Holiday Ham.....STERS

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How was your holiday? 4th of July is without a doubt a food holiday here. I am still feeling bad about last 4th of July when Instacart delivered me someone else's order, and he/she clearly had a banner patriotic dessert planned - there were blueberries, and strawberries, and whipped cream and all sort of stuff to make some kind of pretty tart. I hope they got a replacement! That was when there were shortages of all the things. Maybe he/she got MY order, which wasn't as beautiful, but did contain all the ingredients for my favorite German hot potato salad.

This year, we did brisket and my moderately famous beans. (Famous in our house, anyway.) I left out the spices I normally use, and just used bacon grease, salt and some smoked jalapenos that we had grown, smoked and frozen in 2017 - they were HOT. I didn't eat all day and always convince myself I'm going to eat so much brisket, but it's such a rich food, I'm always done after one piece. So yummy. 

I could eat brisket at every holiday! Or some sort of beef. I'm not a ham person. 

But I am a hamSTER person. 

I saw some sneak peeks of this Christmas hamster set and it cracked me up! But I wanted to make an all year card with it because the images are SO perfect for a birthday card. So here's what I did. 

First I stamped all the little hamsters and gifts and cut them out with the matching dies. I colored them with Graphit markers, because they have the teeny fine tip perfect for small images (Coupon code for these in the footer). Then I used two pieces of this Christmas paper - two of the greys and I lined up the stripes - look closely! You can do that with all the papers in the collection - just slide it up and down on your card base until they align. The hamsters and gifts got glued to that stripe. 

The marker I used exactly matched my Electropop pink ink, so I stamped the oversize Smile in that - and then the die cuts that out with no border, which I love! The sentiments below the hammies is from the same set - this is one of my most used sentiment sets. 

But since Nina went to all the trouble of a Christmas release, I thought I'd make a Christmas card with this STUNNING sentiment set. LOOK at those fonts - and I love the way the dies cut little pieces out between the words. 

Since my electropop was out, I used the same pink again with this fun stencil - the stencil has circles cut out - but next to them, there's a circle that is NOT cut out that's a guide. So after ink blending the pink circles, I just cleaned the stencil and shifted it, lining up the circle guides with my pink ones, and ink blending electropop yellow to create those perfect rows - genius!!

I kept that ink blending light and then REALLY saturated another piece with the same pink ink, stamped the sentiment on that, and then die cut it. I finished it with these glittery embellishments. This would be a very quick, reproduceable card for your holiday mailing!

Here are all the supplies I used today - come back for a giveaway!

Hamster Family Combo [ WFF ] Oversized Smile Stamp Set [ WFF ] Wonderful Christmas Combo [ WFF ] Half-Half Lines - Christmas Paper Pad [ WFF ] Electro Pop Ink Pads- Set of 8 - Gina... [ GNK ] Big Dots Stencil [ WFF ] Enamel Dots - Stardust –... [ WFF ] New Releases – WaffleFlower.com [ WFF ] Graphit — Marker Universe [ MRK ] 2021-07 [ WFF ] Understand Blue MINI Slimline Folded... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Slimline Folded... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #3... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #1... [ CTC ] Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #2... [ CTC ] Sakura CLASSIC WHITE Fine Line 05... [ SSS ] Art Anthology BIG CRAFT MAT 24x36 311473 [ SSS ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSP | SSS | ELH ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH | SSS ] Crafter's Companion GEMINI... [ SSS ] Scor-Pal MINI SCOR-BUDDY Scoring... [ SSS ] Storage Envelopes, Medium 25pk,... [ ELH ] CheckOutStore Stamp & Die Clear... [ CHC ] Extra Large -50 pk, Avery Elle Stamp... [ ELH ] Lawn Fawn STAMP SHAMMY Cleaner LF1045 [ SSS | CST ] Airtable: Organize your stamps & dies [ ART ] Last Chance – 25% off with code... [ WFF ]

The whole July release is awesome, so you can see the rest here. 

For today’s hop, Waffle Flower is giving away $25 gift certificate to THREE lucky winners. You can leave a comment on this blog and along the hop by 11:59pm EDT on Wednesday July 7th, 2021 for your chances to win. Winners will be chosen at random from the comments left on any of the posts in this blog hop - see the full list HERE and will be announced on the Waffle Flower Blog on 7/9/2021.

Also - From now till Wednesday July 7th, 2021, all orders placed at waffleflower.com will receive a mysterious gift (No code required!).

For those of you who are new to Waffle Flower, they have a Last Chance section on their website that lists many goodies for 25% off until they are gone! This would be a great place to start your collection, and Nina is an awesome human, so there's that! I miss her!

Anyway, if you are in the US, I hope you enjoy the rest of this holiday! Loveyameanitbye. 

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