So this weekend was a busy one and the crafting just couldn't take priority. I've been working for months on a fundraiser for a really great organization that I'm on the Board of the Friends for and our big event was Saturday night. I was stuffing grab bags, making luminaries and doing other last minute tasks. But I still like to give handmade birthday cards and my daughter had a party for not just one three-year-old, but two. Consequently, I made two of the fastest birthday cards ever. Literally I slapped them together minutes before we left for the joint party, while my husband took a shower. Totally not my typical style of agonizing over the position of each element but it was rather freeing. Sorry about the abysmal photography -- I took the pictures with my phone in the (moving) car on the way to the party. That dark background is the jeans I was wearing.
The secret to this super fast card design was having 1 inch strips of patterned paper already in my scrap box. I've got tons because as an 8.5 by 11 scrapbooker, I often cut 1 inch off of 12 by 12 papers. I selected three strips that used purple for my daughter's friend Violet and three with oranges for the little girl named Clementine. I stamped some birthday and letter stamps using chalk ink, punched two circles, added scrap ribbon and voila! The stamping is rather messy and not up to my usual standards but I'm thinking three-year-olds won't really notice.
Do you have any tricks for getting cards made fast?
