Patriotic card

I've been keeping the cover of a book of stamps with the Liberty Bell for months, planning on putting it on a card. I finally got around to it and also got to use some paper that has been around for several years. I have so much paper and I need to use some up so I can justify (at least a little bit) all the new paper I buy. (Whenever I bring new paper home and show it off to my husband, he grins and says, "Just what you need, MORE paper!") Anyway, I made 2 cards using a sketch for a challenge. The papers were from the dollar store, the image is from the US postal service, the cardstock is from my scrap papers. I inked with walnut ink on lots of the paper. I wanted to give it the look of old parchment. I popped the image with foam tape.The ribbon is from Offray. On the inside of the first card I used a Cricut cut from Stand and Salute. For the second card the papers were all part of the same pack from the dollar store. There were several things I did differently on the second card. The ribbon is wider, I varied the color of the matting and I stitched around almost everything. This is the first time I have used my sewing machine for cards, and I really like the look. For the inside sentiment on the 2nd card I used stamps from Studio G. The sketch called for the sentiment to be down the side of the Image, but since the "Forever" was already there I didn't want to add another one. I think the first one is a little "blah", too much the same for the papers, but I like how the second one came out.
I am entering the following challenges with this:
1.   Friday Sketchers- http://fridaysketchersblog.blogspot.com/  sketch (of course!)
 
Danielle