When I got to pick my stamps for today's Blog Hop with My Sweet Petunia & the Ink Blot Shop, I was immediately drawn to the Stretched Sentiments ... great font and such a versatile stamp set that can fill the whole width of a card ... love that.

I decided to spend a day pairing with these stamps with Gel Press Prints from my growing collection (I also got to play with the Ink Blot Shop Stretched Holiday Sentiments).
I used my Memory MISTI so I would have plenty of room to stamp on my entire print & also to let the sentiments go off the edges of smaller pieces of paper. The gridded inset makes it so easy to get the sentiments perfectly positioned.

For my first try, I stamped using White Pigment Ink on a Gel Press Print that was done on navy cardstock. I was able to stamp the same sentiment grouping twice by just sliding my paper up on my MISTI grid and stamping a second time.

I didn't have quite the contrast I wanted, so I added some white embossing powder to really make the sentiment pop.

There are lots of tiny stamps in the set ... with the MISTI, I was able to position my group of hearts and stamp them all together. The pigment ink on the painted background didn't give the crispness I was hoping for, so I went a little "grunge" with my embossing powder, leaving some white splatters to go for more of a mixed media effect ... I love the finished card.

I'm linking this card up at the Simon Says Stamp Anything Goes Challenge.
For my next cards, I switched to the new Versafine Clair Inks, which seemed to work better with the stamps & the painted backgrounds. Again I used my Memory MISTI to position my paper and stamps.

I clear embossed Versafine Clair Pinecone Ink for a nice contrast with my brick stenciled background.

Next I made two different cards from the same Gel Press Print ... I love how I could use my Memory MISTI to think through planning both layouts at the same time (one at the bottom ... the other at the top).

I turned my paper design vertically with contrast with the horizontal sentiments ... the green & bronze/gold seemed like the perfect color combination for some holiday cards.

As I kept reading through the sentiments in the Stamp Set thinking about designs, I keep singing this Ren & Stimpy Song over in my head (substituting the words I used on my card below).

Jingle, Jingle, Joy Joy ...

I originally stamped the Jingle Bells on the background, but decided I needed more contrast, so I stamped them a second time on gold metallic cardstock & detail cut them for embellishments.

While all of my cards so far have had the Stretched sentiments go across the entire width or length of the card, my final card positions the text slightly differently.

The finished card base is for a business sized envelope (4" x 8") ... remember you can click on any of the images to see them full size.

Hope you fell in love with the Ink Blot Shop Stretched Sentiments the same way I did ... have fun checking out all of the other great Ink Blot Stamps and ways to use them with the MISTI on today's Hop.
We will choose two lucky commenters from the hop to win one of two prizes: a $50 shopping spree at www.mysweetpetunia.com OR two stamp sets from Ink Blot Shop (images and info can be found here and here). Make sure you leave your comments no later than Sunday March 11th, at 11:59 PM CST. Winners will be announced on Tuesday March 13th on the Ink Blot Shop and My Sweet Petunia blogs (links below).
Ilina Crouse
Jeanne Streiff
Kia Gibson-Clapper
Ceal Pritchett
Giovana Smith
Chris Dayton
Stephanie Severin <<<<< -------- YOU ARE HERE
Lydia Fiedler
My Sweet Petunia