Upcycled Floral cards

I upcycled some old cards from the many stashes I have accumulated. This first card is my favorite out of this bunch. I'm posting the other cards as a learning tool for myself. Should I ever search upcycled cards in the search bar, I'll know what not to do.

First card:

The sentiment is by Hero Arts with inked edges

I fussy cut the flowers out of a card 

Slapped it onto some patterned paper with the edges inked.

Pretty card to an assisted living home.

This thank you card was this shape. I cut off the back and added patterned paper to the corners. 

I liked using this pp because it's the 2" pieces left over from a 6x6 paper pad. 

I work with pre-made card bases from Michael's and they are 4x 5.5-inch cards.

When I cut the 6x6 pads to fit my card base, I end up with a ton of these strips of paper.

If you have that same problem, tell me what you do with those scraps.

This next set of cards uses a background from a former card front. 

Hubby's Grandma gives me all of her card fronts. Well, she received two of the same card for her birthday or something like that. I think that's how the story went.

There's brown cardstock  by Stampin Up closest to the card base

The flowers are die cuts from K and Co. 

There's a brad in the center of the pink flowers

The sentiment is by Fiskars. Black ink by Hero Arts.

The green die-cut is unknown

The ribbon is by American Crafts

So..............

I didn't like the playful ribbon with the elegant flower die-cut

I had to make some adjustments. See the second photo to see my changes.

I removed the ribbon and I replaced it with 2 layers of lace.

I covered the top of the lace with a single color ribbon that was a better match for these flowers.

I think it looks better. Agree?

 Here are the second background card and I kept the playful ribbon because the flower die-cuts weren't as frilly. Plus when I went to change it the ribbon ripped the paper.

I didn't want to fuss with it anymore. 

The sentiment stamps are by Fiskars.

Same supplies for this 2nd card 

Thanks for looking

Here are some other cards that I upcycled to make the cards.

Here's a pretty upcycled card

Another pretty one

Floral card from 2017

Christmas background

I would consider any of the Christmas fabric cards that I made last year, as upcycled.

I saved those pieces of fabric from my Mom's things when we had to sell her house.

If you want to see any of those,

Type the word fabric into the search box.

Below this line is my opinion/review of the sentiment stamp set for the last two cards.

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I have a small tidbit to say on this sentiment stamp set. I had it on my Amazon wish list but ended up finding it cheaper somewhere else. I was so excited to get the stamp set.

It arrived and I hated and still do hate it. 

The sentiments that are in print are too small to read, even hard for me at my young age. (cough, cough) I can't read them. 

It would be extremely hard for a senior citizen to read them.

All of the reasons below are in my opinion what makes the sentiments hard to read:

The cursive sentiments use letters that are too thick. Combine their thickness with the swirl and the size of the stamp, you end up wondering what the sentiment says.

If you don't have the perfect pressure when stamping, the sentiment turns out crappy. Look at my second card. Poor pressure, poor outcome.

The other thing that could have made a poor impression, my ink pads. I used Versafine pigment ink and maybe that wasn't the best choice.

2 other things that I just thought of:

You would not be able to heat emboss these sentiments. Even with super fine embossing powder, the letters would blend and blur together.

I don't think shadow inks would work well with these either but I did not try it.

I should have looked closer at the size of the sentiments beforehand. I was just so geeked that there were sooo many sentiments in one stamp set. Well, when the sentiments are 1/32 inch in size, you can add a lot of sentiments.

I'm done blabbing. I have more posts to get out this week. Sorry if my grammar sucks. I've tried to proofread this post. However, after an hour and half working on this post, I'm done and want to move on to the next.