Kids' birthday cards

My daughter has also been invited to a lot of birthday parties lately and I've been trying to make a quick card for each kid. I've really been loving making strips of patterned paper into banners. It's fast, colorful and uses up those scraps that I always feel guilty about throwing away.

TIP: I used a square punch to make the triangular portion of the banner. You can use any size square punch as long as it's bigger than your paper strip. Just feed end of the strip through the punch, held diagonally, so you cut off a symmetrical triangle shape. So much easier than using scissors or a craft knife!


Please pardon my photography -- my scanner has been on the fritz so I photographed the cards and I don't have any kind of professional setup for card photography.

A cute first birthday card using primary colors:

I stamped the elephant directly onto the card using Charcoal Colorbox chalk ink, then drew the string of the balloon. The hat I cut freehand from patterned paper and for the balloon I used a circle punch, then inked the edges. I cut out the 1 using my Cricut and used that ever-popular Fiskars scallop sentiment punch to make the ground the elephant stands on. After cutting and assembling the banner strips, I stamped the birthday boy's name.

A horizontal variation, this one totally girlie. I'm sure you can see the influence of the first card on this one! Instead of the elephant I stamped with Charcoal chalk ink (as you can see, it's one of my favorite inks!) a large sentiment that I decorated with dots of clear Stickles. Instead of stamping directly on the card, I used a white panel and attached that to an aqua card base. I was able to wrap a piece of pink ribbon around the white panel this way (I hate for the ribbon ends to be seen in the inside of the card -- pet peeve). I stamped the birthday girl's name on white card stock and punched out the letters with a small circle punch, then attached them with pop dots. I added a Prima flower and of course a gem because this was for a very girlie two-year-old. I also embellished the designs on the patterned papers with additional Stickles, because you can never have too much glitter, right?!

Three months... three years

OK, it's like a I'm a once-a-month blogger. Can that be a new thing? Well my same excuses continue regarding work on the new house, which we still haven't moved into yet. The IKEA cabinets are finally installed though! To add to my list of distractions, my daughter's daycare provider quit on me and I'm scrambling to find care for the summer until she starts preschool in September. How she's almost three years old, I have no idea! It makes me nostalgic so I'm going to share a layout I recently completed (yes, I am VERY behind) from when she was just about three months old. The journaling details how I when we first talked about naming our daughter, I didn't want people to call her "Dolly" as a nickname but it has since stuck and totally fits her.

No special techniques used here. It's a hybrid layout. I printed the journaling out directly onto white cardstock. Created the title block digitally, printed it out and glued it on over two rectangles and a strip of patterned paper. Added a sticker and a flower gem. I am proud to report that I used a WAY old piece of patterned paper from my stash. The brown piece is from one of those Paper Pizzazz 8.5 by 11 booklets. Probably some of the first scrapbooking paper I ever bought, way back in the early 90s -- before 12 by 12 paper was even available, I think! I pared it up with some "modern day" Basic Grey (hearts) and DCWV (plaid).

Bubbe

So I'll say it again (yes, it's like Groundhogs Day -- have you ever seen the movie?) I have been creating but I haven't been blogging. We're attempting to finish our new house so we can finally move and I have huge work event and well there really is only so much time in the day. I guess I would rather make memories and capture them than detail my process.

Anyway, my husband's grandmother passed away two years ago yesterday. She really was a great woman -- smart, strong and opinionated, protective of her family and its traditions, but warm and welcoming. My husband saw this layout that I made of her and my daughter not too long before she died and kept asking to see it. So this one's for him.

The pink flowered and brown striped papers and the title stickers actually came from a kit, which I rarely buy. I believe it's Cloud 9 by Colorbok/Fiskars because that's what the stamps are. I looked at the flowered paper and thought, "That looks familiar!" and realized I had the coordinating stamps (Chocolate Chalet) so I used them to stamp the title block. I think it came out a little busy but it conveys the fun these two were having.

And here's another one also featuring my daughter and her great-grandma.

This one uses that brand of paper that Michaels sells, Reminisce I think (paisley), and a sheet from a new stack I just bought by My Minds Eye, Lime Twist. Yes I was supposed to be curtailing my craft purchases until after we move, but I just could not resist this stacks luscious colors and fun, versatile patterns! I was also happy to finally use the felt flower border that I've been hoarding in my stash for quite some time. I filled the flower centers in with tiny pearls and added larger pearls to the Prima flower centers.

"Beautiful" layout

Well the Ikea cabinet buying went better than expected although what I didn't expect was to not have time to post again until after they were already delivered! They haven't been put together by my contractor yet though so it's a ways away as to when I'll see my new kitchen completed.

Meanwhile, my parents came to town, which took away from my creating and blogging time, but I did finish more pages than I anticipated. Warning: pink, girly baby pages to come in the next few posts!

