Honey Bee Stamps 4th Anniversary Celebration!

Hi there! If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that I’ve been sneaking peeks of Honey Bee Stamps‘s release. This release is a doozy… over 50 new products being debuted… and it’s super appropriate, because it’s their 4th Anniversary! Four years of Honey Bee goodness! I am so proud of how much Honey Bee Stamps has grown, and so honored to have been part of Melissa’s Design Team for almost two years now! I seriously am so lucky to be able to work with so many wonderful people in this industry, and Melissa is on one of my absolute favorites!

There’s a huge blog hop going on today and tomorrow (my “official” blog hop post is tomorrow), but I created so many projects using the new goodies in this release that I thought I’d spread the details about them out over two posts! This post will be long, with lots of pictures, but that’s just how much I have to show you!! 🙂 Let’s get started!

For my first project, I wanted to create a birthday card using the fantastic new Balloon Bunch dies. These are a set of nested dies, with two different shapes included in the die set, and they range from teeny tiny to gigantic! I die cut a bunch of them from some watercolor paper, then used Vicki Boutin’s Watercolor Brush Markers (such gorgeous, vibrant colors in this watercolor set!) to watercolor the solid balloons in a pretty mint, jade, pink, and fuchsia color scheme! I also added a generous layer of Ink On 3’s Pixie Dust to each ballon to make them super festive.

Next, I blended some pretty purple, pink, and mint inks on a white A2 card using blending brushes, layered my die cut balloons over the top, and adhered them with foam tape. I also die cut a glittery white “birthday” using the new Birthday Honey Cuts die. I white embossed a coordinating greeting from the new Happy Birthday stamp set onto some strips of vellum. (So many cute sentiments in that stamp set! Definitely a must have.) The final touch was some jewels and Nuvo drops.

For my second project, I used the absolutely stunningly detailed new Mandala die. I die cut the Mandala from some beautiful gold card stock, then layered it on an alcohol ink background that I had in my stash. (I like to make a bunch of them at once and then have them on hand for a quick background!) I stamped the greeting from Thanks a Bunch using Brass embossing powder onto some heavyweight vellum, then fussy cut around the edges.

The final touch was a few gems around the edge of the intricate Mandala die cut.

I saved my favorite for my final project today… Y’all know I’m a sucker for anything peony, and these new Spring Peony stamps from today’s release immediately claimed my attention as soon as I received my package. They’re gonna be awesome in any medium. For today, however, I decided to put my Luminance pencils to use. I absolutely love the look of colored pencils on colored card stock to create a seamless, almost screen-printed look, so I stamped several of the blooms and foliage from Spring Peony onto some beautiful teal card stock using white pigment ink, then colored them with my C’aran D’ache Luminance colored pencils.

I wanted to keep that deep teal background, allowing the peonies to be some bright pops of saturated color, which was accomplished by coloring the flowers on the same shade of teal card stock, then die cutting them and layering them on my teal background. I also die cut one of the new Double Stitched Polygon dies from that same teal card stock and popped it up on the teal card base using foam tape.

I die cut the white “bloom” from the new Bloom Honey Cuts and added the rest of the sentiment from the Bloom stamp set on strips of white card stock. I arranged the flowers on one side of the Double Stitched Polygon die cut, then adhered them and the greeting components using liquid adhesive. The final touch was a few jewels for sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my projects today. Be sure to stop by the Honey Bee Stamps blog to get linked up to Day 1 of the Blog Hop. (Psst… There are prizes to be had!!!) And don’t forget to come back here tomorrow for Day 2 for even more inspiration using the newest release from Honey Bee Stamps! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!