OWH Stars and Stamps Sunday Sketch Challenge 1

Let's see if I can make this work.... I'm not used to doing challenges from other people's blogs yet!

Operation Write Home now has a card challenge blog... and here's the first challenge!

 The first one I'm quite proud of. I used the sketch as-is and didn't mess with it - sometimes simple is the best. The message was embossed with my Fiskars Scrapboss and then rubbed with ink to darken it.
I cut the border with my favourite Fiskars border punch (if you look at many of my cards you'll see this heart border over and over again because it's so cute!) This simple sketch seemed like a good moment to use a more elaborate patterned paper rather than stamping... the floral sheet is from the 'Cuteworld Collection' that I picked up at Ross.
Lastly I inked the inside edge of the card just to the width of the punching so that it has contrast, and I glued the little heart punchouts from the border onto the card.
Oh, and the challenge said you got bonus points if you incorporated stars, so I used tiny star brads in the corners! Left to my own devices I would have used hearts to tie in with the border but the stars don't look out of place.

And then I made a second card...

This one was intended to be very whimsical and childlike and to use some cute little foamy shapes that a friend gave me. But it didn't come out quite the way I imagined it in my head. It looks better IRL than in the scan but I'm still not entirely thrilled with it. I didn't have enough of the cloud paper to use it as a background for the entire card and it kind of disappears... If I'd been thinking a bit longer I would have turned the card on its side and used it that way, but it didn't occur to me until I'd already cut the strip in half. :( That's one of the hazards of designing your cards as you go along - I never really know how they're going to work out until they're at least half done!
The border is printed vellum, the stars are the cute foamies, the patterned paper and cardstock are scraps, and the sentiment was a RAK from a friend. The biggest squares are three inches but I skewed them. And yes they really do cut off like that at the edge of the card.