Christmas and 4th of July Cards

I sat down last night and just created. I love those times when the ideas seem to flow effortlessly. Making cards, scrapbooking and sewing are relaxing for me. My boys spent the night at their grandma's, so I had a couple of uninterrupted hours to myself! During this time I came up with three different cards. It's not the season for any of them, but the ideas were there, so I just let them take shape. You can't see the stockings very well on the red cardstock; however, I did do generation stamping on that as well. I was quite pleased with my "God Bless America" background. I created that using a square foam stamp (I made). Once again, I used generation stamping. For this I inked my stamp, stamped it on my paper and stamped again and again without re-inking. Because the foam stamps soak up so much ink, I was able to stamp 5 or six times before I had to re-ink. Then I stamped my text, followed by the fireworks, and finished it off using the TP (toilet paper) technique. TP stamping is something I learned from internet researching. You take a wad of toilet paper, twist one end to make it hard, dip it in your ink and use it like a sponge. Just dab it all over your paper. It adds a lot of texture. You can also use sponges, foam, seran wrap, tin foil. Each creates a different look. I also distressed my flag image edges with this same technique so that the white paper would not look out of place. As you can see, I had fun last night.