Home Sweet Home!

I love the Decor Elements, Home Sweet Home, in the Sale-a-bration booklet.  The fact that it comes in an assortment of colours is the icing on the cake.  I chose one in Chocolate Chip in the first order for which I qualified for Sale-a-bration and decided to display it in a frame with some of the Neutrals Collection DSP behind it, arranged as if it was quilted.  I added a couple of  scalloped circles cut from the Sale-a-bration Everyday Enchantment DSP with my Scallop Circle Punch and added some Soft Suede cardstock for good measure.  The finished product is really quite nice.

Tomorrow I'm attending the local Optimist Club's big all-day scrapbooking crop (just as a participant) and I've donated a similar framed Home Sweet Home as a fundraiser.  This time I've made it with the white version of the Home Sweet Home but I've backed it with the much darker Chocolate Chip DSP and Chocolate Chip cardstock.  As it happens, the same Sale-a-bration Everyday Enchantment DSP looks great with this version as well and so I'm using it cut with the Scallop Circle Punch once again.  The finished product is very similar but at the same time, is quite different.  I wound up having to buy a slightly larger frame this time around and so had to redraft my measurements, but I'm liking the results.  What do you think?

Since the frame is larger than the one I first used, the lettering seemed too crowded in the centre, so I cut apart the Home Sweet Home into three strips and placed them slightly further apart than they are actually designed to be.  I think the Chocolate Chip gives it a totally different look as does the white of the Decor Element.  I had to sponge some Chocolate Chip ink onto the Everyday Enchantment DSP scalloped circles to make them fit into the colour theme better.

The "How-To's" of Hemp

I've used the Baker's Twine to loop around the centre of a punched out butterfly to give it the illusion of a body and antennae but it's a bit droopy.  I've also been eyeing the Hemp Twine in the catalogue because I thought I could use a sponge and ink on it to make it any colour I wanted and it looked as if it would have more body.  Well, I was right.  It definitely has more body!  Compared to the Baker's Twine, it stands at attention and waits for a command. ;)

I decided to try it on a card just to see what it was like using it.  I wasn't using butterflies but it's not like that's the only way to use twine, after all.  In this case I thought it might make a unique border but it didn't have enough presence.  One strand was simply too thin to make it as a border.  So I cut three strands and proceeded to braid the strands loosely.  The result was exactly the right finishing touch for my card.  I'm going to use the Hemp Twine a lot in the future!

I love the way the braided hemp surrounds the Very Vanilla.  I stamped the VV first with my large Net Stamp using Crumb Cake ink, then I used my large Scallop Circle Punch to cut a medallion of that beautiful Everyday Enchantment DSP (I'll miss it when Sale-a-bration is over) and used my 2 1/2" Circle Punch for the Soft Suede backing.  All in all I'm very happy with the results.