Stay Cool with Guest Tracey McNeely

Today we’re thrilled to welcome our friend, Tracey McNeely to the blog. Tracey is the founder of 25 Days of Christmas Tags and we think you’ll love her style as much as we do.

Hi friends! I’m super excited to be here today on the Ellen Hutson blog to share a few cards I made with the Essentials by Ellen Summer of Stamping release.

When I first looked at the Stay Cool stamp set and coordinating Stay Cool dies I saw popsicles and ice cream. Today I’m using geometric images from the Stay Cool stamp set to make some graphic summer cards.

First up is Stay Golden. I stamped the large circle from the Stay Cool stamp set  6 times with Dried Marigold Distress Oxide ink on a 4.50” x 3.25” panel of Neenah cardstock.

When I stamp with Distress Oxide ink I tap the ink direct to my stamp and then take a foam blender to smooth out any bubbles that might appear. I used a second foam blender to add some shading with Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxide ink along the one side of the circle.

The leaves were die cut from a cardstock panel blended with Twisted Citron and Mowed Lawn Distress Oxide ink. 

The panel was adhered to an apricot card with foam tape. Sentiments from the Stay Cool stamp set were stamped and white embossed black cardstock with Hero Arts white embossing powder. The co-ordinating Stay Cool dies cut the embossed sentiments plus three more layers for each word. They were glued together to create chunky sentiments. 

Next up is Stay Cool, made with the half circle stamp from the Stay Cool stamp set.

With three colours of ink I was able to create this graphic image using my MISTI. I used Kitsch Flamingo, Spiced Marmalade and Wild Honey Distress Oxide inks. I started with a 4.25” square panel and used a centre finding ruler to locate the centre point of that panel then marked it with a pencil. 

Then I lightly wrote the number 1 in the upper right hand corner with pencil, 2 on the upper left corner, 3 on the lower left corner and 4 on the lower right corner. I put the panel into the corner of my MISTI, making sure that the number 1 is the top right corner of my card. 

The half circle stamp from the Stay Cool stamp set was placed vertically on the centre dot, with the help of a T-Square, and I stamped the first image with Kitsch Flamingo. 

The panel was then rotated to the left, so that the number 2 was now in the top right corner. I inked up with Kitsch Flamingo again and stamped the second half circle.

I repeated this process for numbers 3 & 4 to complete the pattern.

Clean off the stamp well and wipe with a microfiber cloth before changing colours makes a big difference in getting a nice crisp transition between colours. I moved the stamp halfway between the first and second pink half circles and picked it up with my MISTI.

I stamped and rotated my panel using Spiced Marmalade, remembering to rotate to the left until I had four orange half circles. 
The final colour used was Wild Honey. I placed the stamp in the space right in between the orange and the pink.

I created another chunky sentiment with Stay Cool stamp set on black cardstock with white embossing. The panel was cut with the PinkFresh Studios Stitched Scalloped Square dies and added to a grey matted panel. I finished the card off with another chunky sentiment. It kind of looks like a fan, perfect to Stay Cool!

One last card, Chill Vibes was made using the ‘popsicle’ and half circle stamp from the Stay Cool stamp set.

This card was the most freehand of the three but I managed to keep my lines straight with the help of the gridlines on my craft mat. With a 4.25” square panel I started from the bottom left and stamped the popsicle image with Kitsch Flamingo. Then I continued it vertically up the left edge of the card until it ran off the page. For column two I offset the image a bit and once again continued to fill up the column. From there I just repeated the patterns in columns one and two across the card.

Using the  half circle image I stamped on each shape in column one using Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxide ink. For column two I changed to Wild Honey and repeated this colour pattern for the remaining columns.

The panel was trimmed down to a 4” square and mounted with foam tape to a white 4.25” square white card base. A final chunky sentiment from the Stay Cool stamp set was added to finish it off.

I had such a blast playing with the geometric shapes in the Stay Cool stamp set. I managed to make three cool summery cards and not a popsicle in site! I hope I’ve given you a few ideas of what to do with this stamp set.

Thanks so much for crafting with me and thank you to the team at Ellen Hutson for giving me the floor today!

~Tracey

If you’d like to see more of Tracey’s beautiful work, you can find her at @traceymcneely on Instagram.