Here Comes the Sun

Once again, I couldn't resist the House Mouse and Friends Monday Challenge - this time it's Here Comes the Sun.  I think these two little fellas are happy the winter is over!  To make the little banner for the sentiment, I stamped the words twice, once for the card, and a second time to create a mask or template.  I cut the second image very close to the letters, following the shape as best I could, then I positioned that just above and below the sentiment and drew lines for where to cut, leaving some white space as you can see.  To make the cuts at the end of the strip of paper, I used a square punch, punching with just a corner at an angle to the strip of paper.  I had seen a tip for that somewhere and wanted to try it.  Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well for me, instead of nice, sharp points I got one sharp and one squared-off point and had to fix it with scissors.  Better find that tip and re-read the instructions...
One of the many positive aspects of clearing through the clutter of over a decade is finding things you didn't remember you had - this background paper is a perfect example.  As soon as I saw it yesterday I knew I had to use it for this challenge.

And now all of my patterned paper (and scraps thereof) are finally organized, whoo hoo!  Tomorrow I'll share pictures of that, and of something else that got organized as a result of my crafts room cleanup.