Your Next Stamp Birthday Bash Blog Hop ......

Today is a very special day as Your Next Stamp is celebrating its very 1st birthday with a Birthday Blog Hop!

The YNS Starlets are being joined by some fabulous friends for this hop, and together we are showcasing some fantastic new release stamps as well as some firm favourites! These new stamps are available to buy from today from Your Next Stamp, along with all your YNS favourites.

If you'd like to participate in the hop and you didn't arrive here from Andrea's blog, please CLICK HERE to return to the start of the hop at Karen's blog, as I'm sure you don't want to miss out on all the fun we have for you today!The hop starts today (Thursday, August 5th at 08:00 EST) and ends on Wednesday August 11th at midnight (EST).

We have not one but two grand prizes for you to win - two lucky winners will be drawn at random to each receive a $25 gift certificate to spend on YNS stamps! WOW! As the prize is so fantastic, we are going to make you work a little to enter, LOL! Each Starlet and Guest Starlet have a letter hiding in their blog post. All you need to do is gather these letters, rearrange them to form a 3-word phrase, and then email this phrase to Karen. All correct entries will be entered into the grand prize draw. So make sure you hop around every blog and remember to leave a comment at every stop too.

I have two secret letters for you  ....    A   Y

All that cake must have affected Karen as she has gone a little crazy and is holding a 20% off sale for the duration of the hop - the crazy part is that everything will be reduced by 20%, including items already on sale! I'm not sure when (or even if!) this will happen again, so make sure you hop on over to the YNS store once you've completed the hop and fill your basket!

I have used the super cute Sleepover Fhiona stamp set - I love this one!!!   I have stamped the background with Real Red ink using the flower from this set, the image has been sut out and layered with diamensionals after I have slightly curved the edges to give the cushion a rounded look. I have stamped and layered up the large popcorn stamp using my circle punches, the bowl has a lovley glossy finish as I covered it with crystal effects.  The borders are punched using the eyelet border punch mounted onto the Real Red card with some matching grosgrain ribbon, the sentiment is also from this set and again I have used my oval punches, I don't know what I did before I had them!!!  The base card is Bright Blue, I thought it gave it a lovely crisp look to the card.

So now it's time for you to hop on over Cabio's blog as she is the next stop on our hop, but don't forget to grab my hidden letter first and also leave me a comment!

Thanks so much for hopping with us today! I hope you enjoy our birthday celebrations and new stamps!