Baby wipe mini book...

Welcome back to Stamps and Stencils, Ruth here with our next inspiration post and yes it does say baby wipe! I'm sure a lot of crafters will use baby wipes when creating but instead of throwing them all away, do you sometimes dry them and save them thinking that could make a nice background? A lot of mine are just plain grungy and dirty and discarded but sometimes they have possibilities...and in keeping with Julia's current theme I've created a mini book.

So how did I start?

All sorts of colours and all sorts of babywipes, I buy whats on offer so the quality varies.

Sometimes you can see the potential of a lovely background. I posted this one on my blog a while back, I used a JOFY set because they are quite an open stamp and coloured in with promarkers...carefully

So for this post I looked for another suitable background and found this one which I've again used JOFY stamps on.

I've turned it into a journal page which I stitched onto some photocopy paper, to give it some stability.

So with the 'fluffier' ones, I've stamped and stencilled and then ripped and layered!

I then stitched, randomly to secure the loose pieces. If you didn't want to do this you could use a spray adhesive and faux stitched stamping.

Once I started using the sewing machine I couldn't stop, wonky stitching which I excel at is perfect for this! 

I became more confident and thought these colours would be good for leaves so having sewed wavy lines one way, I stitched rough leaf shapes the other.

So this is my haul of ready made embellishments. You'll notice some hearts in there which is really where the inspiration for the post came from. It was our wedding anniversary a few weeks ago and I was looking around the craft room for inspiration and my eyes landed on the used baby wipes, so I created 2 baby wipe hearts and thought maybe I should explore this idea more.

Above is the original card and below I've added some more colour to the hearts I made this time around.

Having promised last time that this would be a quick post, I'm failing so I'd better get to the mini album.

There were 2 large leaves that were almost the same size. I cut 10 pieces of cotton paper in the same leaf shape. Cotton paper is a bit more sturdy.

On each leaf I used peeled paint and blue violet archival with various stamps and stencils. I then picked out some phrases to go on each one and embossed them in gold. You'll notice the back of the leaf cover is a lovely blue which is another bonus.

On the reverse of each page I used peeled paint and dusty concord through an Emma Godfrey stencil. It adds a little bit of colour but will also allow me to do some mini journalling if I want to.

Hope you enjoyed this inspiration post and if your wondering what I've made with the rest of my embellishments I'll be posting some cards on my blog later this week.

Don't forget you've got just under a week to join in with our current 'small is beautiful' challenge.