Hi Stampers. I apologize for yet another drop off in posts. If you are not aware, I suffer from depression. It’s fine. I’m on medication. Just sometimes, I feel completely unmotivated. My daughter just graduated college and moved into her first apartment and I’m having some Mommy blues..

Stampin’ Up! is my happy place. Going into my craft room is an escape of all the stress of life. I can spend hours just playing on Pinterest and flipping through catalogs for inspiration and then getting out my stamps, paper and ink. When I’m stamping – all is right with the world. My phrase is “There is no stress in stamping”.

Enough about me and my mess – let’s move onto today’s card. Have you ever looked at a stamp set and tried to see it for more than what it was created for? Look at this stamps set – It’s called Flower Patch, it has matching framelits and is set to retire at the end of this month:

Note the flowers in the lower right corner. I’ve used them as “firewords” in a Fourth of July card.

This card starts with a Night of Navy card base (8.5″ x 5.5″, scored at 4.25″). Next up is a 5.25″ x 4″ layer of Whisper White card stock. Onto this Whisper White layer, I stamped those flowers in Real Red, Night of Navy and Daffodil Delight ink and covered in wink of stella to give it some sparkle. Fireworks sparkle!

For the greeting, I used die cuts. The word “happy” is from the Hello You set of thinlit dies (also set to retire) and the number 4 was cut from the Large Numbers framelit die set. The “th” is stamped onto a scrap of Whisper White card stock with Night of Navy ink using a stamp from the Number of Years stamp set and cut out with a framelit from the same Large Numbers framelit die set that the number 4 came from. (The word “happy” was adered to the card using the fine tip glue pen and the 4th was attached using stampin’ dimensionals that I cut in half to fit.) The inside of the card is lined with another 5.25″ x 4″ layer of Whisper White card stock. I stamped the fireworks around the outer edge to match the outside of the card and stamped the greeting (from the retired Perfect Pennants stamp set) in Real Red ink.