CASEplorations May

It's May Day here in my neck of the woods in Germany, a holiday actually. Here's hoping Spring (in our hemisphere) has actually sprung and plans to stick around.

Even if that's not the case, we've got a wonderfully Spring-y card for you to CASE during the month of May.

Image Source: Shery Russ

And it's from our STAMPlorations fearless leader herself, Shery Russ. Not only does she create art and write her blog(s) including That One Layer Mixed Media Girl, design stamps and stencils, run the STAMPlorations business, design over at Time Out and One Layer Christmas Card and The Mixed Media Card Challenge... whew, I'm pooped already... she's also Mom to one of the cutest babies on Facebook!



So take a look at "Ms Energizer Bunny"'s CASE of herself.

Follow your bliss one layer card

Shery's maintaining the color and floral scheme, this time with a more illustrated look. The black subway art sentiment still pulls you in to the center of the card, but this time it's an encouragement card rather than a Mother's Day card.

Before we get to the DT projects, let's learn a little more about Shery:

About how many hours per month do you spend on stamp designing?
"Before Kathryn was born, I spent probably close to 45 hours a month designing stamps. After Kathryn was born, I slowed down a bit and probably now spend about 20 hours a month. Out of necessity -- I have been doing my designing in the wee hours when Kathryn is asleep -- I tend to knock off a set in one sitting (about 3-5 hours). It helps that I have a folder where I keep all my drawings; they help jump start the design process. (I try to draw whenever I can and scan them for later tweaking. Only a small number of those drawings make it as stamps.) Plus Photoshop and Illustrator are my best friends because I can easily tweak the drawings and add cool stuff to them and even combine them :o)"

And how do you find inspiration for new stamp sets?
"A design element on a curtain, poster, blanket, etc. could provide inspiration. When we're in town, I hit the home decor section of whatever store we're in because a shape, color, or word can trigger an idea for a stamp set. I was inspired by the pair of boots I saw at Target and it became the inspiration for A Girl and Her Shoes stamp set. When we visited an antique store early last year, I saw this cool retro coffee pot. I stared at it for the longest time so I could commit it to memory and then sketched it as soon as we got home. That coffee pot sketch sat in my folder for nearly a year until I got inspired and used it in the Coffee Happy set. And sometimes, my inspiration would be a word or a phrase, and this is often how I get started on the sentiment sets. I'd come across a cool phrase or quote and go, "Hey, I can come up with a stamp set based on that!" :o)"

Can you see why I lovingly refer to Shery as "the energizer bunny"?!?

So what would you choose to CASE from Shery's card? Take a look at what the DT has created and then join us with your CASE during the month of May, won't you?

Shirley

Maria F.

Deepti

Monika

Kim

Cornelia

Vicki

We'll vote for a winner to receive a $15 gift certificate to the STAMPlorations store OR a 3x5 stamp set and two runners up to receive a $5 gift certificate from the entries in the gallery CASEing this month's card. Are you ready to play?

We'd love to see your projects in the gallery below. You can read the challenge rules here. The linky is open until the end of the day May 31st. Hope to see you there.

An InLinkz Link-up