Welcome to the 1st Unofficial CC Blog Hop

Welcome to my blog. I'm rather new to maintaining a blog and this is the first time I have participated in a blog hop. I am the 6th blog on the 1st Unofficial Crop Chocolate Blog Hop organized by Scrappy Canuck. If you "stumbled upon" our Unofficial CC Blog Hop, you may want to start at the beginning, a page maintained by Wild Flower, because those that comment on each blog participating in the hop are eligible for the prize drawing.


The project I am sharing today is the nth iteration of a banner I saw in a catalog. My original sketch started out like this:

The arrow coming in from the right was a reminder to myself with how I could create the stars and stripes. I have a great set of embossing templates I purchased when Lisa Bearnson was demonstrating them on the Q.

Then I thought of this alternate shape for the background and star bling hanging from the bottom of the shape:

Unfortunately I did  not see any star bling in the store. Then started going through my Slice Design Guides, the little paper pamphlets that come with the Design Cards, and hit upon a star shape and that's when I came up with this:

I used my Slice Design Cutter and the Basics 1 Design Card for all of the die cuts. I cut the red star at 4 inches and the white star at 3.5 inches. I cut the letters at 2 inches. When cutting my letters I did not lift my Slice and cut a second time (this is when the hands free kit comes in really handy). The Slice blade was not deep enough to cut all the way through the pre-glittered paper, but there was enough of a indention in the paper so it was easy to use a craft knife to complete the cut. Prior to layering the star pieces, I used gold star glitter on the edges of the white star. I used foam squares cut down to attach the letters. I used red eyelets to create a way to string my die cuts and my Crop-A-Dile to attach them. I used organza ribbon to hang the letters. Here is a close-up of one of the letters:

I have files created on my Gypsy to create my first impression of the banner. If I get a chance to cut and assemble them, I'll post a photo here.

I hope you enjoyed visiting my page. Don't forget to leave a comment so you are eligible for the prize drawing. The next blog in our hop is Dream Big Cre8tions.