Hip Hip Hooray for Pop Dots

HEY! We went to an "Estate" sale this morning and one of the ladies selling her things had paper goodies. WAHOO! I got a few needle books, a couple sewing patterns, some recipe booklets, an antique birding book, etc. I'll show you all my loot next week. This week my buyers remorse is that I didn't buy more from her!

Oh me ... I made my 4th of July cards today ... but not in time to get them out in the last mail pick up (You could have bet on that one, couldn't you?!!). So they are now officially, Happy 4th of July AND Happy Summer cards.

I'm usually inspired by vintage postcards but no ideas were forthcoming this time. nada zip zilch. I was about ready to give up and throw in the towel but then I happened to pick up a photo album from my mom's family and there was this adorable picture of my mom and EUREKA! Light bulb's went on! Inspiration at last.

I scanned my mom's photo and printed it out on card stock. I layered the image with dark red and navy card stock and placed these upon a card that I made from cream card stock.

Then I googled for vintage newspaper images and shrunk the image, printed it out and folded the mini page into a mini newspaper hat for my mom to wear. I punched out a little red star to give it more pizazz. (Her hat is too big but my fingers wouldn't work with anything smaller ARGH!)

Then I googled for vintage flag images that would have been appropriate for the year of this photo, 1924-ish. I shrunk the image and printed out a lot of them and made a garland. I used vintage embroidery thread from my grandmother's sewing things for the garland string.

And yes ... pop dots ... couldn't live without pop dots. I cut out a second image of my mother and raised her up using pop dots and I also put them under the flag banner. They make everything POP!

I had bought the patriotic Kate Smith stamps at the Post Office last week (I can remember my parents getting such a giggle over her "enthusiastic" delivery when I was a kid) and used those for postage on the envelopes and I had address labels with flags on them. Voila! Fourth of July fun, albeit, a bit late.