Ribbon of Hope

Do you watch So You Think You Can Dance? Well, if you saw last night's episode, Ade & Melissa, to much acclaim, did a beautiful dance about a woman who has breast cancer. How ironic that I was putting the ribbons on my new domino pins made with Stampin' Up!'s Ribbon of Hope stamp as I was watching it!

I added this set (which is really not a set, just one individual stamp on the last page of the catalog for just $7.95) to my last order on a last minute whim and I'm so glad I did. Did you know there's a color associated with pretty much every cause? It's an interesting thing to google. Anyway, that's a versatile stamp.

So, pretty similar to the Christmas ornament domino pins or magnets I make for craft fairs, I decided to do something with this set. I'm making them into pins & I'll also attach an elastic cord so they can be ornaments too. I made these with Staz-On inks and then covered the whole domino with Iridescent Ice embossing powder. For the breast cancer pin, I just wrote "HOPE" myself with a black sharpie.

A few tips when working with the Staz-On. Because it's a solid image stamp and the domino surface is slippery, the stamped image looks mottled at first. To smooth it out, I used a blender pen. It also pushed the color around enabling me to get that darker around the edges dimensional effect. If you get a stray mark outside your image, a Versamarker will clean it up! The yellow image was really light after embossing, so for more definition, I outlined it with a darker yellow fine-tip Bic Mark-It permanent marker (yes, you can write OVER the embossing powder, pretty cool). Since SU! doesn't make a yellow ribbon, it occurred to me to make the ribbons red, white & blue for the "Support Our Troops" pin. I live in a military-heavy area, so here's hoping these go over well :)

Ribbon of Hope