...SOAP day 2...

Good morning and welcome to the second day of our April SOAP! - If you have  no idea what I'm talking about - just scroll back a post and read up!! We are spending the first 4 days of April on a stamp parade of all the sets we released in March - plus another peep at an older set on Monday.

In March we released:

• Bitty Banners
• Vintage Banners
• Very Vintage Labels No. 18
• Back in the Saddle
• Way Out West

and we're taking the opportunity to have a little parade of new ideas for these sets. Our next new stamp release will be May.

Here's who else is parading along with me today!!

• Anya Schrier
  
• Belinda Chang Langner
• Bonnie Sharp 

• Claire Brennan
• Jennifer Holmes
• Julia Aston

• Laurie Schmidlin
• Lynn Mercurio
• Mona Pendleton
• Sandie Dunne
• Sarah Martina Parker

My project for today focuses on the Bitty Banners set. I thought I would use it to make some itty bitty bunting!!!! So cute and not as time consuming as it looks.

I started by lining up 4 of the bitty banner stamps on my block so that i could mass produce the bitty bunting elements. Once I had stamped enough in one colour - I trimmed them out easily with scissors.

Then I sponged the edges - i always think things look a little naked till they are sponged!! lol.

When I had plenty of these little bunting pieces made up - I started to sew them together - very simple - I used a shorter stitch length than for normal sewing so that they would stay stitched when I trimmed sections apart later.

This was all quite quick - it took maybe 10 mins to make the bunting sections and another couple of mins to sew them together.

Hey-presto - bitty bunting!!

Next thing I did was stamp up some background card - I used the same method of lining up several stamps at once on my block.

I made my card base larger than usual - about 4.25 x 8 inches, so that i would have plenty of room to string up my bitty bunting! I sponged it plenty to soften up the white (antique linen - distress ink, surprise, surprise...lol) The sentiment is from Vintage Banners.

Next i dressed up my little pot of pencils - these are to be a little gift for my larger lady - she won a badminton match last week and was presented with a trophy - her first and I just wanted to pop a little card and such her way to recognise that. Here is the plain pencil tube before I dressed it.

I stamped another piece of card with the same background pattern as the card and wrapped it around the tube. Then I strung the rest of my bitty bunting around it  to finish.

A little mini banner on top with matching sentiment to finish - this is just two triangles of card with a cocktail stick wedged and glued between.

So, you tickled?

Don't forget to comment on yesterday's post to be in with a chance of winning a prize....some stamps of course!!!