From Russia With Love

It's amazing how, at the end of the day, all good things lead back to bacon.

Yes, even in papercrafting.

Yesterday, I was making my sample for my Virtual Stamp Night challenge at Splitcoast this weekend (come play!) and I had a bacon-related revelation.

You know how your paper warps when you do watercolor or embossing techniques? Well I usually glue my card together and then go slip it under the pile of magazines on my coffee table until it's dry and that flattens it out.

But then I realized - I have the perfect card flattening tool - and I don't have to dig through a pile of magazines to find my card after I use it.

It's a bacon press!

I've had this bacon press since 1990 - and I've actually never used it for bacon. The secret to good, flat bacon is to start with cold bacon in a cold pan. But it's so cute and heavy duty that I couldn't get rid of it.

And then today - it hit me like a lightning bolt - it's the PERFECT card press!

A few minutes under the bacon press and my card was perfectly flat! God bless bacon!

The VSN (Virtual Stamp Night at Splitcoast) theme this weekend is Around the World in 80 Days, and each challenge this weekend takes inspiration from a different country.

For my challenge, I chose Russia - specifically the Imperial Faberge Eggs. The story of Faberge is very intriguing, and the majority of the eggs made by the House of Faberge were made for the Romanovs to give to each other. It's a fascinating story for me, because it starts with a gifted French artist, goes through a horrid governmental overreach, and ends up with Aqua Net. Not even kidding. Read about it.

What's cool about Faberge is the uniqueness of those eggs - and how just the name Faberge calls that particular magic to mind.

So I chose my favorite Faberge egg as inspiration - it's a deep cobalt blue egg (currently owned by Prince Albert of Monaco) with ornate gold detail. It's stunning. So I used the First Sight stamp set (coming in the Occasions Mini January 4th) to emboss in gold, and then I spritzed it and added Turquoise, Violet and Ultramarine Brusho. I let it air dry so the color stayed vivid.

The ultramarine separates so that you see both blue and violet, which I love.

Speaking of color - my new online class is available now! It's a color combo study for the upcoming Picture Perfect stamp set - available January 4th. Here's a peek of one of the layering images in the set - I stamped out the four steps for this image.

This class shows you 24 total color combos - 5 combos for the hummingbird, taken from real bird photos, 1 hummingbird combo that give it a vintage, sepia look, 10 combos for the rose stamp, 5 for the starfish and 3 for the leaves.

These are unique combos you will be surprised by, and I also give alignment tips for this multi-step stamp set.

If you're a demonstrator and pre-ordered this set - you'll love this class for your own classes. If you are not a demonstrator - if you buy this set from me beginning January 4th - this class will be free with your purchase!

A little something for everyone.

Hope  you come play along with us for Virtual Stamp Night - the challenges are amazing.

Loveyameanitbye/