Sweet Summer Inspiration

We were given the image at the left to use as our inspiration for this week's Pals Paper Arts Challenge. I love the aged wood (Crumb Cake and Soft Suede), the blues (Pool Party and Baja Breeze) and the Whites (Whisper White). Because I have soooo many new stamp sets to play with, I again made two cards ;) 

I used Established Elegance for the first one. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE this stamp set? I especially love the typewriter. I don't know why... but it's what attracted me to this set. I love the other images too, but the typewriter, I don't know, I just love it :) Nothing says vintage quite like a typewriter.

For the second card, I used Patterned Party. I absolutely love this birthday card stamp set. It's great for kids cards, great for adults cards. It just works. And in keeping with the summer theme, I used Pool Party and Soft Suede as my main colors, with the 2011-2013 In Colors as accents.

Little hints:

*The Seam Binding ribbon (Very Vanilla on the card to the right) is great for the ruffling technique. Run a bit of Snail along your card where you want to adhere the ribbon and ruffle your ribbon randomly. This technique can also be easily done with the 3/8" Taffeta Ribbon.
*SU! card stock is thicker than most, so when you distress it with your bone folder (such as curling the edges) you can split the layers apart to give it an aged look.
*Sponging the edges of your card stock is an easy and cost-effective way to achieve and aged look.
*Want to stamp an image in several different colors? Use Stampin' Up!'s Stampin' Write Markers. They contain the same ink as the ink pads and you can stamp with them.

Hope these two cards helped you fall in love with some new stamp sets and keep letting stamps bring out your creativity!