Playing with Patterned Paper at Hero Arts

Hello, friends! Happy New Year! We had a wonderful holiday with LOTS of visits with family and friends. Busy, busy, busy...but GOOD!

Now we are right back where we left off, running to school and work and after-school activities. Luckily I was able to squeeze in a little crafting time on Saturday while my DH took my youngest to basketball.  I tuned in to the 90-Minute Challenge at the Hero Arts blog, hosted by the lovely Karen (Born2scrap775).  She challenged us to make a card in 90-minutes by stamping on patterned paper. Love this idea!

Here's a secret. When I have a desire to stamp but have no particular card ideas in mind, I just stamp images on patterned paper scraps and cut them out for future use. Butterflies, elephants, apples, flowers...you name it, I have a stash of them! So when I saw this challenge, all I had to do was pull out my stash, stamp some backgrounds, and voila, instant card!

Here's a peek at my elephant stash...once cut out they fit into a little baggie for easy storage (you know, like the bags that extra buttons and thread come in when you buy new clothes?).

Here is some of my apple stash:

Now that you know my secret, you can see how easy it was for me to put together these cards! I highly recommend doing this, especially if you have to whip cards together on the fly.

My first card used some patterned elephants and a bird that I also had in my stash (left over from Christmas). I used the Hero Arts Elephants, bird, cloud background, and sentiment. The grass is made with Bazzil swiss dots paper and a Martha Stewart grass border punch.

For my second card I used a new Cuttlebug embossing folder I bought a few days ago...couldn't wait to try it out. The sentiment and apples are both Hero Arts.
 

It figures that as soon as I finished uploading my cards to the Hero Arts Flickr group, my DH and son came home and we were off to our next activity. I didn't get a chance to leave any comments (although I plan to do so today) but I can tell you that the ladies there made some AMAZING cards! If you need inspiration regarding how to include patterned paper in your stamping, you need to check THIS out!

And to top it all off, I found out right before I went to bed that I won the digi prize for this round of the challenge. Wow! I haven't dabbled in the digital stamping world yet (there is something about the actual act of stamping that I love!) but I'm willing to try something new. A new technique for the new year!

Thanks for stopping by...have a great day!
Judy