My Calypso Friend

Happy Saturday, peeps!  Do you have some stamping/fun time scheduled today?  I have a little free time, I hope I can get some in!  Meanwhile, I wanted to share a card with you that highlights some of the new mini catalog products:  Tea for Two Designer Fabric, Itty Bitties and the Borders Scoring Plate.  I love orange hues almost as much as I love blues, so when I saw the Tea for Two fabric, I knew it would be on my wish list!

But before I worked on the fabric, I cut my cardstock and embossed a little line of dots & scallops at the bottom border.  Can you see it there?  A big thing to remember when using the Borders plate is that you must work on the BACK of your project!!!!  I’ll give you a couple other hints at the end of the post, too!  Then I cut a strip of fabric about 10” long for my card with my pinking shears and gathered it on my machine with a basting stitch.  That step was rather moot, as my thread ended up breaking just before I adhered it to the card, so I didn’t bother to re-sew, just sort of hand-gathered it on top of a line of sticky strip.

I added another line of sticky strip on top of the gather and adhered my ribbon.  The final touch was the image from Perfect Punches and the little bird from Itty Bitties:

There are so many fun little images in that set, I find myself looking for ways to use it!
So here are some tips I have found helpful for using the Borders plate:

• Remember to have your project face down before you emboss!!!
• Use blue painter’s tape (my hubby wanted to know when I was going to return his and I told him NEVER—go buy some new) to anchor your project in place.  I used little bits, but do be careful, as it is not foolproof and it will tear the cardstock or paper if you don’t use a gentle hand when removing it!  I speak from experience!  This tape is also good for anchoring your dies in the Big Shot!
• A piece of waxed paper rubbed on your cardstock along the embossing area beforehand helps the stylus emboss smoothly.
• Hold your stylus upright, perpendicular to your project, not at an angle, to get the best embossing.
• If you butt your cardstock all the way to the top of the scoring plate and don’t get that last little area embossed because of the way the overlay is created (if you own one of these, you’ll know what I mean), do your embossing, remove the overlay and finish that last little bit without it.

Hope those tips help a little.  The Borders plate looks intimidating, but it is definitely a cool tool that helps to add interest to your cards!  If you have any questions, please shoot me an email!!!  Again, I cannot always answer your questions from the comment screen, so email is best!  And be sure to come back tomorrow for the Paper Players challenge!

Cassidy managed to get my church bulletin from my Bible and found fun ways to play with it:

Reading:

Arranging (she seems to like doing this to a lot of things):

and making it fly in the air!

Enjoy your day!