Make your own background

Good Sunday afternoon folks

Well it's the last day of August and I am back from my holibobs, getting ready for work tomorrow. The children's uniform has been bought and labelled, pencil cases filled and shoes polished so they are ready for their return to school. I can't believe how quickly the last 5 weeks have gone and it's head down now till Christmas (only 116 days to go till the big day!!!!) so today I decided I would craft all day.

The challenge at I love Promarkers is make your own background so I decided to give it a go. I have seen lots of crafty people (on the TV and at shows) making their own stamps by die cutting funky foam so I decided I would give that a go too. I used some funky foam from my daughter's crafty stash (well it makes a change from her borrowing my stuff) and Tonic's Marazine Blue die set. It cut like a dream - I only had to run it through the Grand Calibur once. I was a little sceptical about how well it would stamp but they did ok, as you can see.

I used Memento dew drop ink pads in angel pink, rose bud and London fog and used the ink, blot, plot technique to stamp each design.

This is how I used my background paper -

I began by making a A5 card blank with a piece of A4 pink centura pearl card stock and my Ultimate Pro. I trimmed my backing paper to fit and matted and layered it onto a piece of dark pink core'dinations card. I than attached the whole thing to the card base. 

I made a border using the dark pink card which I die cut using Spellbinder's classic petals border die set. I added a piece of silver centura pearl to the centre of the border, then added a piece of pink gingham ribbon (from the Ribbon Girl) and attached the whole thing to the card base.

The image is Mindy by Julie Nutting which is a huge stamp, it virtually filled the card blank. Whilst on my holibobs I found a lovely little craft shop called Papermaze (they also have a website which you can find here) which is where I bought this stamp (amongst other things). I coloured Mindy with the following Promarkers - 

• hair - raw sienna, terracotta and burnt umber
• skin - satin, blush and dusky pink
• dress - cerise, carmine, magenta, pastel pink, pale pink and cocktail pink
• outline - pastel blue
• shadow - silver lining

This stamp would also be great to paper piece too but that's for another day.

I cut Mindy out using scissors leaving a narrow white border, then matted her on to dark pink core'dinations and trimmed to a narrow border. I attached her to the card with foam pads.

I made a flower using Die'namics plentiful petals die and scraps of the papers. I added a pink sparkly gem to the centre of the flower.

To finish I added 2 Tonic butterflies with pink gems for their bodies and stamp a sentiment from LOTV's sentiments to fit scrolls.

I would like to enter this card into the following challenge - 

http://ilovepromarkers.blogspot.co.uk - challenge 234 - make your own backgrounds

Many thanks for stopping by 

Lesley