Practice Makes (Closer to) Perfect

I finished the set of 10 Papertrey Ink cards I made for my colleague. From my practice, I have learned a few more little tricks that made working with the Faux Ribbon set a little easier. First, about the cards, though. These two cards have basically the same layout, but with a different orientation. The embellishment on the masculine birthday card is a brown button with a piece of brown twine tied through the button hole. The embellishment on the feminine card is a stack of flowers--clear white ones from Making Memories, pink one from Queen & Co. The white ones are self-adhesive, but instead of using that adhesive to stick them together, I punched holes in their centers and put them together with a brad. And, I also must be honest--I didn't realize at the time I made the card that the white flowers were self-adhesive. It would probably be helpful if I'd read the package first, wouldn't it?

Now, for the tricks . . . First, here's my masking hint. On Nichole Heady's blog, she suggested using masking tape to mask the cardstock to create a ribbon stripe. I read in quite a few stampers' galleries and blogs that when they tried this, their cardstock ripped when they removed the tape. So, I used long sticky notes instead for masking. They are less "tacky," so removing them doesn't rip the paper. The ones I used were 5" by 3". Another trick was for lining up the images on the acrylic blocks. I found that I did better with putting the long ribbon images on the acrylic blocks straight if I placed the stamp strip right along one of the edges of the block. Even with this, I am still challenged with getting the images to go straight across like I want them. I guess that's par for the course for someone who can't draw a straight line with a ruler!

Materials used:
From Stampin' Up!: Pink Passion, Brocade Blue, Close to Cocoa, and Basic Black Classic inks; Brocade Blue, Close to Cocoa, Basic Black, and Whisper White cardstock; silver brad; glue dot; dimensional
Other: Faux Ribbon stamp set (Papertrey Ink); button (Walmart); brown twine (Walmart); white Clears Flowers (Making Memories); pink flower sequin (Queen & Co.)