A Swell Background

I'm all at sea today with a couple of cards using the Swell stamp set from Avery Elle.

I love that this stamp is such a large background but I decided to make it much 

more versatile by carefully snipping the little boats out of the wavy scene.... it's easy to do 

with a sharp craft knife or scissors and you can always add the boats 

back into the design if you want to..

With the boats separate, you can ink them in different colours as I've done here.

I've used a circle die to cut a central aperture then layered a smaller aperture 

under the front panel to give a blue border to the design.

I've used part of the sentiment from the same set and added 'Birthday' on a banner 

with Swinging Borders and Lots of Letters by Mama Elephant.

Another fun thing you can do with the boats removed from this background 

is add different images in their space... like this seagull from Beside the Sea.

The waves and birds are embossed in white and I've cut a circle aperture again 

and used the die cut to make a recessed window..

The seagulls in the Peek a Boo Summer Pals was the perfect fit for this card so I've 

paper pieced them and tucked them into the window... one of them had to be 

the Birthday Gull so it has a party hat!!

It may seem scary chopping into photo polymer stamps but as long as you're 

careful it can really make those supplies stretch that bit further with your creativity.

This is what my stamp looks like now... and I can just pop the boats back into 

the holes and still use it as intended.

Just to note that some of the stamp sets I've used have now sold out in store due to the 

very popular sale over the weekend, please use the notification system for when they 

come back in stock if you'd like to purchase them.. thank you

  

  

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jenny x