10 Cards 1 Kit / Simon Says Stamp October ’17 “Brushstroke Messages” Card Kit

Hello folks, Scott here with my 10 cards from the Simon Says Stamp “Brushstroke Messages” Card Kit for October 2017. This kit is chock full of mirrored card stock, embossing powder, and embossed pattern papers – lots of shine this month.

As you can see, this kit has sold out at Simon Says Stamp, but most of the kit supplies are available on their own. This month the stamp set is the “Brushstroke Messages” Stamp set which includes 5 bold brush stroke stamps and a little brush stroke heart along with six different sentiments – “thank YOU”, “YOU ARE loved”, “happy BIRTHDAY”, “YOU’RE GOING TO ROCK THIS”, “JUST WANTED TO SAY YOU’RE AMAZING”, and “YOU GOT THIS”.  We get 12 double-sided sheets of  My Mind’s Eye 6 x 6 BLUSH Designer Card stock Paper with rose gold foil accents – the gold foiling is very nice, and the papers feature dark navy blue, a blush pink (sigh), and ivory to go along with the rose gold foil. We are treated to a die this month – the Small Spiral Flower wafer die which is about 1″ square, and a full pot of Simon Says Stamp Steel Navy Embossing Powder, as well as a Ranger “Emboss It” pen in clear and Ranger’s .5oz. Mini Multi Medium Matte Glue,  and a disposable mini applicator adhesive brush. The card stock in this kit includes a sheet of Tonic Studios Burnished Rose Mirror card stock, and 1 sheet each of Simon Says Stamp 100# card stock in Ivory, Smoke Gray, and Soft Navy. Only 3 sheets of card stock, so I have to add to that to get card bases for 10 cards. I search through my stash and discover that I don’t have any card stock that matches this color pallet. My Ivory is much darker, my Gray is much lighter, and none of my dark blue card-stock is even close to the same color. So I do something that I have never done before with any card kit – I cut the Soft Navy and Smoke Gray card stock into quarters and mount them onto simple white card bases from my stash. I guess there’s a first time for everything, and I do end up with 4 Soft Navy card bases, 4 Smoke Gray card bases and 2 Ivory card bases. I worried that I didn’t have any ink pads that would match this kit either, so I did a little stamp test and did find that my Stampin’ Up Stampin’ Spot in ‘Night of Navy’ matched the Soft Navy card stock very well! I have to admit this stamp kit and color pallet did not particularly inspire me (more pink and no images to color!) so let’s see what I can come up with…I started with a piece of the pattern paper that had a large swatch of the gold foil paired with the ivory, and cut that out with one of my Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies. I ended up using almost all of the Stitched Rectangle dies in my stash – both the large and the small – I do love the sharp detail that the stitching adds. I decided to use some of my Gray card stock from my stash (Staples Cover Stock in Gray) and cut a mat at 4″x 5.25″ to go on top of the Soft Navy card base. I used the Emboss It pen to draw corners on the top left and bottom right corners of the gray mat and embossed those with the Steel Navy embossing powder – really nice embossing powder – great color and great shine! I felt like the gold embossing was a little overpowering, so I took the medium brushstroke stamp and stamped it vertically on the foil with VersaMark ink and embossed it with some of my own silver embossing powder. I figured I could add silver embossing to this pallet in compliment to the grey colors, and this vertical stripe did break-up the large expanse of foil on the pattern paper. I DID have something in my stash that matched this kit – the Nuvo Crystal Drops in Navy Blue matched the navy blue in the kit perfectly! Three drops of those on the silver embossed ‘brushstroke’ added just the right touch of texture and shine. I stamped the sentiment in VersaMark ink and embossed it with the Steel Navy embossing powder – REALLY nice embossing powder!! I like this card a lot, and discovered that the ‘rose gold’ foiling on the pattern papers reads a little more like copper when it isn’t paired up with the blush pink in the pattern papers. Aha!! Let’s see if I can create 10 cards from this kit that are real elegant, masculine cards!For this card, I wanted to try to emboss the Spiral Flower Die on the mirror card stock without cutting it out. It took me a couple of tries to find the right pressure on my die-cutting machine, but I got a good embossing of the die on the top of a 1.5″x 3.25″ piece of the mirror card stock. I added two rectangles of the navy pattern papers to match, and mounted all three on 1.625″x 3.375″ gray card stock mats that I embossed on their edges with my silver embossing powder. I embossed the sentiment on the mirror card stock with the Steel Navy powder from the kit, which worked very well. I thought three dots of the Nuvo Crystal drops under the mirror card stock would finish this card but, with everything mounted on foam tape to the Soft Navy