Happy Thanksgiving

by Ryann Salamon / RyannMarin Designs:

Hello! I can't believe that November is almost upon us! Not only is Thanksgiving just around the corner, but my time as a Guest Designer for DRS is almost up! The last two months have *flown* by! But as sad as I am that this is my last blog post, I'm super excited about what I get to show you today!

One of my favorite things about fall are pumpkins. I love the smell of pumpkin-scented things. I love pumpkin flavored foods. I love pumpkin flavored coffee (helllllooo Starbucks!) :) This pumpkin image is no exception - I love it!

For my card I used Simply Pumpkin (G304) and Thanksgiving Arc (E050) - which is NEW!! I've colored in the pumpkin using Prismacolor Pencils. The patterned paper is Stampin' Up and the chocolate pearls are from Kaisercraft. This was a fairly simple card to put together - perfect for mass-producing! I thought it might even be cool to do this on a smaller scale and make place cards for your Thanksgiving dinner table.

Have a fabulous Tuesday!!

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Bee is for Birthday

by Ryann Salamon / RyannMarin Designs:

Hello again! I've got a fun bee-day card to show you using one of my favorite techniques - distressing. A lot of people use ink when distressing. I typically just use my handy edge distresser to rough of the edges of cardstock. You don't have to have a fancy tool to distress. I know people who use their scissors and even one friend that uses her fingernails! Distressing can take your card to a whole new level! Ever tried to make a shabby chic/vintage card? Add some distressing and you will be well on your way! :)


For my card today I've used Bitsy Bee (A1020) and Another Year Flies By... (F489) sentiment. I wanted the bee and sentiment to take center stage so I've kept the my card simple. I distressed the edges of black and yellow cardstocks then layered them together. Then I added a bit of black/white gingham ribbon and it's done! A nice and easy gender-neutral card; always good to have on hand!

If you didn’t already download the free issue of Sheetload of Cards – what are you waiting for? There is a fun challenge going on all month long over at Sheetload and the prizes are sponsored by DRS Designs! You can check out the challenge HERE!

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Get Well Bear

by Ryann Salamon / RyannMarin Designs

Good morning. Today I'm going to share with you one of my very favorite ways to color an image. Now before you go to grab your markers and pencils - keep reading! I don't know about you, but coloring those larger images can be really tough for me, so I like to cheat a little... I like to paper piece them instead!

Paper piecing is easy and really fun to do! After stamping your image on your cardstock, stamp it on a piece of patterned paper too. Then all you do is cut it out and adhere it on top of your cardstock stamped image. You can even take it a step further and pop it up on some dimensionals for some added depth.

My card today uses Boo Boo Bear (G431) and One Line Get Well Soon (B254x). I used Crate Paper's Mia collection to paper piece the bear to coordinate with the rest of my card. In addition to paper piecing your main image, you can also paper piece parts of it, like clothes or furniture. Try mixing and matching your patterned papers! Have fun with it! :)

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Trick or Treat Fun!

by Ryann Salamon / RyannMarin Designs

I thought today I would share with you a Halloween card I made since I've been focusing so much on Christmas. I thought a break was in order! My card today uses one of my favorite Halloween images from DRS Designs, Long Tall Monster (H158x). I colored my monster using Copic markers (V12, V15, C1). I then stamped an extra of the Trick or Treat sign, cut it out and popped it up on my original image using dimensional adhesive.

You may have noticed the sewing on my card? One of my favorite things to do is alternate a zig zag stitch with a straight stitch using my sewing machine. I love the subtle look it adds to cards and it's so appropriate for your Halloween cards! Why don't you give it a try?!

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Hollied-Day Candle

By Ryann Salamon / RyannMarin Designs:

Happy Friday! I don't know about you but I am ready for the weekend!! While playing around last night with my DRS Designs stamps I thought it might be fun to use some new holiday stamps :) One of my favorite images from the latest release is the Silhouette Holly (F002). It would be great to use to create your own background or maybe on the corner of an envelope or the inside of your card for that perfect finishing touch! It inks up nice and easy and it's such a classic image.

