Background stamps for A Blog Named Hero

Hi, all!  Please check out my post at A Blog Named Hero today - all about how to use a background stamp in a few different ways.

Here's a sneak peek:

A lovely afternoon

Just over a month ago, I went to my friend Stella's place for an AMAZING lunch/afternoon tea.  Stella loves all things pretty and shabby-chic, she loves cupcakes, and she loves papercrafting, so we get along like a house on fire! 

These are a couple of pics of the table she set for our tea (please excuse the picture quality - taken on my phone) -


The tea was to celebrate 2 birthdays - mine and Debbie's (another lovely papercrafting lady) - hence the candles on the cupcakes.

Stella, Debbie and I decided that we would all make either a scrapbook page or a card based on the photo on the left - so this is what I came up with:

The stamps are from Stampin' Up - I thought the sentiment was very appropriate: "if you are what you eat, eat something cute!"

I hope you have a lovely day - thanks for visiting :)

Happy birthday, Paul!

It was my brother-in-law Paul's birthday this week, and this is the card I made for him:

Thanks for visiting :)

Kraft, twine, buttons and CAS

I've been wanting to play along with CAS of Sunday's challenge "Krafty Twinery" all week, but I only managed to get around to it tonight.  I also saw CASual Friday's new challenge, "Buttons", and decided to combine the two.

 I just love these vintage style buttons from Stampin' Up - I'll have to get more of those!  Are you a button-hoarder like me? 

Hope you're having a lovely day, and that you remember to smile ;)

Reduce, reuse, recycle!

The challenge at A Blog Named Hero today is to recycle - to reuse something that has already been used (other than normal cardmaking supplies)! It was my birthday last month, and a friend of mine gave me a lovely scarf wrapped in white paper, with a piece of wrapping paper in a band around it, and some pink ribbon tied in a bow - it was too pretty to throw away, so this is what I came up with:

 This was what I started with (except it was a longer piece of ribbon)

I would have had to iron the ribbon to use it, as it was quite wrinkled in places, but getting the iron out just for a piece of ribbon seemed excessive, and remembering to iron the ribbon when I had the iron out for something else requires a level of memory that I don't seem to have anymore, so I thought I'd see if I could make a rose out of the ribbon:

I think I need some practice doing this - I ended up with entirely too much hot glue on my fingernails! Have you ever made ribbon roses? I really enjoy making my own flowers for cards, and have tried a few techniques (I did a photo tutorial for a different type of ribbon flower a couple of years ago - you can find it HERE) - what's your favourite way to handmake your own flowers?

I didn't have a piece of pink cardstock to match the ribbon, so I swiped some white cardstock with Picked Raspberry Distress Ink.  The sentiment is from HA Birthday Sayings.

I hope you find something to recycle into a card for our challenge - as always, there's a voucher from our incredibly generous sponsor, Simon Says Stamp!