers on the background and then dabbed on the Bubblegum ink. Once the ink was set, I gently peeled off the stickers to reveal the original white base color.

I mixed up the sentiment a bit by masking off the words from the True Friend set onto the Love Quotes diecut.

Designer Series: True Friend with JJ Bolton

*SHIPPING UPDATE*
We thank you for all your support! We are truly grateful for the overwhelming response to the sale and our tv appearance! Please know that we are working very hard in getting your packages out but it will take a bit more time than usual. Thank you all for your patience and understanding!


Hey guys! Just stopping by the Mama Elephant blog today to share a card I made with the new set True Friend! Every release, Kryssi and Angela comes up with at least one unique and fun sentiment set and this set is definitely it!

This was one of those cards where I started with the sentiment and worked backwards. Do you all do that too? I just couldn't resist that "I got you, babe" stamp. (Showing my age, shhhh!!!) I started my card by stamping the banners twice with coordinating inks. The pink banner was stamped with lollipop over blush and the yellow banner was done with orangeade over sunny. To give the banners a bit of depth, I used these blending sticks to do a little shading. Then I stamped my favorite birdies from Love Quotes and colored them with matching markers. I cut them out with the matching dies and popped them over the banners.

To finish out the card, I die cut little hearts with the new Confetti die. To make sure the color matched, I blended the same color inks over the die cuts. Easiest way to get the perfect match! The last step was to die cut the thin frame using the scalloped die from Femme Frames. This is actually the reverse cut that you usually throw away. I thought it would a cute but subtle detail:)

That’s it for me! Thank you so much for taking a peek:) Hope everyone is having a fantastic week!

Mahalo and Aloha,

jj

Designer Series: Emily Leiphart and... Star Wars?!

Hi, it's Emily and I'm here to showcase Origami as well as Sketchy Letters.

As you can tell from my card, I'm a big Star Wars fan. Yoda's one of my favourite characters and I think it's hilarious the way he talks! I decided I would create him after visualizing parts of him in the Origami stamp set. I did this by stamping out various animals and objects, then coloring them in to create a reference sheet of parts.

The size of Sketchy Letters was perfect for creating this sentiment. The style of the font goes perfectly with Yoda without overwhelming him or the card. These letters are easy to line up, too! Imagine all the possibilities of combining these two stamp sets.

Watch Origami Yoda come to life!

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

TODAY Show Video

Ladies (and gents), thank you so much for all your moral support the last few days. It meant a lot knowing so many of you were cheering us on through your television sets. We have read each and every encouraging messaging coming through emails, Facebook, twitter, Instagram, texts, oh my! We truly feel so connected to you all! :)

Everyone else seemed like seasoned pros in comparison. When I sat down to write my pitch, it turned out to be a 5+ minute love letter of my passion for stamping and how ME is striving to make a positive impact with the people who share our love for creating. It was a difficult task to truncate all of that to 30 seconds. I'm sorry if I didn't do us justice. :( I probably won't rewatch the video again due to embarrassment, LOL. But yay, we move on to next week! Someone please hold our hands!

Be sure to catch Marcus Lemonis and his season 2 premier of The Profit on NBC tonight at 10PM EST! He's awesome and such an inspiration!

NBC Today Show and Customer Appreciation SALE!

Good evening, everyone! Last week, we've dropped some hints about something big. No, scratch that. This is bigger than big, it's GARGANTUOUS!!!! It's so gargantuous that I just did a spell check to make sure I spelled it right because I've never used the word before to describe anything!

Are ya ready?! Here we go! 

This Tuesday 2/25, Mama Elephant (me and Angela!!) will be making an appearance on the Today Show. Yes, THE NBC Today Show with their millions and bajillions of viewers!!! National tv!!!

Are you shaking for us yet?! 'Cause we can't stop!! I'm not gonna lie.. we are terrified. We are hardly your ideal TV personalities as we are both known to be painfully shy! Especially when you stick a camera and some lights in our face! We're just so much better at being anonymous people doing our thing. :) We will be on with several other companies in a feature that spotlights small businesses. We're still not sure how we're gonna handle everything yet, but we'll try our best! One thing for sure, it'll be the scariest 4 minutes of our lives!

But, as scary as it is, we're not alone right? We can count on you to root for Team ME? We will be pumped knowing that we have the support of this community behind us!

Do you know why we're Mama Elephant and not Mama Monkey, or Mama Pig, or Mama Hippo, etc... Simply put: Elephants never forget. We will never forget that we owe our success to every person who's ever supported us. There isn't a single day that goes by that we are not humbled by the love and support this community has bestowed upon us. So as we throw ourselves into the spotlight on Tuesday, we want to show our appreciation to the ones who got us here by giving you a head start.

