and now, for something different...

Stickers.  Nearly every papercrafter has them.  Goodness knows there are oodles of different types of stickers available to use in papercrafting. There are 3-D ones, realistic photo images, and plain flat ones, in pretty much every conceivable design – animals, people, landmarks, flowers, you name it.  I admit it – I have a LOT of stickers that I’d collected when I was scrapbooking, thinking ahead to the projects where I could use them.

My stickers haven’t been touched much, other than to move them from one spot in my craft area to another, since my scrapbooking activities took a back seat to my cardmaking about 6 or 7 years ago.

Over the weekend, Operation Write Home’s Stars & Stamps blog sponsored a “blog skip” – a mini blog hop – challenging its participants to use stickers to create the focal point of their cards.   I was interested in seeing what the participants created so I made my way through the circuit. I have to confess that I was very nicely surprised by what I found – enough that I was inspired to browse through my stickers and see what kind of card I could create with them to donate to Operation Write Home.

Going through my stickers was interesting.  Most of them are the plain flat ones (think Mrs. Grossman’s) and made me wonder why I’d purchased them in the first place (oops).  Then I found a package of floral stickers that I’d received as part of a secret sister swap.  One of them looked like it would work in this week’s OWH sketch challenge layout.  I decided to give it a try.  I found some coordinating cardstock and designer paper.  Although the flowers had a yellow background as part of the sticker, I put it on a base of white so it would stand out from the background.  That’s when I ran into a small problem.  The sticker was a bit longer than the dimensions specified in the sketch, and adding the base just added more length to it – which made me run out of room for the bow.  So I decided to squoosh the sketch (yes, that’s a technical term) from a horizontal to a vertical layout.  Ta-da.

Please excuse the lighting. The yellow cardstock in the background matches the sticker better in real life.

And – can you believe it – I didn’t use any stamps or digital images on this card!  Amazing!

Supplies:
Cardstock: Basics White (Papertrey Ink); Yoyo Yellow (Stampin’ Up); designer paper from Sugar Rush 6″ x 6″ paper pad (Basic Grey)
Other: Delicate Daisies sticker (Paper Bliss); white grosgrain ribbon (SU)