Forgot one!

One last card - this is the one that I made for my niece!

Getting caught up

I have been saving up all the pictures, but I think it's safe that the recipients will be too busy before tomorrow to look at the blog and see their cards. These are my cards for my family.

Busy day today

I find that I make all my Grandmother's cards with "A Child's Year". I like the simple, nostalgic images, and I think they are probably easy for my grandmother to see. I joined a scrapbooking/card making group a few months ago, but tonight is the first crop I am going to be able to make. Not being sure what the protocol is, I will be going empty handed. I would like to learn techniques from more experienced crafters. On this card, I think something is missing from the yellow circle, whether it was inking the edges, or chalking it. So much to learn.

Easter Chickie

I think I am going to have to bite the bullet and stop taking pictures of my cards with my phone. While it easier just to e-mail them to myself than to hook up my camera to the phone, I don't think the pictures present the cards at their best. Anyway, just a cute little card for my niece for Easter.

Start of the holiday season

This is the Easter card that I made for my nephew (one down, how many to go??). I had to make the face twice...I don't have a proper blender pen, I tried it with a foam pencil I have, but the cheeks and the mouth came out too red and blotchy....looked like he had scarlet fever! I think I need to get new markers....I think the writing is too thin for the card. But it was a fun card to make.

Too punny...

I love it when a plan comes together.... I made this card for my brother in law and his wife. Like my husband and I, they are also an Interfaith marriage (Jewish/Christian). But you never know where inspiration will strike... I was watching televison this morning, and the channel had an ad for back-to-back Harry Connick Jr. movies. As my brain likes to play hopscotch, this eventually led me to thinking about the "When Harry Met Sally" soundtrack I own, which led to singing "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off". In the song, there is the lyric "You say Oyster, I say Erster" (btw, who says Erster?). That led me to putting Oy vey and Easter together - Oy-ster. Ha, ha. Things just fell into place after that. A quick search on http://www.cricutsearch.com/ found that there was a clam on "Create a Critter", which I just happen to own. A quick cut of some glitter paper made a pearl to make the clam into an oyster. A few years ago, my parents gave me a big container of 12 x 12 cardstock, but I had never really looked at it until recently, as I wasn't doing any crafting. It's in an accordian file. I've never gone through it to organize it, but the first slot I started to thumb through had the paper, which looked enough like sand to me. A little glitter glue, a few pop-dots, and la voila!

Needing a reason to create....

I bought the "Cars" cartridge because I found it way on sale at Walmart. Didn't know what I was going to do with it, but couldn't pass up the bargain. So that created a need to do something, so I made signs for 2 of my nephews. I didn't want to leave out their little sister, but (and this is completely sexist of me) didn't feel that "cars" was appropriate for an 8 month old girl....I do freely admit that if she was a boy, I probably would have done it no problem. So I used "Dress Up Paper Dolls" to do the one for her....it really looks, well, lacking, compared to the Cars ones. Maybe I'll have to invest in some more of the Disney carts...

The Cars ones were my first foray into layered and detailed cuttings - one frustration was that I couldn't always tell what I was cutting, or where it was supposed to go, exactly. A little more detail would have been helpful, but I think they turned out okay....

I can't believe I made this

I had made a card box for my sister's birthday a few weeks ago, but I didn't have the stamps or ideas for the cards yet. When I saw these stamps, I knew they were for my sister. The colours of the box I had made were all wrong. Then I found a pad that just worked. So I made a new box this weekend, and have been working on the note cards, small cards, and tags to go with it. I am so pleased with how the cards turned out, I can't believe that I made them. What has stopped me from doing a lot of card making in the past was that everything I made looked homemade, not home crafted. I have pushed past that with these, I think. The small cards are embossed in blue. The note cards, the image is in black, but the phrase is embossed in silver ( it says "Fashions fade, style is eternal - Yves St. Laurent"). The tags I thought would look nice in the brown sepia toned ink (called Cocoa), but I like the embellishment accent. I think I might now be addicted to bling. I still need to add ribbon or strings to the gift cards, and do the rest of the note cards, but had to share!

Out of my window

Enough already. Really.

Birthday gifts

Saturday I made this card box for my sister's birthday. I still have to make the cards and tags to go in it, but I got the box done. I also have to add some embellishments to the front, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I think this might be a staple gift now. It's meant to hold some larger note cards, some smaller note cards, and a few gift tags. The directions for it are here http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/stationerybox/.

Cabin fever

My husband travels A LOT for work. He left yesterday, comes home tomorrow (at about 10 pm), but leaves again on Sunday, gone for a week, back just to repack a suitcase, leaves again...Between middle of September and middle of December he was gone for about 10 weeks. I'm currently unemployed, and with no kids, there are what seems like days on end that my only social interaction is with the cats.
Especially with the bad weather, it has not been too condusive to go out. Hence the inspiration for today's offering.

I tried to weld the letters using the Gypsy, but I guess I didn't do it right. I did not want to glue the individual letters, so I decided to use the negative image instead. I'm trying to play with colours (using colours I wouldn't normally put together) and with layers.

Question: What do you use for glue? I'm using white glue, and am having problems with it leaking, and curling the paper. I do have some craft two sided tape, but it wouldnt' work on smaller, more delicate images. Suggestions?