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Welcome to our first Clear Artistic Stamps blog hop!! This week we are introducing our new additions to the Design Team as well as 10 new sets that have recently been released. Our blog hop is a short 10 station affair and there will be prizes that you can win if you leave a comment at each hopping blog that you visit!
My new stamp set to showcase is the wonderful A Dreamer’s Moment . I thought I get the new designers on their creative way with showing them a colorful collection of colored pencils, don’t those make your mouth water?

I used the fabulous Dry Embossing tutorial by Vicky that I found on the Firecrackerdesigns Blog . I had never done this before but after a few trials it worked very well. In short, I stamped and black embossed the pretty iris on vellum card stock (papertreyink) and then dry embossed them from the back using a fiskars stylus.
Coloring the leaves was done with Derwent Inktense Watersoluble Ink Pencils. Those are so intense, much fun to play with. Here is a picture showing up top how I applied the pencil to the front, then on the bottom after the ink was activated with the waterbrush:

The base material to build my pencil box are 4″ square coasters from Elemental Doodles. I must say those are the best quality coasters I have worked with so far. They accept glued paper wonderfully, are soft enough to punch and sew through with the machine, yet very sturdy. The bare coasters were covered with basic grey papers (porcelain), the medium EK success corner rounder punch (green) is perfect to round corners on 4 inch squares of paper for these. Then I adhered the stamped and colored vellum pieces that I had cut somewhat at a center line. I wanted the pretty paper to show on the top. After punching these with the Bind-It-All I added a bit of decorative machine sewing all around. Here are the pieces before assembly:

The bottom and inside of the box pieces have the same dotted pattern. Now all that was needed was to lace these together into a box. I used 4 lengths of double sided green ribbon, starting at the top corners each to lace down and then along half of the bottom sides. They meet at the centers on the bottom and were tied into a knot. and that’s all there is to it I am happy to have my pencils out of hiding and into plain view. Had a bit of issues finding stuff when they were in a 4 layered metal box, now I can immediately see what I want!

Here is a list of our blog hop stations, feel free to just hop on to the next person or start at the beginning at Belinda’s blog. You have until Wednesday 09/09/09 to visit and leave a comment to be entered into our drawing. First prize will be the fun Limited Edition set Thoughts of an Egret and there will be runner up prizes as well!

• Belinda
  
• Heather
  
• Nancy
  
• Wendi
  
• Samantha
  
• Lisa
  
• Jean
  
• Etha <--- you are here
  
• Jeanne
  
• The Cottage Studio