Papertrey Ink March Blog Hop Challenge

So excited to be participating for my first time ever in the Papertrey Ink Blog Hop!  I placed my very first order last month during the Anniversary celebration and boy was I not disappointed!  Loving all the beautiful products that came to live at my house!  So here is the inspiration photo for this month's hop:

Um... Gorgeous much?  And here is how I was inspired:

As always, I was inspired by the colors.   The pink, the yellow, the white and that beautiful "nest" that holds the bouquet of flowers.  I love the blue hue created by the soft light coming in the window so I added a little bit of blue but not as much as I originally planned...just a little in the butterflies on my Crate design paper.  And I also felt the cup with the steam mimics the flowers come out of the base.

I knew I needed one of these beautiful Cover Plate Dies and I chose this Twist pattern and I LOVE it!  I cut it in white and placed it over a piece of the design paper that had a soft pink watercolored look to it.

And of course I had to get a couple of the coffee related items... this What The Doodle Tea Time set (mine has coffee in it) has been on my list since I saw a card on Amy's blog I've been filling up carts that include these stamps and dies and abandoning them.  So I finally did it!  There was a sale and I ordered enough to get free shipping and how could I not?

The tricky part for me with this set was die-cutting the steam.  It is so intricate, but what I ended up doing was die cutting the steam first.  Then I took both the negative space and the diecut over to my Misti.  Then I placed some temporary adhesive on the negative space and die cut and stuck them both down together with my diecut piece inside the negative space.  Having the negative space surrounding the die cut helped me to place my stamp set over the die cut just right.  I stamped it with versamark, added the powder, and then took the whole piece of paper out of the misti and over to my heating tool and heated it up while it was all still on the paper.  I needed to do the die cut first because if I stamped first, when I'd run it through my Big Shot, the embossing powder would crack and come off in some spots so this worked best for me.  But there is a similar way to stamp first and then die cut by using a negative space cut out to line your die up on the paper.   If I can ever find the video on it, I'll link it up here.  It was so worth the extra couple minutes to line it up because I LOVE the way the die cut steam looks and this will help with a few other dies I have that I've had a similar struggle with.

Another awesome die I knew I needed is the Fun Frames!  These are such a pretty shape and there are two in the set.  I love that the frame and inside are cut separately so you can mix and match your papers or leave them both the same.  Here I cut two and used the pretty Butterfly paper on the inside with just a plain white outer frame.  Love all the stitching on these too.  So pretty!  I cut a few of the butterflies out of the paper so I could pop them up and use them as embellishments.  Of course I needed some flowers in pink and white and added a few leaves die cut from kraft paper that were sitting on my desk and they were perfect to mimic the beautiful nest in the photo.

The What The Doodle Tea Time stamp set has a couple sentiments on it as well.  I cannot believe how inexpensive this set is!  Since there was black in the design paper, I decided to cut my CDD banner in black and heat embossed this sentiment on the set in white.  A few more flowers and a couple sequins and done!

I'm also playing along with this week's Outlawz Twisted Thursday Challenge... the twist is Seasons.

I was so happy I signed up for the PTI newsletter so I got a sneak peek of the inspiration photo for today's hop.  Life is so busy especially now during tax season that I may not have been able to play along had I not.  I am loving my new stuff and still have a few items left to crack open so you'll be seeing those soon!  Oh... and I've already started a new Wishlist...lol! #AMYMADEMEBUYIT ... cause she did!