Fun with faux postage

When I was cleaning out my craft space over the summer, I came across some sheets of embossed paper from years ago. They're 12" x 12" papers with a series of small rectangular images, and each image looks like a tiny collage. I bought them at Archiver's (do you remember those stores?), and I think we had used the paper on a make-and-take project. I must have really, really liked it because I bought four or five sheets.

My favorite thing to do with these embossed papers was to use a decorative scissors with a stamp-style blade to cut apart the rectangular images so they look like fancy postage stamps. And that's exactly what I did for these two cards:

Supplies:
Stamps: Dictionary (Stampin' Up!), Simple Strips Background (Taylored Expressions)
Paper: Life's Journey Stamp Collage Embossed Paper (K & Company); Crumb Cake, Basic Black card stock (Stampin' Up!); Typeset Specialty Designer Series Paper (DSP) (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: VersaMark (Tsukineko); Crumb Cake, Soft Suede (Stampin' Up!)
Accessories: Linen thread, Classy Designer Buttons (Stampin' Up!); real flower confetti (Pressed Petals); Simple Strips die (Taylored Expressions); stamp-edge scissors (Fiskars); Dimensionals (Stampin' Up!); Art Glitter Glue (Art Institute)

Aren't they fun? You can't tell in the photo, but the details like the flowers and butterflies in the small images are embossed, which adds a great texture to the cards.

Here are a few other details:
- I used a piece of DSP with a vanilla and black diagonal stripe on the bottom of the Basic Black card. The vanilla keeps with the vintage feel of the "stamps" and isn't as stark as white. I tore the top edge of the DSP to echo the collage style of the images.
- To make the two-tone background on the Crumb Cake card, I inked the whole background stamp with Crumb Cake ink. Then I lightly tapped the edge of the Soft Suede ink pad on random parts of the stamp before applying it to the card stock. It creates a nice aged, distressed look.
- The flower on the Crumb Cake card is a real pressed flower! A friend gave me a small package of them awhile back, and I love how it coordinates with the flowers in the "stamp" image. The flowers are very delicate and lose their petals fairly easily. I placed tiny drops of glue behind as many of the petals as I could, so hopefully some of them will stay on the card.

I ended up using a lot of older products -- embossed paper, background stamp, scissors, DSP and embellishments -- on these cards, and I'm so pleased with how they turned out. Sometimes when you're constantly being bombarded with new stamps, dies, papers, etc., it's fun to go back and pull out some old favorites.

Thanks for stopping by!