April Guest Designer Laurel Beard

Hi there! I was pleased as punch when Ashley contacted me about guest designing. I have been a long time admirer of Avocado Arts. They have such cute stamp sets with adorable images. They stamp perfectly! AND, they have digital die cuts? Yup???? I had no idea! Digital die cuts that work with an array of machines... Perfecto!! A little bit about me.... I was born, raised and still live in Florida.... I am married to a pilot but am afraid of heights.... I have two precious kids that are such miracles.... I like breakfast for dinner, bacon NOT sausage, and I love Coke Zero (Pepsi, plgh)....... I got into crafting by accident. A friend of mine had some weird contraption sitting on her dining room table. I asked what it was and she told me a cuttlebug. After laughing at the name, I asked what it did. Then she starting talking about stamps. I thought she was nuts. I'm like, I just get liberty stamps because they are forever stamps and the rates don't change, because surely she was talking about postage stamps... HAHAHA! I started searching the web, bought a few inks and stamps and then never looked back..... I LOVE techniques with distress inks and gelatos and just recently, I discovered the world of embossings pastes! You can find me on my blog (www.laurelbeard.org) or over on my youtube channel (www.youtube.com/laurelscrafts)......

I had the pleasure of working with two adorable stamp sets today... A Mother's Love and When and Where (insert links). The first project I created is with A Mother's Love. I decided to watercolor the flowers by coloring the stamps with distress markers and then stamp them to a card base! I misted some Mister Huey's in Dewey onto the background and then adhered the panel to a card base! I love the sentiments in this set and how you can build custom sentiments.

The next card showcases a lot of technique and uses When and Where (insert link)... I stamped the triangle border onto a card base and colored in a few of the triangles with markers... I took two pieces of glitter tape and adhered them onto the center of the card!   I then took the journaling card stamp and stamped it onto watercolor card stock in versafine onyx black ink and heat set it in clear embossing powder... The Who/What/Where was stamped in versamark and heat set with Liquid Platinum embossing powder. Just delicious.... See the background? That was created with Faber Castell gelatos.... Love those babies.... And as a finishing touch, I popped up the arrow with some foam dimension and colored it in with a Faber Castell Big Brush pen....

And finally, I created this tag for my daughter using A Mother's Love (insert link)..... I die cut the tag twice and adhered them together showing just a little bit of the pink. Look closely at the pink base because I stamped the chevron image from When and Where (insert link) in white.......   The flowers were softly colored with distress markers and stamped onto the tag.... The sentiment was stamped with Audrey Blue Simon Says Stamp ink.. See? I love all the sentiment builders in that set...

I've had so much fun playing with these sets..... Very versatile.... The sky is the limit!!! :) Oh and during April, they are offering FREE SHIPPING! AND, if that's not enough, if you spend $30, they throw in a free stamp set valued at 16.99. Not bad eeeh? Thanks again so much for having me... I'll see you again soon.