The Banner Punch Makes Me Happy!

Aloha, all!

     Oh, my, I've been so busy with my grandchildren that I didn't realize that all I'd done with this post was to put a picture of my project up!  Shows you how much more important those kids were than the computer.  But now, unfortunately. they've gone home to North Carolina.  And fortunately, I'm back in my craft room getting things somewhat back to normal!

     This is the project that I made for the current challenge at SUO Challenges.  The challenge is to use banners in our projects!

     I actually made this card over a week ago when a new online friend from Australia visited, and we had a class in my home for her to join us and make some projects with the new Banner Punch (I've already posted one other project that we did which you can see here).  While we were at it, I taught a few new (to them) techniques, among them good old fashioned masking.

     For the stamped layer in the project, we used three images from the stamp set, Happy Watercolor.  I wanted the flower to appear as if it was behind the paint swatch and sentiment.  Here are the steps to do that:

1. Ink up the paint swatch stamp and stamp on cardstock.  I used Daffodil Delight Classic Ink on Whisper White Cardstock cut 3" high by 2-3/4" wide.
2. Stamp on a piece of light weight scratch paper.  I find that the best paper for this is a sticky note, and I stamp at the top where the sticky part of the note is to help keep this piece in place when I take the next step.
3. Cut out the shape that you just stamped on the sticky note and place it over the stamped image on the cardstock.  When I cut out an image for masking, I cut really, really close to the stamped image, even cutting off just the teensiest part of the edge.
4. Ink up the flower stamp and stamp it where you want it to appear behind the paint swatch.  I used Island Indigo Classic Ink.
5. Remove the sticky note pain swatch and now the paint swatch looks as if it's been stamped over the flower!

     I colored in the flowers using my Tangerine Tango Stampin' Write Marker and then stamped the "You Make Me Happy" stamp over the paint swatch using Island Indigo Classic Ink.

     Before I punched the banners, I created the card base using Tangerine Tango Cardstock cut 11" high by 4-1/4" wide, and folded it in half to make a card 5-1/2" high by 4-1/2" wide.  Then I cut a piece of Daffodil Delight colored paper from  Watercolor Wonder Designer Series Paper (DSP) 4-3/8" high and 4" wide.  I layered it on the front of the card 1/8" in from the top and sides.

    Then I made the banners. I punched six different designs from the Watercolor Wonder DSP set.  Then I adhered the banners so they bumped up against the bottom edge of the Watercolor Wonder DSP layer, evenly spaced across the 4 inches of that layer.  Finally I layered a 1/4" wide strip of Island Indigo Cardstock and adhered it across the edge where the banners met the layer.

     The last part of this project was to mat the Whisper White stamped layer onto a piece of Island Indigo Card stock that I'd cut 3-1/8" high by 2-7/8" wide.  I adhered it to the card front using Stampin' Dimensionals.

     OK – now I'd better go to see if there are other projects out there on blog posts that don't have anything written on them.  I'm sure by the end of the week I'll have recovered from having all that family in our house – but I'll also miss them a lot!  I definitely need to get crafting to get over that!