April Verve Spotlight Hops Day 2

Hi friends! We're back with another day of hopping counting down to our new release on April 10. I hope you'll hop along with us to see the eye candy the Divas are sharing. Leave a little comment love for them as you hop about for  a chance to win some shiny new Verve!

I'm the first stop on the Day 2 April New Release Spotlight Hop, so if you didn't hop here from somewhere along the hop, you're in the perfect place to jump right in! All of the stamps and dies you'll be seeing over the next few days will be available in the Verve shop on Tuesday, April 10. If you missed yesterday's hop, click here for my Day ONE post.

Today the Divas and our special guest, Michele Greenwood, are featuring the new Hope Lifts stamp set and the coordinating Lifted Hope die set. The design for this set has been floating around my head for a while. Whenever I read a blog post about someone facing a health or other tough challenge, the sentiments in this set are some of the things that go through my head. You know the... "I wish I had a stamp for that..." type of moments in life? Luckily, since I have my own stamp company, I can sometimes make my wishes (well at least the stamp related ones!) come true. 😉

So maybe, like, me, you've been wishing for a hot air balloon stamp with a matching die. Or maybe you wished that the butterfly in Sparkly Dreams was just a teeny bit larger and easier to color?  Or maybe you could just use a little word of hope for a friend going through a difficult time? Well, this is the set for you!

Since I used the butterfly image for my Viva la Verve card on Friday, I decided to start with the hot air balloon image from Hope Lifts for today's card. I simply stamped it and cut with the coordinating Lifted Hope die set and started coloring with Copics.

Next I pulled out some shimmerz sprays and did a watercolor wash on a piece of watercolor paper.  I embossed the hope things start looking up sentiment in white.  At this point I decided that the Copic colors I chose didn't quite match my wash, so I used some of the leftover ink to watercolor over the Copics.  I then used a little white india ink to add in some white highlights, then coated the whole thing with wink of stella.

I chose a tall card layout to reinforce the looking up sentiment.  A piece of patterned paper, a taffeta bow and some shiny sequins finish things off.

That's all for me, next on the hop is our super duper fabulous Guest Diva, Michele!

Want to win some shiny new Verve? We'll be picking a random commenter on one of the hop spots below to win today's featured products! So be sure to leave a little comment on all the blogs below to increase your chances! Check out the Verve Blog post today for the full hop list, prize details and a little more on this fun new set.

Day 2 Hop List 1. Julee 5. Laurie 2. Michele (Guest) 6. Marisa 3. Betty 7. Maureen 4. Charmaine 8. Teresa

Enabler's List
Stamps: Hope Lifts (Verve Stamps)
Paper: Perfectly Plaid Winter (Lawn Fawn), watercolor pad (Prima), white (Neenah)
Ink: Jet black (Altenew), copics markers, jenni b bleu and palm reader Vibez, ride the tide creameez (Shimmerz), versamark, white india ink (Bombay), wink of stella clear glitter pen
Accessories: Lifted Hope die set (A Cut Above by VERVE), ribbon (SU!), white embossing powder, paper distresser, sequins