Hand in Hand and Heart to Heart

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Good morning! Are you ready for today? I’m taking a deep breath before I dive in and start showing you everything from our very first collection! I can hardly believe the day is here, and we’re just a few days from launching our store!

Without further ado, welcome to our first ever New Product Meet & Greet here at The Greetery! What is a product meet & greet? Just like it sounds…first you get to “meet” the new products as we introduce them. Then you can “greet” them by leaving a comment for a chance to win a gift certificate! Details on how to win will be at the bottom of this post.

After we’re through with the product introductions, I’ll show you some projects. We have several amazing guests with us this week also, and I’m so excited that they were able to join in on the launch! I can’t wait for you to see what they’ve made with these new products, so be sure to click the links to their blogs and give them some oohs and aahs! 🙂

Now for the product introductions…

Hand in Hand Stamps & Dies

Today’s products are some things I’ve had in mind to create for a long time. The first set is called Hand in Hand, and consists of a stamp set and matching dies.

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The images in the Hand in Hand set can be combined in many different ways. You can choose to use each person by themselves, or grouped with any of the others. They can also hold either the umbrella or the dog’s leash!

Fir & Foliage No. 1 Stamps & Dies

The other set being showcased today is called Fir & Foliage No. 1. This set creates beautifully detailed multi-step trees in two sizes. They are wonderful for scene-building and work perfectly with the Hand in Hand set.

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Stencils

The last products being showcased today are stencils. We are releasing two different stencils, and they both work wonderfully for scene-building and as companions for the other products I’ve just introduced.

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The Pathway stencil is a two-step stencil consisting of a solid pathway and a cobblestone detail. The solid portion of the pathway is included in the stencil. Simply snip it apart from the base to use as a mask.

The Fir & Foliage No. 1 stencil set is a three-step layering stencil. It creates a tree very similar to those in the Fir & Foliage No. 1 stamp set, but on a larger scale, so it works great for pairing with the stamp set to give your projects lots of depth and dimension!

I put together a video for you, showing you these stencils in action!

To aid in your list-making and planning, below you will find the prices for today’s products.

• Hand in Hand stamp set – $15
• Hand in Hand Die – $21
• Fir & Foliage No. 1 stamp set – $24
• Fir & Foliage No. 1 die – $18
• Fir & Foliage No. 1 3-step stencil – $9
• Pathway Stencil – $6

Now for the fun part! Let’s get on to the projects using these new sets!

The Hand in Hand set is so fun to color using your favorite medium and technique, whether that’s markers, colored pencils, watercolor, or something else. For this sweet Mother’s Day card I used the no-line watercolor technique to bring these images to life. I’ll be doing some video tutorials for coloring these images, so stay tuned for more info on that! I also used both of the new stencils on this card to finish off the scene.

My next project has a much different feel! I wanted to create the look of a rainy night in the city. I started out by sponging bright Distress Oxide inks onto my background to mimic the look of city lights. The woman was colored with colored pencils.

TIP: To make your colored images more lively, it helps to incorporate lots of different colors. You’ll notice in both of the cards above, their clothing incorporates some of the colors from their surroundings to mimic the look of warm sunshine as in this first project, or reflections as in the second.

I did some no-line watercoloring once again for this next project. It’s one of my favorite techniques! This time I just used the little girl and gave her the umbrella. Doesn’t it look like she’s skipping happily through the puddles?! I tried something fun with the Pathway stencil here – I embossed it by running it through my machine with an embossing pad. Then I watercolored the stones to give them a realistic look! I used the Fir & Foliage No. 1 stencil to add the branches along the edges to draw your eye in to the scene. The grass and flowers along the path were done freehand.

Blog Tip: You can click on any of the images in this post to get a closer look. When you click on them, you’ll also see a comment form where you can leave a comment or ask questions about how something was done or what supplies were used!

This next project again uses no-line watercoloring for a Father’s Day card. I used the man, boy, and dog for this one. I love the dog, but that little boy might be my favorite from the set! I started the background with kraft cardstock and used Distress Oxide inks for the stamping and stenciling. Using the Fir & Foliage stamps and stencils together gives you a nice variety of sizes for the trees and creates lots of realistic depth.

I had to go against everything in me that’s wishing for spring weather right now to create this next project! 🙂 But I really wanted to experiment with creating some wintery effects using these new sets. I colored this red-clad couple and their umbrella using colored pencils. The trees were done with the Fir & Foliage stencils. I used the trunk stencil along with the detail portion of the tree-top with some embossing paste to add snow to the branches. I also added some white ink splatters once my card was finished, to mimic the look of falling snow.

My next card uses just the Fir & Foliage No. 1 stamps. These trees are perfect for any season, making them something you’ll want to reach for over and over, all year long. I had fun experimenting with stamping them in vibrant autumn colors. The sentiment and the dies they’re stamped on are from the new Sentiment Suite set that we’ll be showcasing later this week.

TIP: The solid portion of the Pathway stencil can be used as a mask to create hills. I used this technique on both the autumn tree and winter scene cards!

Now that you’ve gotten to meet all of today’s new products, you can “greet” them for a chance to win a $50 gift card! Read on for details…

• Comment here on the blog for one entry (one comment per person)
• Comment on our guests’ blogs for more entries (one comment per person, per blog)
• Comments close at Midnight ET on Thursday, April 25
• Winners will be posted at 7am ET on Friday, April 26th here on the blog

Without further ado, our amazing guests for today!
(click on the images to visit their blogs)

Thanks for visiting today! We’ll be back tomorrow for another day of product reveals and projects!