Seriously, My April Paper Pumpkin Kit and Alternate Ideas!

This month's Paper Pumpkin kit featured some sassy stamps (the greetings, as you will see are "Seriously," "you kick booty," and "love your guts"), a cool color combo (Night of Navy, Baja Breeze, Old Olive, More Mustard, and Cherry Cobbler), a generous amount of natural Linen Thread, and the awesome Silver Designer Buttons (from the Spring Catalog).  This kit lends itself well to creating some great masculine cards, which can be challenging!  However, it is also versatile enough that you could create a card for most anyone with it!

Using just the supplies and instruction that come with the kit, you can create 4 cards.  However, as with the Welcome Kit, I decided to add just a couple more sheets of paper (one Night of Navy and one Baja Breeze 8-1/2 x 11" piece of card stock), and some scraps of Very Vanilla, and with those simple additions, I had enough material to create these eight cards:

Here is the first card I created, following the design and instructions that Stampin' Up! included with the kit:

For the next card I made, I decided to follow the provided instructions again, and use the "love your guts" stamp, but  omit the "guts" part.  I took a Cherry Cobbler Stampin' Write Marker, inked up just the "love you" part of the stamp, stamped that on a long scrap of Very Vanilla card stock, reinked and stamped again in Cherry Cobbler.  Then, for the third time, I cleaned the stamp, reinked it using a Baja Breeze marker, and stamped:

Time for a confession -- I had a bit of trouble when I inked up my "seriously" using my Cherry Cobbler ink pad, which needs to be reinked (would have had better results if I'd used the Stampin' Spot included with the kit!!).  I had a moment of panic when I lifted my stamp up from the paper and saw an incomplete image on one of the precious die cut adhesives from kit, but then, a simple solution came to me -- stamp on Very Vanilla paper and adhere that over the bad image.  And, that worked pretty well:

 

Phew!!!!


On my third card, I changed things up a bit more.  I had seen some samples created by Marti Crapo, and liked her idea of using stamps from the two other Paper Pumpkin kits in combination with this month's kit.  So, I used the "hey there" and splash stamps from the Welcome Kit, along with the dots stamp from the Try It kit on this card.  I also decided to create a landscape card this time:

Another idea I wanted to try was to stamp "seriously" along with the "fabulous" stamp from Fabulous Phrases.  For this card, I used a Not Quite Navy base, and had cut one of the Not Quite Navy Designer card bases from the kit, to use as a designer paper layer.  I again used the splash stamp from the Welcom Kit and the dots from the Try It kit:

Here's another photo, which shows the "fabulous" a little better (in retrospect, I should probably have stamped it in a more contrasting color like Cherry Cobbler or even More Mustard -- guess I should just re-stamp it on a piece of Very Vanilla and attach over where I stamped it on the card again here!):

Here's another card, again with a Not Quite Navy base, and using the "hey there, friend" stamp from the Paper Pumpkin Welcome kit in Not Quite Navy ink.  This time I added a strip of the Epic Day This and That Washi Tape as well:

This card uses a Baja Breeze base, along with a flag created from a piece of one of the designer card bases included with the kit.  I stamped the dots from the Try It kit in Baja Breeze under the speech bubble.  I also used my Baja Breeze marker again to add just the "love you" from the "love your guts" stamp.  And, you might notice there is also a clip on this one from the Elements Cute Clips (Spring Catalog):

For the final card, I decided to create something a bit more elaborate.  I die cut a piece of Very Vanilla using  the largest of the Apothecary Accents Framelits.  I used the "seriously" stamp and Try It kit dots in Crumb Cake; stamps from Amazing Family in Not Quite Navy, Basic Gray ("Father"), and Baja Breeze (decorative image); and the ship from The Open Sea in Baja Breeze.  The card base is Baja Breeze, and I layered a piece trimmed from one of the kit's card bases on top of that.  I'd stamped that with the splash image from the Welcome Kit.  There's also a strip of Epic Day Washi Tape, with linen thread wrapped around it, and a small button from my stash of Silver Designer Buttons (not included with the Paper Pumpkin kit):

Hope you enjoyed these ideas!  If you haven't signed up for My Paper Pumpkin yet, what are you waiting for?!  It's so much fun to get a kit filled with wonderful, surprise crafting goodies in your mailbox!

- Michelle