Christmas Cardinal

I have had this image for years, but never used it before. The spellbinders' circle die was the perfect frame for it!

Birthday in Blue

This technique is called "Serigraph." It's been awhile since I have done it ... I made a couple of extra panels that I took forever to make into cards! But I believe I embossed the image in white, sponged several shades of blue ink over it all, then stamped the image with blue, then embossed the text with black.

A special older lady is having a surprise birthday planned by her family, so this will go to her!

Have a lovely day!

In a hurry graduation card

If you are a cardmaker, and don't take pictures of your cards, I highly recommend you start doing so. I love the ideas I get from stamping blogs and magazines, but sometimes, as when I created this card, when I am in a tearing hurry, it's great to have a card that I can duplicate precisely ... I know I have the stamps and almost certainly still have some of the matching cardstock! (And even in a hurry, I can't bring myself to dulplicate someone else's card anyway!) This was a card design I had made when I first started doing cards, and remade, with the only change being the cuttlebug die cut I used for the cap. Guy cards always seem to be harder to design, so I'm so glad I had photographed this!

More Birthday

This was such a cute, simple design to make!

Sailor Birthday

I realized Friday evening that if I wanted to make sure my sailor received his birthday package on time, we needed to mail it out Saturday morning. I'm in a flurry of cardmaking for the craftstore ... finally closing my website means I need to redo all the labels on the backs of my cards. So, I need to get the cards back that are there now, and replace them with "current label" cards. So ... I knew I needed some help! I did a search on Splitcoast stampers, and found this card there. While I have intended occasionally to case a card, usually I end up designing something altogether different. But this card was so perfect, I changed very little at all.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope you have a great day tomorrow!

Birthday card

As I was creating the card I posted yesterday, I really liked how the flower looked on the patterned paper. I don't usually stamp an image onto a strong pattern like this, but it looked great, so while I didn't want to cover it up with the text, it worked well for a simple greeting.

Fall Birthday cards

It seemed appropriate to post birthday cards today: it was my daughter's birthday Wednesday, and it's mine today. In celebration, we're cleaning the house - we are feeding a group of college students after church tomorrow!

Moving along ... I have had so much fun with my Cuttlebug leaf dies! I also really love wood ... whether the look comes from stamping, wallpaper, or this beautifully embossed wood cardstock.

The multi-colored leaves came from a cardstock panel on which I had done the polished stone technique.

Romanos 13:15

In English, this reads "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him." Romans 13:15

The embossing powder is a line called "Antiquities," no longer available, but it has a textured look like Tim Holtz Distress powders.

another Spanish birthday card

I often cut extra pieces when making a card, thinking I may create duplicates, or mess one up in the middle of a card and need to have another on hand. I had done so with the papers in this card. With the time press I'm under, I've really tried to make card that were essentially already begun. :-)

Feliz cumpleaños

Another Spanish card!

Gracias in Green

I am going to be selling cards at Houghton College, and they are very interested in foreign language cards. Spanish is the easiest for me, with a husband approaching fluency, and a good number of Spanish stamps. This card will look familiar to those of you who follow my blog regularly; the images were left over from a few cards I made a couple of months ago. A good thing: I have very little time to make cards in all the requested languages: Spanish, Swahili, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese

Scrapling in blue

I was introduced to this mini card idea a couple of months ago. As I save all my reasonably sized scraps and strips of cardstock and paper, it's a great idea for me. I made this for someone to whom I was returning an item I had really needed. It wasn't something a thank you card was necessary for, it was just a way to make her know I appreciate her. :-)

black and mint

It's interesting the different things that inspire people in creating. My daughter had a combination of black and mint green that had sent me into my craft room to make a card with those colors. I didn't have the exact shade of green that I wanted, but I liked this shade ... especially as I had bought a package of the cardstock years ago but only used it once. :-) I originally really liked just the black background, it seemed more sophisticated or something, I'm not sure what word I really want. Anyway, that's how I photographed it, though I hadn't yet glued it to a card. It sat on my counter until last night, when I finally decided to do that last step. Before I attached it, I looked at it one last time against a green background, and decided I prefered it that way after all. :-)

Thank you #2

This is the second thank you card I made with scraps. It feels so good every time I take something out of that drawer instead of adding to it!

I purchased a set of thank yous a while ago, and did not realize until using them that there are no credits printed on them. So, I can't give credit.

Thank you #1

While digging through my pile of stamped items to make the spanish card, I had pulled out a few other bright pieces, and made a couple more cards. I never seem to have enough thank you cards, so that was my motivation. I put a piece of vellum over the plaid background to mute the pattern a little.

Thank you card

I decided to post both the photo and the scan of this card, because the card is somewhere between the two. :-) The scan does a much better job showing the true colors and textures of the cardstock layers, including the cuttled paisley pattern, but the photo better shows the vividness of the card. I made a number of backgrounds on dark blue and black with opalite inks several months ago, but only made one card from them. I hope to use several more of these backgrounds over the next few days.

Last note card

This is the third notecard design I came up with. I never got completely satisfied ... I used Ranger Big and Juicy pads, and finding the right color was actually complicated ... Isome of the pads have had the colors run too much together, and so the original blend was lost. I also thought the colors were too dark for the "thank you" to show up well; I solved that problem by taking a scrap of paper the approximate size of the text, and rubbing it lightly onto the inked stamp. This took away some of the color, so I had a patch where the image was lighter, and stamped over that.

Simple cards: birthday

I am in the process of making some simple, no-layer thank you cards. Just as I was about to add the "thank you" to the card, I remembered that one of my husband's nieces has a birthday next week, and last I heard, her favorite color is orange. I switched to a birthday greeting and hurrah, the card might actually arrive early ... nearly a first, lol!

Birthday card

Hmmm...I scan all birthday cards and save them to a friends and family file. I don't want to use the same stamps twice in a row for the same person, or do a similar design, etc. Before making my husband's card, I went through my files ... and this is the last card I have on file ... from 2006! Well, at least it told me not to do a palm tree again! :-)