Sometimes creating something special for a card or a scrapbooking page makes that piece memorable or a little extra special.

This week I am going to be at our national convention called OnStage 2026 and I created a bunch of swap cards for the event.

We are expected to use only current products and current colors, so I modified a card I did a few weeks ago and instead of using Designer Series Paper to create the beach blanket in my beach scene I wanted to create a beach blanket made out of background paper that I made.

I looked through my embossing folder as I knew that I wanted to add texture on top of whatever background design I created and decided that the Beautiful Patterns would be a great choice to mimic a blanket texture and design!

I wanted to do matching colors for the card I had designed so I started with Crumb Cake and Balmy Blue inks and did a watercolor wash striped design on our Basic White Cardstock alternating with two wide brushes from our Water Painters three brush sets.

I then dipped my very wet brush into the lid of the stampin’ pad filled with ink refill dots of ink and tapped the side of the brush with my bone folder over the watercolored paper to create a splatter effect.

I decided that the Beautiful Pattern 3D embossing folder would create a nice embossed design over the paper, so I ran it through our Stampin’ Cut and Emboss machine with the BASE #1 and Embossing #4 Plates.

I cut the 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ embossed layers into
1 1/2″ strips.

Then I cut the 1 1/2″ strips into 2″ segments so I created a little rectangular blanket shape.

I took our knife edged scissors which unfortunately are no longer for sale – but use a sharp scissors to cut small fringe across the short edges on both sides.

I added the blanket to the sand of my beach scene card!

Then I proceeded to make 99 more! LOL – now I am ready to swap!

Cannot wait to show you all the great cards I will be trading for in the next coming days! I will have all of them on display at this month’s Stamp-a-Stack class on the 23rd!

Make sure that you RSVP!

Now I am off to visit and stamp with new and old friends – hope you are getting to do the same! Now go and create some artwork of your very own – one stamp at a time!

Happy Stampin’
Natalie