Something new for the LE Designs blog - A review!! Clearly Besotted Set the Scene Stamp Set

Good evening all and thank you so much for joining me for something a bit different on the LE Designs Blog - a review of a product!! This week, I am focusing on what might just be my new favourite stamp set from the fabulous Clearly Besotted.

As some of you may know, I was the winner of the September Challenge over at Clearly Besotted with this card ….

I was given a £30 voucher for Clearly Besotted which I was over the moon with! I already own lots of their stamp sets and dies but still, I was completely spoiled for choice with the options available to order. I finally decided on two collections - ordering the stamps and matching dies for each. Today, I have been playing with one of these sets and this is the one I would like to review.

Whenever you order from Clearly Besotted, you can be assured of excellent customer service from Stephanie Wincott, the owner. Items are always securely wrapped and come looking beautiful in pink tissue paper. My last order also had a beautiful hand stamped thank you tag attached which was such a sweet idea- makes the customer feel very special. Orders are always shipped with such speed too - I have been known to place an order in the morning and receive it the next day. This works brilliantly for me because I am so impatient - hate having to wait ages for things I have ordered!!

And so on to the stamps themselves. The stamps are manufactured in the U.S.A and they are of excellent quality. What I love about them, is I know I can take them straight out the pack, stick them on my acrylic block, stamp them up and I am good to go - there is no need to prep them as I have had to do in the past with some 'cheap' stamps. I have never had a single issue with any of the CB stamps.

So here is the stamp set being looked at today - Set the Scene (with the accompanying die).

As soon as I looked at this stamp set on the CB website, I had images conjuring in my head of what I could do with this set. It was not until I got sitting playing with them, that I realised just how versatile a set this is! I am actually in love with it! 

I began with a sheet of blank paper and stamped the snow shaker multiple times in order to start building up different scenes. I kept everything in black, just so I could see the way the stamps worked together.

Now, I found that the best way to get really accurate placement was to use my stamp-a-majig. If you don't own one of these - you NEED one!! It is the best thing since sliced bread as far as I am concerned. It allows you to ensure you get that stamped image exactly where you want it instead of just guessing and in may case, getting it wrong and then frustrated that my whole card is ruined! 

I will do a separate review on this product and explain exactly how amazing it is!!

Anyway, I deviate - back to CB, Set the Scene. I began working with the snowman because he is just SO cute. 

Using my stamp- a-majig, allowed me to get perfect positioning (which you will see I never got the first time!!)

For the underneath part of the snow globe, there are a number of options - 

 

Or a number of sentiments as you will see used here.

With the snowman, there is also some gorgeous multi sized snowflakes to be used or snowballs - 

*Note - be very gentle when stamping the snowballs and not heavy handed like I was with a couple of them!!*

Lets move away from the snowman and on to a city scape - 

 

There are fireworks that can be used with this which again I used my stamp-a-majig to position properly.

I felt the Happy New Year sentiment worked best with this one.

Another option however, is to use the multi sized stars  - 

Apologies for the additional stamping on this one! We are moving to that next - the trees.

There are two sizes of tree and I find the biggest one fits best on its own.

You could always do a bit of masking and add the smaller ones in at either side? Here is the small tree stamp beside the large one to show how it could be positioned.

The small tree works brilliantly with a snow drift stamp - 

There is even a santa sleight that fits in with this too - 

The advantage of using the stamp-a-majig is also that you can 'try' stamps out before you commit to stamping them - for example….

I'm not sure if this would work or not, but it is once to be able to see it tested out first.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless with this stamp set - and I've still not shown you everything! There are more sentiments that the ones I have used - 

And finally, there is a moon too - this would look great with the sleight flying over the top - 

I had such amazing fun playing around with this stamp set and found it so useful to get them all stamped in various ways on a bit paper first before starting to  think about how these could be made in to cards. 

I would absolutely recommend this stamp set and at only £9.00 for the stamp set and £3.50 for the matching die - I think this is a real bargain. If my boring black and white images don't inspire you - then  don't worry. I've 4 cards to show you in my next post that are made using this set!

If you want to see this set, just click on the link to be taken directly to the stamp link - Set the Scene Stamp Set

Thank you for reading and as always, any comments are very much appreciated. Laura xxx

Supplies used:

Card/Paper: White paper from stash

Stamps: Clearly Besotted - Set the Scene

Dies: Clearly Besotted - Set the Scene

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black

Tools - Inkadinkado Stamp-a-ma-jig