I've used the Silhouette Holly paired with Jumbo Candle (F006) for my card today. After stamping the candle and coloring it in, I cut it out and used dimensional adhesive to pop it up on my card base. The holly is stamped in the four corners of my card. I've used a green ink pad to carefully ink up the leaves then used a red marker to color the berries before stamping.

To create the "glow" behind the candlelight, I took a piece of cardstock and used a circle punch to cut out a circle. I threw the circle away and used the negative to place down on top of my card base and used markers to color in the space. I went over the edges of my yellow circle with a blending marker to soften the edges a bit. Easy peasy!

Enjoy your weekend!! :)

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A Get Well & More

Posted by Ryann Salamon / RyannMarin Designs

Hello! I have a couple of cards to share with you today. The first one uses the fun friendship themed coffee stamps of Espresso-ly Wonderful (F754) paired with Coffee Trio (K747). You'll notice I only stamped the second half of the Espresso-ly Wonderful sentiment. :) I've used the paper tole technique on my card. Each coffee cup has been colored and cut out twice, then adhered to the card using pop-up adhesive - for a total of three layers!! I've added some Coffee "flavored" Shimmerz paint to two of the coffee cups and some diamond Stickles to the third. It's so shimmery and sparkly in person!



My next card uses the lovely 3 Flowers with Butterfly (H1068) and the one line Get Well Soon (B254x) paired with the Silhouette Butterfly Background (H536), which I just adore and find myself using again and again! I started by stamping the butterfly background using white ink and letting it dry before proceeding with the rest of the card. I like that the white ink makes the background a little more noticeable than Versamark ink, but it doesn't overwhelm the card. My "grass" is May Arts ribbon and the images were colored with Copic markers.

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New Kid on the DRS Block

Hi there! My name is Ryann Salamon and I'm so excited and privileged to be joining DRS Designs as a guest designer for the next two months! A little bit about me... I live in San Diego, California with my husband of 2.5 years and a betta fish named Geppetto. I started stamping in October 2007 and haven't looked back! I first happened upon DRS Designs on World Card Making Day 2008 when I won a gift certificate to the store. Since then, my collection has slowly grown :)


I have a fun card to share with you today. I've paired 3 Flowers With Butterfly (H1068) with Just Living Butterfly Greeting (F349) and used the versatile Silhouette Butterfly Background (H536) stamped with Versamark on my card base layer. What I really love about the 3 Flowers With Butterfly stamp is there are *so many* wording stamps that would pair up nicely with this image! The same can be said about the Just Living Butterfly Greeting - any of the floral or many butterfly stamps would pair up with sentiment perfectly! I really love stamps that I can find different uses for that give me more bang for the buck!

I have some additional exciting news to share with you. For the *whole* month of September, DRS Designs is sponsoring the weekly sketch blog Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge. You can find out all the details HERE!

Until next time! :)

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Featured Friday Designer #7

Hi There - Welcome back to our seventh Featured Friday Designer!! As you know, back when we had our Guest Design Team call we were so impressed by all the entries we received that we just couldn't limit our decision to only Guest Designers so we came up with our Friday Featured Designer to give even more people a chance to inspire us!

So today we would like to introduce you to Ryann Salamon, rsalamon on Splitcoaststampers. You can find more of Ryann's work on her blog, The Inked Spot.

The stamps we asked Ryann to work with were: Please note - some of these stamps are an early preview of stamps being released next week!!! Be sure to stop by the DT's blogs starting Monday for more sneak peeks of upcoming images!!









Here is what Ryann created...











Be sure to stop by Ryann's blog to check out more of her work and for more info on these cards!!

Thanks so much Ryann, we wish you continued success!!!

See you soon...

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