tie one on!

for our first april challenge at shopping our stash, we'd like to see projects that feature a bit of ribbon, twine, cord, string, ric rac, yarn or... well, you get the idea, right? here's what i made:

(newish super-sale acquired) green patterned paper: recollections; pink paislee journal card from... 2014 or so? petaloo dogwood flowers and leaves from last year; ancient white vinyl thickers that i nearly threw out b/c i couldn't imagine using them plain... but now that i've stamped and grunged them up, they are MY FAVORITES, lol! pattern stamps on letters: hero arts damask, stampin' up typeface, glitz design music; pattern stamps on edges of journal card: stampin' up distressy fabric texture + cherry pie crackle stamp; inks: most of the various browns and tans of ranger distress ink; ranger black and brown archival (on the vinyl) as well as several shades of copic marker; "HAPPY" alphabet stickers are a couple of years old and were found at a thrift shop by a non-crafty friend who very excitedly and kindly bought them especially for me because, "maybe you could use them on cards?"! ♥ adhesives: elmers brand glue tape, gluedots, sewing machine

ok, yes, the smooshy, ruffley seambinding wound up getting a bit more covered up than i anticipated, but you can still see it (i hope, lol) and i assure you that it inspired quite a bit of this design! something else which inspired me is this fab sketch from the retro rubber challenge blog:

if you've ever played along at retro rubber, you'll know that one of their criteria is that participants must use at least one stamp that's more than a year old, AND mention/estimate the age of the stamp in question. which makes their challenge an awesome one to pair with shopping our stash, since we both value using our OLDER crafty items! in this case i've used three of my favorite pattern stamps to alter and embellish some plain, slightly shiny, white vinyl thickers that were the right font for my sentiment, but emphatically NOT the right style or vibe! the damask pattern is one of the very first hero arts cling stamps, circa... 2011 maybe? the sheet music stamp is part of a set of four or five 2x4" pattern stamps from glitz design that are not quite as old as that, but i definitely had them before we moved (2013) and i still use them quite often. the alphabet with the beautifully clear-but-tiny sans serif typeface is stampin' up stamp that i only acquired last august, but since i got it at the annual paper anthology papercrafting garage sale, i'm guessing it's at least a couple of years old. 

before i set about stamping the patterns quite randomly across my sentiment in various brown and black inks, i hit them with a celadon green copic marker, and added some darker green splodges, so that it would sort of chime in with the fab grungy green background paper i chose to use for my card base. i also did a little bit of inking and "distress stamping" with some very neutral patterns (crackle and a sort of denim texture--both of these stamps also date from 2011 or 12 i think?) around the edges of my greyish-white journal card, just because it looked a liiiiiiittle too clean and bright with the rest of the card, lol! 

be sure to check out the rest of the design team's goodness at SOS, it is a trip worth taking, i assure you! ♥