card base, the card felt a little dark to me. I reached for my Love From Lizi Silver Glitter Peel Off stickers to add touches of glitter over and above the rectangles – that brightened up the whole card quite a bit! For the next card on the Soft Navy card base, I embossed some scrap card stock with my silver embossing powder and the Steel Navy embossing powder, and die-cut the Spiral Flower die three times from each. I used the negative space from the die cuts and glued them to the card base along its opening edge. I took one of the navy pattern papers and embossed some irregular stripes of Steel Navy using the Emboss It pen from the kit. I cut one edge of the navy pattern paper with one of my stitched hillside dies and cut a matching curve on a piece of my gray card stock to use as a mat – the left side of the gray card stock has a stitched detail using my Ellen Hutson Stitching Lines die. The gray and blue are glued together and foam taped up on the card base. I again embossed the sentiment on my gray card stock with the Steel Navy embossing powder, cut that out with one of my Stitched Rectangle dies, and mounted that on the pattern paper with foam tape. I think the negative pieces of the Spiral Flower die are a little more abstract than flower-y and I really like the lack of any gold foiling on this sharp Thank You card. One more Soft Navy card base to go…! I die cut three Spiral Flower die cuts from the mirror card stock to add to the silver and navy die-cuts left from the previous cards, and layered them all together (three times) to make this card. I was going for a ‘fireworks’ thing here and I think these look like fireworks (everyone who has seen this card live still thinks they are flowers, but what can you do with people who have no imagination?  LOL!!). I did draw the trails and ‘explosions’ with the Emboss It pen and embossed them in my silver embossing powder – maybe if I had forgone the firework ‘trails’ they might look less like flower stems…?? Nevertheless, I added dots of my silver Sharpie extra fine point metallic pen to the ‘explosions’ and made a simple banner from the mirror card stock to which I embossed the sentiment in Steel Navy. I added a tiny gray card stock mat behind the banner and foam taped it up on the card base. Fireworks or Flowers, I like this card a lot and think it’s a very classy, very potent, birthday card. Now I move along to the Smoke Gray card bases. I take the Emboss It pen and draw a ‘mat’ on the Smoke Gray card base and emboss it with the Steel Navy powder. I cut one of the navy / gold foiling pattern papers with a Stitched Rectangle die and glued that to my card base. I selectively cut three small rectangles (with another Stitched Rectangle die) from a second piece of pattern paper (avoiding the blush pink portions) and added those to the navy pattern paper with foam tape. I actually double-embossed the sentiment on the center rectangle. I used my Tim Holtz Stamp Platform to stamp the sentiment in VersaMark ink, embossed that with the powder from the kit, then returned the piece to my stamp platform to stamp it a second time with VersaMark ink and embossed it a second time. This gave me a nicely textural sentiment with lots of shine. I love that Steel Navy embossing powder! And card #5 is another dashing guy card! I am working my way through the sentiments in the stamp kit, and only have the “YOU ARE loved” sentiment still left to be used. I’m still trying to keep things masculine here, so I cut a heart shape out of one of the pattern papers (capturing a little slice of the foiling on the left edge) with one of my Darice Nesting Heart Dies and stamped the sentiment on that with my Night of Navy Stampin’ Spot. I mounted that up on foam tape to a square of the polka-dot pattern paper (cut with a Darice Nesting Squares die) glued down to the Smoke Gray card base and highlighted with a couple strips of the mirror card stock on the top and bottom. I used the brush stroke heart stamp to stamp a single heart at the bottom of the die cut and to create a pattern across the bottom of the card base – both in Night of Navy ink. I think this is about as masculine as you can get with this sentiment! Now that covers all the sentiments in this stamp set. Last month’s Simon Says Stamp card kit was all about birthdays (I made 6 Happy Birthday cards) so I decided to add more Thank You cards to this batch. Second only to Happy Birthday cards, Thank You cards are always useful to have on hand! Now, I really like this card a lot, and think of it as kind of hyper-masculine! (it’s the pin-stripes!) Again, on the Smoke Gray card base, I cut a piece of that great pin-striped pattern paper and glued it to the center of my card base, and added two thin strips of the mirror card stock to the sides. I double-embossed the sentiment (again) on the ivory & gold foil pattern paper cut out with another Stitched Rectangle die. I really love the sentiment spanning both the foiling and ivory parts of this pattern paper – textural and shiny – I think that Steel Navy embossing powder really holds its own with the gold foiling! I  used foam tape to mount the sentiment to a piece of the polka-dot pattern paper (you know I love stripes and polka-dots together!) and glued those to another piece of the mirror card stock cut out with a larger Stitched Rectangle die. Those three layers are then foam taped over the pin-striped pattern paper and another Thank You card fit for the stout-hearted is borne!  