Posts tagged ‘cards’

My Dad lives really far away, in Austin, TX. Which is great when we get a chance to visit him, because Austin is one of the coolest towns to visit. But it is awful when Father’s Day rolls around. Yesterday I was able to talk to him on the phone and plan a fall trip out to Texas. But I was not able to remember that Father’s Day was coming until the Monday before, and therefore ran out of time to get him anything, even a card to send.

So I did the next best thing. I sent him a digital card. But I didn’t use of the many online card makers, instead I let my kids draw pictures on our computer with the Wacom Tablet and laid out a card in our photo editing program. Then I sent it  to his email box with instructions on how to cut it out himself to get a 4×6 card. The blue field on the top gets folded over so that the card will stand up on his desk.

I love you, Dad. Wish you were closer.

I’m in a friend’s wedding next month and volunteered to make the bachelorette invites.  I needed something quick and simple which is hard because I prefer to go overboard & make things too intricate!

For these, I stamped the “Love is in the air” quote, free-hand cut out the flower & edged it with ink, and used a straight-edge & marker to draw faux stitches around the patterned paper.

By the way, the bachelorette party is at The Winery at Wolf Creek (near Akron, Ohio).  If you’ve never been there, I completely recommend it for a unique date night.  They only sell wine , chocolate, & cheese/cracker baskets, so you’re welcome to bring your own picnic foods.  The view is great with the vineyard & lake in the distance.  Plus they have musicians on some evenings and offer fun events like “cooking with wine” and “chocolate & wine pairings”.

For my grandpa’s birthday I whipped up a quickie card made mostly from recycled paper in this old song book.

I stamped “happy birthday” and used a circle punch to cut it out and a smaller circle punch with the treble clefs.  I glued these to a gray paper background to make a border.  The hat is folded from scrapbook paper…it’s just a mini version of the hats typically made from newspaper.  The background is a page from the song book.

Much of the time when I’m stamping I emboss my images.  Embossing makes the image stand out by raising it and making it shiny.  There are a few different approaches to embossing & some different products you can try (such as clear or colored powders and white or colored stamp pads, plus we’ll discuss whether to use pigment or dye based inks).  But the basic idea is you stamp your image on paper with ink, sprinkle embossing powder & remove the excess, then use a heat tool to melt the powder.  So here goes…

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For a friend’s bridal shower gift I’m making her a stack of thank you cards.  The best part is I managed to use entirely scrap paper except for one full sheet of the background paper on the far right card (I kept the label but can’t locate it in my pile of paper right now…will look later.)    I also used a thank you stamp, ink, clear embossing powder, zig-zag scissors, a sewing machine to stitch white thread around the perimeter, glue, tape runner, and my favorite paper rose (a trace & cut template called Fold-It Swirls.)

Occasionally I’ll use Shrink-Its to make greeting card embellishments.  You can also use them to make buttons, jewelry, and other creative plastic items.  They’re about $3-$4 for a pack of 6 sheets, which isn’t too much for how many items you can make.

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I’ve had a happy nostalgic time looking at my craft photo archives.  I remember all the fun projects & gifts I’ve made. I’m embarrassed to see items I proudly gave away as well!  It’s my artistic journey, and I’ve grown a lot over the years.

One of my favorite crafty things to do when I first graduated college was make greeting cards.  My budget was $0 for craft supplies, so I had to get innovative.  I used pressed leaves, construction paper, markers, a kids watercolor set, and sometimes one of the two rubber stamps I owned.  I learned everything I could from library books, but made do with do with what I had instead of buying the actual supplies.  Sometimes I felt like I’d never advance in my skills without all the “right” supplies, but in all actuality I was learning resourcefulness and still making progress in my creativity.

So, just for fun, here are some cards I made 7 years ago.

While my paper crafting supplies were strewn over the dining room table, I thought I’d make another greeting card.  I love the small canvas size of a card…it feels manageable and non-intimidating.  My inspiration today was the scrapbook paper you see on the left in the picture (by Basic Grey).  For the card, I drew the botanical images on cardstock scraps, cut them out, and glued them on a blank greeting card.

For this card I raided my scrap paper stash, grabbed my circle & flower punches, and sat at the sewing machine.  I cut a background paper for the size of my card and sewed the punches in lines across the paper.  To do this, I laid 3 punches on the paper at a time, sewed them in place and repeated to finish each row.  You could glue the papers first if you want them to stay perfectly in place as you sew.  When finished sewing, I trimmed the edges with scissors, then glued the paper to the blank greeting card.

paper & punches for card

I got inspiration for this card from the paper garland project at Design Sponge (written by guest blogger Lauren Normandin).   She makes paper garland on the sewing machine and uses it as a ribbon to decorate gift boxes.

I am lucky that I have daughters because there is always something cute to make for little girls. But Colleen only has a son, and my great friend Ellie has two sons, and I always want to make them cute things, too. I ended up making these cards for Ellie to use for her boys. It’s a set of six blank cards embellished with wall paper samples in a burlap looking print and cut outs from a 1960s copy of the Bear Cub Scouts Handbook.

I figured she can save these to give to her boys as birthday cards, or to send to relatives as “thank you”s from the boys. They would also make cute invitations to an outdoor birthday party or cook out. Hopefully I can get these in the mail to her in the next few days.