Hey crafty pals! Happy Saturday! Welcome back to this edition of Weekender with Wanda on the Simon Says Stamp blog! SO happy to have you here again with me for a bit of your weekend. Great to see you!  What have you been brewing up in your home studio lately? Are you getting organized? January and February for me always seem to be a time for nesting and cleaning. I like to recover from the holidays, and get ready for the new year… When I’m home and it’s cold outside, I also like to drink lots of coffee! LOL. Today’s card was inspired by my love of coffee, and also inpsired by a fun retro color palette. I used our Simon Says Stamp Exclusive stamp set called “What’s Brewing” to create a card that would be perfect for a friend. This set reminds me of a cool, retro kitchen theme and that’s why I chose the aqua and pink color scheme.

The main image in the stamp set is this big coffee mug! It has lots of smaller items that you can use to customize it. LOVE that! I made a pretty pink stripe on the bottom and then used the hello stamp too. I gently added some Antique Linen Distress Ink to the handle and the coffee part. I also stamped my steam image in the Antique Linen Ink for a soft feeling. I like these pretty colors with the deep black accents.

I used the same paper pad for all the patterned papers. It’s a favorite of mine – I AM by Simple Stories. I think I bought three packs of it!! I stamped my sentiment on a banner and cut an extra banner to use underneath for another pop of color. The heart/circle stamp is part of the set too. I cut it out and mounted it on my twine to kind of look like a button.

Here’s a trick I use a lot: Make your own background paper! I love taking the smaller stamps in a stamp set and creating my own repeating pattern. Here I stamped the small mug several times on my top layer. My paper is cream color. Don’t worry about getting it exactly perfect – just have fun! I stood up to stamp this so I could look down on my images. This is the perfect retro mint green ink….

I used a corner rounder to smooth out all the edges on my layers. Another fun tip: Cut a piece of patterned paper to use as your card base. Here I used a pretty floral on black paper. I cut it to A2 size and adhered it to the front of an A2 card base. Adds a little bit of something to the final card!

So that’s what’s brewing over here! Thank you, as always, for coming by to check out Weekender with Wanda! I love sharing with you. Have a great weekend! Happy Crafting!

SUPPLIES: