Yellow butterfly thank you card

Finally getting around to posting one of the other "end of the year" thank you notes I made. This one was for my daughter's babysitter. She likes yellow. Totally not a color I usually reach for unless it's super bright, but I liked this butter yellow cardstock and I think it came together nicely with the piece of flowered patterned paper that happened to be on my desk. The yellow in the patterned paper is actually closer to the color of the cardstock in person that in this photo. The butterflies are stamped, cut out, raised up with pop dots and finished with jewels. Overall a cute and easy card to put together.

4th birthday boy card

Yes, I have been crafting. Here and there. No I have not been blogging. Anywhere.

Here's a quick card that I made for a four-year-old whose birthday party my daughter went to over the weekend. I got to make it in the time that my daughter made her own card. Hers mostly involved scribbles, so I had to pull this together pretty quickly.

Ran some scrap navy cardstock through my Texture Boutique (really almost typed Bowtique there -- entirely too much Mickey Mouse Clubhouse has been playing at our house) for the background. Cut some scraps into banners using the quick square punch technique. (Just slide the end of the strip into a large square punch at a 45 degree angle, squeeze and you've got a banner.) Stamped the birthday boy's name letter by letter onto white cardstock, cut out freehand and edged with blue ink. Stole a foam number four from my daughter's craft stash, tied around a piece of bakers twine and the card was done. With 20 minutes to spare before we had to leave for the party. Whew!

Funny, I looked back at cards I've made for the same kid the past two years, and apparently I think banners and bunting when I think of him.

Last year's card:

The year before:

I'm definitely going to have to come up with something new next year!

Fastest cards ever

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?

Patterned paper possibilities

I've been scrapbooking a lot lately! I know I should be packing up my craft supplies in preparation for our move instead but I just can't make myself do it until a little closer to our actual move date. Crafting makes me happy and sane, both of which I need right now!

This layout focuses my my daughter and her babysitter's daughter. I love getting photos during the day that show me how happy she is and the fun that she is having. Here I paired some patterned papers that I usually would never put together but I wanted the layout to be colorful and reflect what was going on in the photo. I thought the number paper from the My Minds Eye Lime Twist collection (I'm still really loving this stack!) was related to the fact that they are in the library (OK, letters would have made more sense...) and the cloud paper from American Crafts showed that it was a rainy day, hence my daughter's polka dot raincoat. The plaid paper (I think from the Target Dollar Spot) picked up the color of her friend's coat and the flowered strip (DCWV Kidlet stack) was fun and tied the colors together. The blue strip at the top was kind of a random addition that I'm not sure if really adding anything. I just happened to be going through my sticker stash and found the chipboard "Pals" title (DCWV) as a last minute addition. The date sticker is from the Target Dollar Spot (so many cool bargains abound there!) and the little sticker next to it that says "Sweet" was a freebie for renewing some magazine.

Maybe one of these days I can actually catch up a big and scrapbook some 2013 events! The photos in this next layout are even older, as you can see that my daughter was just a baby. How time flies!

Again I paired patterns that usually I wouldn't pick. I really am trying to use up some of my stash and stretch my creativity (sometimes with mixed results, I know!). These are some really old papers from Colorbok. I also used one of those foam craft stickers for kids as the embellishment. The journaling and date label are digital elements that I printed. I punched holes down the side and ripped some to the edge to simulate authentic notebook paper.

The photo in this last layout is from around the same time. To make it I used a lot of the scraps generated from the previous two layouts. Since I scrap 8.5 by 11, I usually cut an inch off of each sheet of 12 by 12 paper before I start using it. I've organized these 1 by 12 inch strips in a box that I can pull out when I need a quick border. I found out that they also make a cool background!

The title is from a very old DCWV kit but it just happened to fit my subject. I really am trying to use up my stash! I love that simple layered flower sticker in the lower right. Kind of hides the fact that I cut the plaid pink strip too short! A mistake is just an opportunity for creativity, right?

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?!

"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!

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.

Starburst card (nothing to do with the candy, unfortunately)

So I haven't been blogging, but that doesn't mean I haven't been creating! As my daughter has gotten older, (almost 2 1/2! -- she'll tell you that she's a "big girl") I have been snatching bits of time here and there to make cards and work on her scrapbooks. The scrapbooks are important to me so that she'll have a record of who she is and how she got that way. The cards are important because they are a much lower stress way to exercise my creativity on a small canvas that doesn't necessarily need to be of keepsake quality.

Here's a recent card that I am particularly proud of because it was the first time I created a "starburst" effect with patterned paper (I am sure this isn't the correct terminology for this, but I'm lacking time to look it up). This is something I had seen all over the place in magazines and had been pinning on Pinterest for some time and which, quite frankly looked simple to achieve digitally but too hard to do by hand. I had been struggling with scrapbooking my daughter birth and early days, feeling that no design I could come up with would somehow be special enough. Voila, "starburst" effect layout. But I wanted to practice before I did it on a scrapbook page, so came up with this card design for a co-worker's birthday.

I made a standard 5.5 by 4.25 inch card with white card stock and put a dot in the lower left corner. I then cut a long triangle from patterned paper and lined the point up with the dot. I trimmed off the excess paper that overlapped the edge of the card. Then I cut another triangle and overlapped the first one, also lining up one point with the dot on the card. I repeated until I had covered the card with a rainbow of patterned paper scraps. I thought there was probably a scientific way to do this but I just eyeballed it and I think it came out pretty well.

The point at which all of the papers met was a little sloppy. I toyed with adding a sentiment there but nothing seemed quite right so I saved the sentiment for the inside (it just says "Happy birthday" -- nothing special) and instead added a large paper flower. I layered on a smaller pink flower and of course added a little rhinestone bling in the center (those cheap adhesive gems from Michaels or ACMoore that are like $1/sheet). I stamped the recipient's name with tiny alphabet stamps in one of my favorite inks -- Colorbox Charcoal chalk ink -- added a bit more bling and I was done.

The recipient loved it and put it in her special box of cards that I've made for her that she claims she is keeping for when I'm famous (for doing what, I'm not quite sure, but I appreciate her confidence)! I loved that I used up a bunch of scraps and I got to practice a new technique, all during my daughter's nap time.

One of these days I will have a little more time to make a video or at least take pictures during each step so I can show instead of tell how I did something. Maybe when I (finally) make the scrapbook page of my daughter's birth that making that card is helping me design!