Effective immediately, take 10% off with coupon code TODAYSHOW. Coupon is good until 2/26 11:59PM EST. 

A few notes before you go!

1. We've got a brand new site, hopefully the shopping experience will be smooth and enjoyable!

2. We are fully restocked. Yay! But hurry for the best selections, we expect some items to sell out very fast!

3. Discount code is valid for everything in our store! We have some amazing sponsors lined up for the class. The retail value of products (swag) is closely approaching the cost of the class itself, so this is a fantastic deal! And who knows, we just might be famous after this! LOL, I'm totally kidding!!! Thank you for supporting us!!!

With love,

Kryssi and Angela

STAMP HIGHLIGHT : SKETCHY LETTERS

Sketchy Letters is today's stamp highlight. These fun letters can really enhance the playfulness to your personalization! We are loving the sketchy look from our Pandamonium set to our sketchy sentiments. They are also very fun to color because the lines creates extra texture! 

Sketchy Letters

Elena created a hilarious custom sentiment to match the monocled bunny. Applying glossy accents to the one eye is such a great idea!

Nichol stamped all the letters in the alphabet from Sketchy Letters onto the die cut Femme Frame shape. She highlighted a couple of the letters with Ocean Ink and replaced the "o" with the heart in the set, stamped with Apple Ink. She finished the greeting with a script phrase from True Friend.

Emily created a panda-versary card for her husband using Sketchy Letters, True Friend and Confetti Creative Cuts.

Jenn highlights the Sketchy Letters by adding them to the Love Quotes - Creative Cuts die.

JJ stamped the sketchy letters in white to create a snowy chalkboard scene with penguins from Polar Pals. The asterisk stamp makes a perfect snowflake, no? With the dark background, she used colored pencils instead of markers to color the images. So cute!

More announcements...

The ME site will be going dark shortly as we transition to a beautiful new home. We hope to complete the move in 24-48 hours. Fingers crossed for sooner than later!

Oh hey, did you see THIS POST on Facebook?! So excited!

Wanna win Origami and Basic Borders? Pop on over to the Paper Crafter's Library to check out a new card I made and comment for your shot at winning both sets!

I did promise you a flurry of excitement, didn't I? :) I hope you're ready, 'cause its about to get crazy up in here!

STAMP HIGHLIGHT : ORIGAMI

We have Origami as our Stamp Highlight today. The art of paper folding has been an all time favorite activity for me when I was a child. Now that I'm an adult, I still enjoy folding little animals for my kids. We now can have the art of origami without the folding!

ORIGAMI

Let's take a look at what our Design Team have folded up for us!

Elena created a graphic valentine with a striped angled panel frame. Her origami animal looks perfectly foxy in those colors.

Emily watercolored the Origami swans and masked off the sentiment so it stamped around the swans and along the edge of the waves. Adding silver stars from Confetti - Creative Cuts complements the sentiment perfectly. Emily also used the Landscape Trio and Femme Frames - Creative Cuts to create her scene.

Geralyn created a cute and simple card using the Origami set. To mimic the sketchy letters of the sentiment, she colored in the origami cranes with pencil crayons. A little foam adhesive behind them adds dimension.

Jenn created a small card by stamping the sketchy sentiment onto a pre-printed diecut and then popping up the festive polka-dotted origami cat.

JJ went wild with the fussy cutting and created a string of lucky origami cranes! Each crane is stamped on different patterned paper and strung together on gold twine.

Laura created a tag using the Embellished Tag die. She stamped the origami fox and colored it in with Copics. Then she added a little polka dotted tag behind for a little pop of color.

 Nichol stamped the Origami image three times and cut it two into additional pieces to layer on top of the original image to give the illusion of depth and dimension. She also stamped a scene for the image using Sunny Skies as the background, die cut the waves using the Landscape Trio dies and stamped them with the polka dots from Basic Borders. She finished the card by stamping the greeting and adding three Origami hearts stamped onto red cardstock, cut out and embellished with Glossy Accents.

Leave it to Kathy Racoosin to think outside the box! Love the frame within a frame look she created... and you have got to check out her butterfly pin board!

STAMP HIGHLIGHTS : TRUE FRIEND

Today we are highlighting True Friend. I'm pretty sure Kryssi was thinking about me when she was designing this set. ;) True Friend is a true gem to anyone's collection because the sentiments does a great job tugging on heart strings. You can mix and match these sentiments or use them alone. This set also coordinates with our Bold Banner Creative Cut.

TRUE FRIEND

Our Design Team did a fabulous job with this set!

