February's Instant Garden Digital Stamp: Graceful Still Life

It’s always an exciting day for me when we release new images, whether they are clear stamps or our “digis” — the files you can download from our website and then print out and color. I absolutely love watching them come to life from craft tables around the world. Today we have a really fun digi set, and it has a little story about how it came to be.

Around our house, basically any shelf, tabletop, and windowsill is fair game for a still life. The act of putting different objects together brings me a deep sense of joy! Whether it’s on paper, or in reality!  In concocting the image for our February release, I envisioned a simple still life of a vintage tea pot resting on a stack of books (always gotta have stacks of books!), with a little sunhat nearby. The teapot would have a few clippings from the garden, and for this image I decided on springy collection of Roses and Dogwood branches. And here is what I drew, I call it Graceful Still Life...

Pretty fun, eh? I was happy with how it turned out, and shared the set with those fabulous Instant Gardeners, my digital release design team, so that they could make cards to inspire everyone. I was thinking about how the designers would color up the roses, how they might approach the color scheme for the books, and wondering what exciting combinations would arise. 

Then a card was presented that threw me for a wonderful loop and changed the course of the set!

Just take a look at this card by Jessie Banks. That clever girl!! She zoomed in to the Graceful Still Life image with an eye on those Dogwoods and thought, I want a card that’s all about the flowering branches. Isn’t this watercolor gorgeous?

After I saw Jessie’s card, I knew I had to offer the Dogwood branches all by themselves! So that’s just what we did. This digital download includes the still life image, a sentiment for the inside of the card (or check out Broni Holcombe’s post to see the sentiment get top billing!) AND the Dogwoods sized up to work on the full card front. I love being open to spontaneity!

Now, if you want to run over and grab Graceful Still Life, it’s in the shop right now, ready for you to take it to the next level. But I think something even more fun to do is to go see what those genius Instant Gardeners have made with this set — I know they will inspire and delight you, and help get those creative wheels turning... let’s go look!

Jennifer Dove

Broni Holcombe

Cheryl Scrivens

Nancy Sheads

Jessie Banks

Barbara Walker

Thank you so much for stopping over at the blog today! And just a quick note to remind you that we’ll be having an exciting release of new clear stamps in March, and I cannot WAIT to show them to you!