Introducing our August Guest Designer, Suzy Plantamura!

We're very excited to have Suzy Plantamura as our guest designer this month.  Here's a little about her:

Suzy lives in Orange County CA by the beach which is her favorite place to be in the world. She is a home mom that loves to paint, draw, and make cards on the side. Suzy was in the scrapbooking industry for ten years, often published in the scrapbooking magazines and on several design teams. She stopped scrapping about a year ago and discovered the joy of stamping and making cards. She loves to watercolor paint and designs stamps and watercolor cards for Simon Says Stamps.

Wait until you see what Suzy created for us today.  She has absolutely outdone herself!

Hello Neat & Tangled Friends! I’m so excited to be the guest blogger today and two other times this month! I have LOVED working with their adorable stamps and dies as they are whimsical, cute, and fun! I started a blog series recently called “One Stamp, Five Ways” where I show five cards with different techniques to inspire us to all use our stamp sets more!  Today I will be sharing five cards using my most favorite stamp set by Neat & Tangled, Big Top Birthday.

This card was made with a watercolor background attached to a cream cardstock base. I drew the scallop border and also watercolored it. The stamped images are all colored with Copic markers.

After I attached all of the stamped images to the background, I added some of the little lines that are the smallest stamp in the set – they add the perfect finishing touch!

Could this card be any brighter? Again, I used my favorite coloring method – watercolor to make the background. I die-cut an oval out of the center to frame my images.

I stamped these images with a light ink and colored them with Copics so there were no outlines. Then I decided they would look better outlined since they had so many details, so I added some fine tip black marker outlines. I like how this makes them look doodled.

I’m always drawn to blues, greens, and teals, so this card might be my favorite. I watercolored the background and then used a white cardstock oval as my frame for the images.

I used the same coloring method for these images as on the last card and added my own doodled outlines. After they were all attached, I stamped some little stars and lines around the images and added some sequins to finish it off.

I wanted to make one over the top card using almost all of the images! First, I watercolored the background with blues adding large polka dots to accentuate the playful theme of the circus card.

I stamped all of these images with black ink this time and then colored them with Copic Markers. I think this card shows my love of color and coloring – these stamps were so fun to color! I added some sparkly sequins to add some more glitz!

I love to show different ways to use a stamp set, so this card demonstrates a very simple use of the stamp set. It can also be used for a wedding OR a birthday card. I watercolored this background using pink on the top and lavender along the bottom.

I stamped the cake with a light ink color and then colored it in with Copics. I added some small dots to the frosting with an Orange Glitter Pen. I outlined the cake with a fine tip black marker. I attached it to a white circle to make it pop and bring the focus to the image. I added a stamped banner to the bottom with the salutation and finished it with some twine and sequins.

This stamp set is definitely my new favorite set. I love that it can be used for both crazy over the top cards as well as simple, elegant cards for different occasions. I have more detailed step-by-step descriptions to make each card on my blog if you want to come visit! Thanks so much for having me Neat & Tangled and I’ll be back very soon!

Suzy 

Thanks so much Suzy!  These cards are a perfect reminder that we're celebrating our birthday all next week!  Come back Monday for our week long hop and have a great weekend!