July 4th and a sale - -

 Couple of weeks ago my PIC (stamping Partner In Crime) rode together to a stamper's used stamping sale. This is the first time in over a year that we have been able to do anything together so it was a fun afternoon. Here are the items I picked up at this sale:

The Snowglobe Scene die from Elizabeth Craft which will get some use for holiday cards - I think I paid $6 for that die set and this die set was $3 --

No packaging with this die set as it is a combination of two die sets she sold together. The distressing and cutting tools set by SU was $2.00:

Usually at a stamp sale I take a piece of scrap card stock with me for any punches I find but for this sale I had forgotten my scrap piece. This way I can try out the punch at the sale before I buy it to be sure it works and cuts well.... But I wanted this EK Success Tulip Border punch so I picked it up anyways and brought it home -- very happy to say it cuts beautifully:

That was $6 or $8 and happy to have it. My last big purchase of 25 cents was an orange marker:

Usually at these sales I do not buy markers or opened stamp ink pads as you never know if they are all dried out or anything but this marker has lots of colour to it and it will come in handy for my holiday Snuggets, BOO Day projects, as well as Easter....

The sale before this one was at Daphne's store in Matthews and had picked up a Walmart bag full of unused SU wood blocks for stamps. The seller said she did not use the wood blocks and she just saved them and put them in a bag thinking she would eventually use them for something crafty but she never did - so happy me I picked up these unused blocks for $1 for the bag. I knew I would use them for decorating for July 4th:

and

I used craft acrylic paint from HobLob to paint the blocks red, white, and blue. Once dried I added scraps of printed card stocks to the fronts of the blocks using ModPodge. Added glittered stars I punched out and I used Beacon 3 in 1 glue to put those on the fronts of the blocks. For the "USA" I used large letter dies and cut them out of red glittered card stock. This is the second time I used these blocks to decorate with - the first set is from BOO Day:

I also wanted to make a holiday wreath so this year I made a Deco Mesh Yardstick Wreath for the door:

I painted one side of the yardstick that was the front and I added the pipe cleaners to put the mesh on the yardstick. Lots of videos on YouTube for this yardstick wreath and it is very easy to put together. Once the mesh was attached I put a dab of hot glue on the back of it to keep the pipe cleaners in place. To fill the front of this I used red, white, and blue stars from HobLob that I hot glued onto the mesh. Also cut apart red, white, and blue flowers from the Dollar Tree to fill in the front:

Also at the top are two star sprays also from HobLob:

Also made a flag block using the SU wooden blocks:

Easy stripes to make using washi tape for my rows. Added one star to the flag and I may distress the edges of it now that it is dried.  Lots of July 4th projects in the works in the craft room -- now finishing up the rest of the treat holders I am making and will post those once they are complete. TFL  ** Here is a new photo of the flag block once I sanded the edges and sponged a light brown ink to the edges to give it more of a distressed look:

It now has a softer look and not so many straight lines and edges. It looks good with the other blocks I had decorated as well.