Diva Inspirations are hopping today

Welcome to our February Diva Inspirations Hop!  

Today the Divas are dusting off some Verve favorites and putting on our monthly hop to inspire you with a fresh new spin on the stamps in our stash! So grab a drink and hop along as we share a little Verve with you!

There's a great little prize involved, too! A random commenter on one of the hops will win a $30 gift certificate to VERVE, so be sure to leave a little love in the comment section as you hop about! You can find out all the prize details over on the Verve Blog today.

Your next hop is Laurie! 

In case you are just getting started in the hop here is the full list to get you going.

	1. Julee	8. Andrea
	2. Betty	9. Charmaine
	3. Jen	10. Janelle
	4. Sankari	11. Laurie
	5. Sony	12. Maureen
	6. Susan	13. Teresa
	7. Amber

Details:
If you want to know more: I started with a wood grain embossing folder and a piece of blue card stock. I started with a foam roller ($1 store) and a mixture of white, black and raw umber acrylic paints. Then I switched to a rubber brayer with some more white added to the mixture so I would only get the raised grain of the embossed paper. Then I decided to heave-ho the rest of the paint onto the embossed paper with a palette knife. Three different ways to get paint effects with embossed paper.

I wanted to repeat the blue from the base mat and used it on the Rounded Scallop Frame. It was too much solid blue so I repeated the paint mixture, but only used a dry stiff brush (I think I didn't clean it out sufficiently from the last use, but if you have a stencil brush that would work well too). The pennant trim die paper and scallop circle peeking out from the doily are made from white paper that I used a brayer and a Gray ink pad, a paper that was already in my stash.

And if you're curious, I made pattern paper for the cupcake with Verve's Graph Paper Plain Jane stamp because it was the perfect size grid for my small embellishment.

Stamps: Treasured Words, Graph Paper Plain Jane and With Love (Verve Stamps)
Paper: Charcoal Linen (Wausau), white (Neenah), Pewter (Neenah), true blue and dusty rose scraps
Ink:  Basic Black (Stampin' Up)
Accessories:  Seam binding (Truly Madly Deeply , Verve), Rounded Rectangle die (A Cut Above die, Verve), Rounded Scallop Frame (A Cut Above die, Verve), Pennant Trim die (A Cut Above, Verve), Lace doily (LSI), scallop circle die (Spellbinders), gray twine (The Twinery), button, Pink rhinestones (Want2Scrap), wood grain embossing folder (Darice), acrylic paints (mixed white, black, raw umber), palette knife, sewing machine