Wow, has it really been nearly a year since I posted? I've had months of making nothing crafty, followed by weeks of intense work, but just haven't posted anything. Recently, I have become aware of some fantastic images and dies by Papertrey Ink that I am really wanting to purchase. But ... I really cannot afford to. So, on a whim a few days ago I looked to see if they have a blog, and if there are any opportunities to win free products. Happy day, I found a challenge. I needed to take a die and use it as a stencil. Well, I only own two products (so far!) from Papertrey: a honeycomb die and the coordinating stamps. So, that made it very easy to decide what to do! I had extra die cuts from the last time I made cards with it, so I just put a little temporary glue to hold it onto the paper and daubed in the inks. I also needed to make a card for someone in our church who just lost her step-son, so this helped me to push through and get a card made for her. I had fun with this; my only frustration was just thoughtlessly grabbing white cardstock when I would have preferred beige for fall colors. I was really happy with the results other than that (oh, and a major difficulty getting a decent embossed image on vellum - it took five tries, and even this one was flawed).