Friday's Forgotten Stamps

Today I dug into my background stamp drawer to pull out a background stamp I haven't used in forever! I was so excited when I first bought this stamp, but for some reason, I found it hard to work with. Soon, it faded into the background (no pun intended!). But this morning, I wanted to challenge myself to try and come up with a design that brought new life to the Word by Word background stamp.

Since I'm on a roll making square cards (just wait till I show them to you, they are SO fun to make!), I kept right on rolling and made this one square too. I knew I didn't just want to stamp directly onto cardstock, because doing that is what didn't work for me before. I thought, and I thought, and I thought. Then I thunk to myself, "why not give acetetate a try for the very first time"? Oh, oh. I've tried to make cards with acetate before, and did not have much success. I didn't have high hopes for it to work this time either. But, I'm all for new things, so I stamped a square piece of acetate with brown Stazon and gave it a shot. It worked! The stamp didn't slip and slide on the acetate, so I got a nice clear image the first time. Things are going my way today!

Since I'm such a designer paper addict, I couldn't imagine not using any on this card. I took out my beloved new Basic Grey 6x6 pads and started leafing through each piece, holding the piece of stamped acetate over each design to see how they looked together. I finally settled on the Phoebe line, Presidio to be exact, as the paper I would use under the acetate. I held paper and acetate together by using four pink brads in the corners. I decided I wanted to focus on friendship for the card, so I stamped the Word by Word background stamp again (just the word friendship) in ColorBox Fluid Chalk Ink (Dark Brown) on a piece of Whisper White. I cut it out and placed it over the word "friendship" on the piece of acetate. It's popped up with foam tape. The sentiment, about friendship, is from Michael's $1 bin. I stamped that on a round circle and mounted it on a scalloped circle punch that was first sent through the Cuttlebug (Swirl pattern). After I tied the green polka dot ribbon onto the card, I attached the sentiment with foam tape right on top of the ribbon. I am tickled with how it turned out. I hope this inspires you to give your Word by Word background stamp a new life!

I'm not sure many of you have noticed this next little tidbit, but I have NOT jumped on the Stamping Bella bandwagon as of yet. I don't know why, so far, they just haven't appealed to me all that much. It's not that I don't think the girls are adorable, it's just.......mmmmm, I don't know what my problem is. However, to attempt to remedy this little issue, I was wondering if any of you would be willing to send me some stamped images of your bellas so I can see for myself just what all this Bella excitement is about! I would be willing to send YOU stamped images of some of my new Hero Arts stamps that I've been featuring on my cards lately. Can anyone help a stampin' sistah out? You'd be a BellaBabe if you would!

Have a great day!