Banana Frog Blog: Featured Stamp

What with the fabulous marvel of snow falling here in southeast England, how could today's featured stamp be anything but Blizzard? It's just meant to be! This set includes six versatile snowflake stamps for all your wintry projects.

A few years ago, I indulged in a little white and sparkly Christmas tree perfect for one of our windows and each year I have decorated it in a slightly different theme. This year it is the entirely black and white tree -- black baubles, black and white photos as ornaments, white lights and bows from black and white gingham ribbon. But this week I decided it also needed some snowflakes!

Making tags like these is a great way to use up some small scraps of paper and ribbon.

Start with a blank tag and a large snowflake stamp. Ink the stamp with black ink. The faded look on the background of the tags is created by the way the ink is added to the stamp: instead of placing the stamp directly to the ink pad, sponge the ink from the pad to the stamp with an ink applicator tool or a foam sponge.

Then ink the stamp directly and stamp a variety of snowlfakes on vintage dictionary paper and small white tags.

Punch snowflakes from cardstock.

Then it's just a case of layering things up -- adding extra mats until the pieces fit the tag and sewing layers to one another to make them secure and add some texture. When everything is in place, add some rhinestones to the centre of the snowflakes and brush sparkly stickles over parts of the tag so it will shimmer in the glow of the Christmas lights!