Elena created the coolest 3D origami crane to compliment the uplifting "true friend" sentiment. And I just love how she used the stitching on the cloud die to add more texture to her card.

Emily created a watercolored frame to highlight the encouraging sentiment from True Friend with an award-winning panda. His medallion was made with Confetti Creative Cuts as well as the Dainty Bow.

 JJ created a sweet rainy day scene with the True Friend set. Monkey and Bunny are sharing an umbrella (as besties should!). 

Nichol stamped greetings from True Friend and a bird image from Origami on watercolor cardstock using Versamark ink. She embossed the images with white embossing powder and applied a watercolor wash over the embossed images creating a soft and pretty watercolor resist image.

Laura used the thick solid stripe and some Mama Elephant inks to create the colorful background pattern. She also added some die cut hearts that were inked to match the stripes.

Our guest designer Kathy Racoosin created this amazingly unique card! Check out the coloring!

True Stamp 2!

Hey everyone, we interrupt our regularly scheduled highlighting with this fun announcement! 

We will be part of this awesome online event on April 5th with some of the best stamp companies! Mama Elephant will be lead by our very own Nichol Magouirk (and me as co-instructor) to bring you this super fun class! :)

Click HERE to find out more! 

There may just be a fab sneak peek of an upcoming stamp set as well! ;)

Make sure you sign up for the Early Bird Notification List for HUGE savings when registration opens!

Have a great week, Stamp Highlighting resumes tomorrow and soon we will be making another announcement... and this one is HUGE!

STAMP HIGHLIGHT : HONEY BUNNY

Today we are highlighting sweet cuties from Honey Bunny! We are so happy that these bunnies have found themselves in so many homes this weekend! Dress them up with adorable accessories that will make them a hit at any party! Or if you need to lend a ear, these bunnies are all ears!

Honey Bunny

Let's take a look at a whole lot of sweetness from the Design Team!

Elena rested the sweet bunny bums onto the stamped banner from "true friend." Outlining the solid image is a great way to give your stamps a different look.

JJ created a peaceful best buddies scene with her Honey Bunny set. The bunny duo is sitting on a wooden swing under a tree branch (courtesy of Winter Wonderland).

Emily created a cute little scene for two best friends sitting atop a hill enjoying the view. The cityscape and log are from Believe in Magic.

Laura paper pieced the two bunnies, and they are ready for a night out. The boy bunny is decked out with his bow tie and bouquet. The girl bunny has a sweet heart valentine for her honey. The tiny heart background was stamped with the heart from the Confetti stamp set in Winter ink.

Jenn created a Valentine using a trio of bunnies along with the conversation heart from the SSS+ME Filled With Love set and ME Bold Banner - Creative Cuts die. Hand-drawn polka-dots and pom pom tails add a little detail.

Check out Kathy Racoosin's fun card!

FEBRUARY RELEASE AND STAMPEDE

Welcome to the Mama Elephant Release Design Team blog hop!

Our newest release is now live and available for purchase in the store:

www.mamaelephant.com

GIVEAWAY ALERT! To celebrate the new release, Mama Elephant is giving away one of each of the new stamps released! Winners will be chosen at random from the collective blogs in the Stampede. Winners will be announced on the blog on the last Stamp Highlights Day. You have up to 3 chances to qualify to win! Just leave a separate comment for each!

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» Follow/tweet us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/heymamaelephant «

Here's my card for the Stampede. Did I go a little nutty with the sequins? Why yes. Yes, I did. Indeed, I did! I might've been silently giggling in delight because I absolutely love the look of sequins, hence why we created the Confetti stamp set... but sometimes I want some dimensions too. And these just fit the bill perfectly because you don't have to worry about them falling off... ever!

Because I applied glitter on the sequins, it's hard to tell from the photo but they are delicious looking in real life. I rarely use the word delicious to describe paper products, but if there was ever a time for me to indulge in word play, this is it!

I also used the crane from Origami and sentiments are from Origami and True Friend. That's my favorite sentiment from the set -- I think it really hits a home run with the recipient. :)

READY TO STAMPEDE? The next stop is our guest designer this month, the wonderful and beautiful Miss Kathy Racoosin!

Here's the full Stampede list:

Kathy Racoosin

Elena Roussakis

Laura Bassen

Jenn Biederman

Nichol Magouirk

Emily Leiphart
JJ Bolton
Geralyn Sy

FEBRUARY PRODUCT REVEAL

Release is just in a few hours (12:00AM EST, sometimes earlier ;)

Here's the full February 2014 Release reveal and it is just awesome!

Honey Bunny

Origami

Sketchy Letters

True Friend

Confetti - Creative Cuts