Introducing our January Guest Designer - Kelly Griglione

It's the first Friday of the new year, and we're so excited to be kicking off the year with Kelly Griglione as our first guest designer this year. Kelly has a wonderful modern, yet whimsical style and she creates some of the most innovative designs around.

Hello folks! Kelly Griglione here; I'm thrilled to be guest posting for Neat and Tangled for the whole month of January! What a fun way to start off the new year. Each Friday I'll be featuring a stamp or die set and sharing a few different ways to use the stamps.

Before I get started I'd like to tell you a little about myself. I grew up as an only child who didn't live next to other kids, so much of my childhood was spent entertaining myself, particularly with arts and crafts. I made my own board games, Barbie houses, tree forts, you name it. My favorite person to visit was my grandma, who always had a craft project ready for me. After getting married to my high school sweetheart I got into scrapbooking as a way to document our honeymoon. I knew about stamping from going to Stampin' Up! parties that my co-worker hosted, but was never really that into making cards. Then my friend took me to CHA (now Creativation) and I saw the jaw-dropping Papertrey Ink booth. I had no idea stamps and cards could look so modern and well-designed! The other tipping point was my decision to start a blog 7 years ago. I planned to post about home decorating, flea marketing and general craft projects so I called my blog "Notable Nest." That lasted a couple weeks, until I found these card making challenge blogs which captured my interest so completely, and I never looked back.

Today we have two teenage boys who keep me very busy with their school and sports schedules. Aside from that and crafting/card making, I love going on adventures downtown Chicago, taking photographs, being with my girlfriends, and standing up front singing at rock concerts.

Now that you know a little (or a little more) about me, let's take a look at a few cards I created with the versatile Floral Medallion Builder!

I had so much fun trying out all the different stamps in this set! Between all these shapes, and all your ink colors, you can create a ridiculous number of unique designs for your cards. It's kind of like building a snowflake ... each one is different even though I stuck to the same basic design and similar colors.

The first design I made is a true flower, with leaves, in a medallion form. I kept the center of the flower open for the most part and stamped the petals around.

Because I didn't want to end up with uneven gaps between the petals I spaced them by using a circle. I folded a circle in half several times until there were 6 sections that looked about even. On the card base I traced around that circle and marked where each of the six folds were. This will be my stamping guide.

Then I started stamping the petals onto the marked guides and was pretty happy when the last petal fit The green leaf clusters are fun to add in between the petals, as well as the sequins in the center white space. Speaking of white space, isn't it neat how the negative white space in the center makes a pretty flower on its own? That Miriam Prantner thinks of everything when designing her sets!

I'd also like to point out the sentiment on this card is just stamped along the bottom of the card. I masked off the strip on the bottom and blended some ink to get a nice border for that thick, bold font.

After being proud of myself for figuring out how to stamp the petals around the circle, I notice the six-sided star that's included in the set. Of course! That's a much easier way to guide your circle of petals! This time I stamped the star in the middle first, and then aligned the petals to the points on the star.

From there I used the open petal stamp to create another circle in yellow-green, and then I stamped the same image in between the petals to make a third circle in lime green. It's all an exercise in building up the medallion until the card front is covered. The sentiment is from Scandinavian Prints, another set designed by Miriam.

I like that even when using exactly the same colors, and the same basic formula of stamping a medallion in the center of the card, you can get individual looks

Case-in-point, here's another medallion starting in the middle of the card, and it looks completely different. This time I added the leaf shapes in the spaces between the star points, as well as the long, skinny leaf shapes between the pink leaves.

Even though there are no hearts on this card, I think the pink and purple colors would make for a fun, non-traditional valentine. This sentiment is again from the Scandinavian Prints set.

My final card with this set was inspired by a peacock's train of feathers. Do you see it? Does this not remind you of an aerial view of the majestic tail of a peacock?

Using the same colors as the previous card I stamped rows of leaves/petals/feathers from light pink to black. For the bottom three rows I used the skinnier petal, and then the wider petal on the top, darker three rows. The sentiment is from the same Scandinavian Prints set. Since it has to do with love, I added some tiny hearts to the intersection of "feathers" at the top of the card, as well as the single heart on the bottom middle, where the peacock's body would be.

I really enjoyed playing around with the different pieces in this set to see what would happen. Kind of like a creative puzzle. If only there were more time in the day!

Thanks so much for stopping by! I'll be back next Friday with some ideas for another fun Neat and Tangled stamp set.