A Special {Julie} Surprise

Me?

I don't care for surprises.
For myself, that is.

Surprises for other people?
Those, I love.
Especially people I love?
Double love.  :)

Today's surprise arranged by Ellen of the CLASSroom is definitely for one of those...
Happy 50th, Julie!

{Who here can't believe that Julie Ebersol is 50??  Me, neither.  She is something like a perpetual teenager.  She makes 50 look gooood, right?}


I can't think of Julie without thinking of stamping, white space, and bright colors, so that's where I started with this project.  I pinned this image recently (the pin's link has since gone away, so I can't give you the source today) and have been itching to come up with my own version...

I had this idea that I could come up with my own petal shapes.
And so I did :)

The process was simple.

• I found a large stamp with lots of solid space (I used the solid tree from Papertrey Ink's Layered Postmarks: Holiday set) to use as the base for my petals and put it on a clear block.  

• I used a small plastic palette as a holder for a few drops of reinkers.  (The reinkers I used here are Hibiscus Burst, Raspberry Fizz, Summer Sunrise, and Aqua Mist.)

• Next... I got brave and used a waterbrush to simply pick up some ink and paint a petal onto the tree stamp.  Stamp it down and there you go... homemade petals. 

That part sounds much harder than it really was.  My "petals" are really just irregular heart shapes, see?  So, so not hard, I promise :)

• Taking a few moments to clean off and dry the stamp in between painting each petal on it was key... I didn't want those pretty colors mixing before I stamped them ;)  A few different colors later and my flower was done.

Stamping the stem image (from Papertrey's Daydreamer set) finished the image off. 


The sentiments follow right along the line of the stem... love that.

I started by stamping the Happy Birthday sentiment (from Over Under Easy) in black so that I could get the position on that one just right, then added the supporting sentiments in Soft Stone.  (The other sentiments are from a single image in Sentiment Signs. A little simple masking on the sentiments with a few pieces of scotch tape across the stamp made that part easy.)

I so wanted to do something special for this one for so many reasons... number one being that Julie has been a *huge* influence on my paper crafting life.  She was the first designer that I came across who really made me fall in love with clean and simple as a style.  This was waaaay back in the day when Splitcoaststampers was *new* and only getting 1-2 cards uploaded a day, if any of you can actually remember that ;)  Clean and simple was just not everywhere like it is today. 

Her cards gave me permission to do things simply.
But with style.
To leave things clean.
But with style :)

And not only that, but she's been a gem to me over the years.

Here's to you, Julie :)
Happy Birthday and many, many blessings to you, friend.


I'm the last stop on this surprise blog hop, but considering the very first stop is another one of my faves... the pretty-much-always-awesome Teri Anderson, I'm linking back to her just for kicks ;) If you started somewhere in the middle, check Teri out and catch the rest of the hop after that. 
Many, many thanks to the lovely Ellen Hutson for arranging things today! 
You can find the entire list of blogs participating in our little Julieathon at the CLASSroom!




{Happy Birthday} card

{all supplies by Papertrey Ink}
CS - White, Aqua Mist
Ink (reinkers) - Hibiscus Burst, Raspberry Fizz, Summer Sunrise, Aqua Mist; True Black, Soft Stone
Stamps - Layered Postmarks: Holiday, Daydreamer, Sentiment Signs
Other - waterbrush