Be Yourself

Simple card to share today - the lovely lady is from an Inkadinkadoo inchie set, and the sentiment is Hero Arts.

White cardstock, two ink colors, layered onto a card base. Sometimes nothing more is needed...

Quilted Americana

I made this card back in early July, inspired by Donelda's Tea Party challenge to use salt. While most "salty" tutorials use glossy cardstock, I've always loved the look you get from using plain cardstock with a single dye ink - not as dramatic, but a soft, lovely design that seems a bit fabric-like. For this card, I started with some scraps of white cardstock (since I knew I was going to be punching squares out, it didn't matter what the starting shape was!) and managed to color my fingertips blue and red along with the paper... but hey, isn't that part of the fun of stamping? ;)

While the treated cardstock was drying, I randomly stamped "America" (from Stars & Stripes) onto some other scraps of white, and also got my bear ready to go. I then punched out a ton of squares from the three papers and created the quilt-like background. I played with the arrangement a bit, and then when I had them laid out like I wanted, I glued them onto some plain copy paper, then trimmed it down to the size I wanted. A bit of black cardstock sets off the bold colors, and a simple silvery bow is the final touch.