Waltzingmouse Blogwaltz - 4th of July theme

Welcome to the June Waltzingmouse Blog waltz! I'm ashamed that it has been a month since my last post, but I have been very busy down scaling my craft room to a single cupboard (more details of that to come in a future post), and I haven't had the time or space to craft. It was with great joy that I got out all my stuff to make this card for the waltz. I was in desperate need of a card for a friend who has gone above and beyond and needed a little thank you for being such a star, and here is the result! I was a little reluctant about what kind of card I could make with a 4th of July theme -what with being British and all! - but I LOVE stars, and so I got cracking.

I started with my ultimate pro, and using the embossing board I embossed a large star onto white card. I wanted to create a mask, and so cute out from white copy paper a smaller star using a craft knife. I used my walzting mouse teeny trees set, and the stamp I used was what I think of as the starry tree, which is the bottom right of the photo above. I stamped this through the mask onto my embossed star using this starry tree in cracked sapphire distress ink.

Here's the star when the mask was removed!

I then sponged the edges with more distress inks and set aside.

A while back I got a bargain in Ikea after Christmas with these packs of ribbon. 29p for a pack of 20.

I think they're meant to be for hanging christmas decorations on your tree, but I just cut them up to make bows. In this case I just cut strips of white to go across the red card.

I also bought some blue napkins from Ikea that are covered in stars, and this is the first time I've used them! I glued the single layer of the napkin onto a piece of scrap card and left to dry. I then embossed a piece of red card with a fantastic Crafts Too star embossing folder.

To finish it off I had some cute luggage labels (80 for 99p at the works!bargain!) which I stamped with the tiny star from the teeny trees set, and the word 'Star' is from a set of Banana frog stamps.

And this is it all together! Sorry my photos are a little dark, but hopefully you can see the main bits!

If you've never tried masking then you should definately give it a try, as it can transform the stamps you have!

Enjoy the waltz!