Background technique

I recently saw a card on this blog - Expressions of a Craftaholic - and wanted to try to make that background.  I pulled out a box of scraps and cut some pieces into 1/2" strips.  The scraps weren't all the same length, so some are
1 1/2" long and others are shorter.  I ran a 4" x 5 1/4" piece of cardstock through the Xyron and proceded to stick the strips onto adhesive.  In the future, I will draw a straight diagonal line onto the base card before running it through the cardstock.  This is my first attempt:

Before adhering scrap card to base card, I ran it through the Big Shot with a Square Lattice embossing folder.  I stamped the images onto cardstock and lightly colored them with colored pencils.  These images are from a set of Sizzix Framelit dies and Hero Arts stamps.  I wanted a border around the images, so I trimmed off the edges left by the die and mounted it on a die cut from the brown cardstock.  I then popped images with dimensional foam tape.

I made a straight line on this base card as a guide in getting my strips straighter.

On this card, I left the die cuts as they were and didn't mount them on the brown piece.  I will practice some more and try to master this technique.