Bonus Days Are Here Again!

Hello friends.

Hopefully you're enjoying some summer fun, as well as some crafting time. One of the benefits of retirement is that summer is a longer season, although someone forgot to tell the weather that this year! In southern Ontario, our last few days have been lovely and warm during the day, and a little cooler at night. Perfect!

As an added summertime perk, Stampin' Up has brought Bonus Days back again. If you're new to Stampin' Up, Bonus Days run through the month of July. You collect $6 coupons for $60 you spend. Then in August, you redeem the coupons on your order. It's that simple and that fun! Make sure you don't miss out!

If I stop to think about it, I feel a little guilty about the amount of time I spend on Facebook, but this week it really paid off! I caught a video posted by a friend of mine, Stephanie Vandorp, who is also a Stampin' Up Demonstrator. I loved what she did with her leftover paper strips, and I was inspired to search my stash to find what colours of strips I had that could make a project. (Don't you just hate to waste paper!)

Here's what I created:

I started out with 6 colours of strips: Sahara Sand, Blackberry Bliss, Powder Pink (retired), Whisper White, Crumb Cake, and Rich Razzleberry. After choosing my colours, I took to heart what Steph said about using adhesive sheets with a piece of paper on the back to hold your strips together. So I cut a piece of adhesive sheet to 5 1/2" by 6". After removing the narrow strip from the top, I  smoothed a piece of copy paper on one side. After cutting the printer paper to the same size as the adhesive sheet, I removed the backing from the other side of the adhesive sheet, and one by one, laid my paper strips onto it on an angle until I ran out of space. Sadly, adhesive sheets are no longer available through Stampin' Up, but you could achieve the same effect by using Snail and gluing the strips onto copy paper one at a time.

To finish creating a striped pattern paper, just cut the excess paper off the edge. leaving a sheet large enough to make 2 cards. Because one of my cards was a portrait style, and one was a landscape style, I cut the paper into 2 pieces, one 3 1/4 by 5 1/2" and the second 3" by 5 1/2". The portrait card used the narrower piece. Next I cut both of the striped paper pieces on an angle, leaving about 1/2" on the right hand side at the top, and 1 3/8" at the bottom right side.

To assemble the card, I glued a strip of Rich Razzleberry under the left edge of the wider piece of striped paper, and under the right edge of the narrower piece of striped paper. The narrower piece was then glued inside the card along the right edge. To cut the angle on the card front, I lined up the stripes inside the card at the top and the bottom with my wider piece of striped paper on top and drew a pencil line to mark for cutting. After cutting the angle on the card front, I glued the wider striped piece along the angle cut.

The portrait card was CASED closely from Stephanie's card, using White Craft ink for stamping the leaves and daisies from the Daisy Lane Stamp Set. The sentiment was from the Waterfront Stamp Set and completed using white heat embossing. Finally, an epoxy droplet coloured with the Blackberry Bliss Dark Stampin' Blend completed the flower. See Stephanie's video and her beautiful card here.

If you're familiar with the Waterfront Stamp Set, you may realize that the sentiments are not exactly as shown. To create the sentiment, I masked the second part of the stamp when inking for the "Friends" section on the card front. When I stamped the second part, "Make the good times better", I masked the "Friends" part of the stamp. Finally, the "& the hard times easier" was stamped below. All of the stamping was done with Versa Mark clear ink, then sprinkled with White Embossing Powder, and set with the heat tool.

For the landscape card, I added Blackberry Bliss strips to each cut edge of the striped paper, and used gold heat embossing to do the leaves, dots, and daisy. I didn't have a Stampin' Up faceted gem, so I used another brand that I had tucked away. The sentiment (inside the card and out) are from the Well Said Stamp Set and Well Written Dies, as is the wee birdie.

The inside of this card also completes the sentiment.

Creating with your "leftovers" from other cards is a special design challenge. Thanks so much, Stephanie Vandorp for the inspiration. 

Hope you've enjoyed the cards today. Leave me a comment to let me know what colours of scraps you need to use up, or what projects you create to make use of them. Get any "piggyback" ideas from Stephanie's video or my cards - let us know. We'd love to hear from you.

Don't forget to join me for Facebook Live Thursday night at 7 pm. And as always, supplies for the cards are available in my store. Just click the SHOP button above.

Happy Crafting!

Craftin' Granny