I finally was able to finish the page that I talked about awhile back, when I was making this starburst card for my co-worker as practice. The technique wasn't as time-consuming as I feared but I am glad I practiced it on a smaller scale first.

The journaling captures the first time I saw my daughter and I think this page does that moment justice. I got to use up a bunch of scraps that I really like. The title didn't work out as I originally planned but I love how glittery the letters are in person and how they curve around the photo. I love it!

Sweet Dreams

Well I have been working very hard at work, at my actual real job, so too much creating hasn't been happening. Here's a quick page that I made that is turning out to be one of my favorites.

I love the photo itself but also the way everything is arranged.The most time-consuming part was searching for the perfect embellishments that weren't too girly for this photo of my husband fast asleep with my daughter. I just happened to see these K & Co. Edamame layered stars on my craft table and I think they are perfect with the Sweet Dreams epoxy sentiment. Detail view of cluster:

Well now it's time for sweet dreams for myself! I'm off to IKEA at the crack of dawn to order cabinets for my new kitchen.

Thankful greetings from Boston

Well, it's been a little crazy in the Boston area lately. To say the least. My family and I are fine and don't really know anyone who was directly affected by the Marathon bombing. Thankfully we felt too lazy to go down to see the Marathon that day and even though my office is really close to the scene of the manhunt for the suspects, I was safe at home, three miles away.

My five year wedding anniversary and my birthday also happened the same week, and we are getting ready to move, so it was crazy on a personal level as well. 

I did get to do some crafting though -- yay! Made this cute card to thank my boss for bringing me back a beautiful pearl necklace from her trip to China:

My inspiration was this card I saw on Pinterest:

This was an awesome card to use up small scraps! As you can see, I used scalloped circles instead of plain ones, moved my sentiment and raised it up on pop dots, and embossed a piece of brown cardstock with my Texture Boutique instead of using a patterned graph paper for the background. I also rounded the bottom corners and added pearls in the center of each butterfly to reflect the pearls that I was thanking the recipient for.

I fee like I'm cheating when I base my work so closely on that of someone else, but sometimes I'm in a bit of a rush and Pinterest and other sites really help get the creative juices flowing.

I have a really special scrapbook page that I've been working on that documents the first moment I saw my daughter. I'm hoping I'll get to finish it tonight (or at least sometime this week!) so I can post it.

A traditional page, made without a sketch

Usually I mock up a sketch for my scrapbook pages. It's rare for me to just sit down with a bunch of photos and make a page without having some kind of blueprint to follow. I use Photoshop to color-correct and resize my photos anyway so I usually just plop the touched-up photos into an 8.5 by 11 inch canvas. Then I can play with placement and color, add digital papers and embellishments and write up some journaling.

Sometimes I'm happy with what I've come up with and print and use it as my final page, just adding real photographic prints and maybe some traditional embellishments to an otherwise digital page. But more often I use traditional cardstock and patterned papers to create my page, just printing out my sketch to use as a placement guide, and maybe printing out my journaling as well.


This page was one of the rare instances where I had no sketch or any preconceived notion of what I was going to do before I began. I had mocked up a rough sketch but when I looked at it, I really didn't like it. Unfortunately it appears that I dislike it so much that I deleted it from my computer, so I'm unable to show it to you. It must have been really bad! Anyway, I'm not really sure I know how this page came together, but it did:

I looked at the colors in my photo and remembered this cool die-cut piece of Making Memories paper that I had been wanting to use. It was 12 by 12 so I trimmed it down to make a large frame around my 3 by 4 inch photo. Then looked for a flowered pattern to use as a background that would coordinate and reflect my daughter's flowered shirt. I found this KI Memories kit, picked a flowered paper and then pulled out an aqua dotted piece to ground the photo so it didn't look like it was floating in space. I edged the strip with a piece of K & Co pink scalloped border sticker. 

The journaling tag just happened to be on my craft table. It is also Making Memories but from a different collection (Spring Fling). It had a wide rounded rectangular hole and at first I was going to slide ribbon through it, but this Cosmo Cricket Girl Friday strip of paper fit better. I layered everything on without planning out my title. I figured it could fit under the photo but really had no plan.

I looked for items that coordinated with the Making Memories paper and found this die cut label and the tiny alphabet stickers. The "7" is chipboard and the other letter stickers are from the KI Memories kit. I outlined all of the title stickers with the same brown pen I used for the journaling to tie them all together.

The embellishments are a random collection of flowers and an epoxy sentiment from the KI Memories kit plus a K & Co tag ("Wow"). The date sticker is from one of those journaling stacks. A random assortment of products but I think they came together pretty well and tell the story of the first time my daughter picked up a Cheerio with a proper pincer grip -- even without a plan!