Hi Everyone, and welcome to another week of Social Stamping – the blog host brain child of the lovely Kelly Kent – to keep us all stamping together when we can’t actually….you know….stamp together! You can use the ‘next’ button at the bottom of this post to jump around to all the blogs, and if you want to see the complete list of everyone joining in tonight, just click here!

The theme tonight is animals, and to start with I had no plan – so I stamped a bunch of animals and started to colour. I pretty much only use Stampin’ Blends when I colour as they make it very easy for the un-arty to get a good result for minimal effort!

Tip number 1 for you – when stamping a bunch of images like these I use the Stamparatus, and then I leave the stamps in place on the clear plate. Once I am finished colouring, I put the sheet back in the stamparatus and stamp again in Versamark ink, and then heat emboss with clear powder. I find it really sharpens the lines and gives the images a nice shine. Tip number 2 – if you accidentally sprinkle black embossing powder on instead of clear, just get a small clean paint brush and brush off the powder – try and go straight from the image to the edge of the card (as opposed to over the top of other images). It will make a mess and leave dark splotches on the non-coloured card around you images, but since I was planning on fussy cutting this didn’t matter. Be sure to use your embossing buddy before re-stamping in the versamark. Tip number 3 – check what powder you are sprinkling before you sprinkle…there’s a pretty obvious difference between black and clear 😀 😉

For these cards I used one of the simplest ‘fancy folds’ I know. Cut your regular card base (you want to end up with a landscape card, side fold), and then cut off half of the front panel. Once you have decorated this little panel, you just glue it back on (in the opposite orientation to what it was). If you are running A4 card bases you need to trim off about 7.4cm of the front panel. If you are using US letter bases you need to cut off 2 3/4″.

I ended up making some Get Well cards with these animals – and have saved the remaining lady bugs for another day. I think it’s handy to have Get Well cards on hand as when you need them – well you need them now.

Which is your favourite? Leave me a comment and let me know – I love reading your comments.

Next up tonight is my lovely friend Michelle – I was lucky enough to get a sneak peak of her card earlier this week and it is spectacular! Click below to check it out.