Though I don’t have any gray ink pads in my stock, I know that stamping with VersaMark ink will create a ‘watermark’ on your card stock – so I stamped the large squarish brushstroke stamp in the middle of another Smoke Gray card base. I figured I would then emboss the ‘Thank You’ sentiment on top of that watermark. WELL… I don’t know if it was the humidity or what, but I couldn’t get my VersaMark ink to give up its stick! I tried using my heat tool, my EK Powder tool, and nothing I did would completely remove the sticky from that ink. SO… I ended up just stamping the sentiment on the watermark with the Night of Navy ink pad and then embossing the entire center stamping with clear embossing powder from my stash. The Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies make great frames when paired up, so I cut the smallest frame from the random ivory & foil polka-dot pattern paper, and the third frame from the regular ivory & foil polka-dot paper. The second and fourth frame are cut from the mirror card stock. I glued the polka-dots down to the card base and elevated the mirror card stock frames with the Darice double-sided sticky foam strips that we received with our SSS July card kit. I think this card is very striking and it’s amazing how much the dimension of the frames really pulls your eye into the center sentiment block.   Now I still have 3 of the brushstroke stamps still to use, so I paired up the long skinny and the long thick brushstroke stamps and stamped them with my Night of Navy Stampin’ Spot on the top and bottom of the Ivory card base. I added a strip of the random foiled polka-dots pattern paper down the middle, and two thin strips of the mirror card stock right in the center. I like how the mirror stripes echo the stamped stripes. For the sentiment, I recently purchased this Spellbinders “Be Amazing” stamp and die set on sale at Scrapbook.com and thought the “Be Amazing” sentiment went right along with the theme of this kit re: ‘just wanted to say you’re amazing’. LOVE these stamps that have an outline die!! I stamped and embossed this on vellum with the Steel Navy embossing powder – WOW! Really sumptuous!! I die-cut the vellum and a piece of white fun foam with the included die, ran the vellum through my Xyron Sticker Maker, and stuck it down to the foam die-cut. A little Scor-tape to attach the sentiment and it makes a very chunky  embellishment that I didn’t have to cut and glue 5 pieces of card stock together to create! After using all the navy in this kit, I really enjoyed the light feeling and brightness here! Now I have one more Ivory card base and one final brushstroke stamp from the set to use, so another Thank You card couldn’t hurt, and as much as I like the Steel Navy embossing powder, I was getting a little tired of the navy and the grey and the gold….Anybody looking for some color this month!!?? LOL! I decided to throw caution to the wind and go for some really big color! With the assistance of my Tim Holtz stamp platform, I stamped the brushstroke at an angle across the Ivory card base with Ranger Archival Ink in Deep Purple, Manganese Blue, Emerald Green, Monarch Orange, Vermillion, and I used the SSS Hybrid ink cube from the April ’17 kit in Lemon Zest for the yellow. The sentiment is a Lawn Fawn Scripty Thanks die and I used some Stick It adhesive sheets to attach some white card stock to one side of a piece of fun foam, added more Stick It to the back of the foam, and then I die-cut the sentiment and colored the card stock side with some red Spectrum Noir alcohol markers. I was able to use the Stick It adhesive on the back of the fun foam to attach the sentiment to the card front. I did use my Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen to add some sparkle to the brushstrokes and the die-cut. Here’s another nice chunky sentiment that’s casual yet quite lively! Of course, I love this card and actually felt a little liberated making something truly cheerful and bright!!    That concludes my 10 Card 1 Kit post this month! That’s 4 Thank You cards, 1 Birthday card, and 5 cards of affirmation..!!! I think this is a very handsome set of strapping cards! I am quite proud and personally thrilled that I was able to complete 10 cards without using any of the blush pink!! WOO-HOO!!  LOLOLOL!! Thank you so much for joining me here – I hope you enjoyed!  If you have any questions, please go to the contact page and send me a note! Please, please share this post with others, and Spread the Cheer!!