Tag : greeting card

63 posts

Snow, snow, snow

What a wild ride at the beginning and end of my winter break. We’ve had snow storms that bookended the time off.

Winter break started two hours early with an early release due to weather. Now we are having our second snow day in a row! That just doesn’t happen!! Can’t say I’m sad about two full weeks off.

Leading up to break we did a couple fun things at school such as winter week theme days, treats and even pancake breakfast cooked by our administrators.

We each got a mug to fill with treats. I decided to add a my signature flower as well as my name to my mug.

Our special education team had a week long secret Santa exchange…this was day 1 for me.

I also made a bunch of Gnome ornaments for work friends. I’ll do a separate post on how I made those.

Christmas is a favorite time for Marvin. He loves a good box.

And bows!! Bows are his favorite. We actually save them so he can have some to play with all year long.

Mini-me got him this very special bow. He LOVES it!

The whole family was off work between Christmas and New Years. The company Mr. G works for generally closes that week and J took the week off so he could move. Yep you heard me…he moved out. He is living in a house in the neighboring town with one of his buddies from high school. Of course with the crazy horrible weather yesterday, we went and picked him up from work and brought him here for the night. None of the roads were plowed and his little sedan would have never made it. Thank goodness for four wheel drive.

New Years Eve we went for brunch at Hell’s Kitchen and enjoyed some great live music.

And a massive Bloody Mary! I couldn’t eat more than a couple bites of my meal after that. Lucky for me, I had a good leftover lunch the next day! 

I’ve been doing a bit a creating as well such as this card from scraps laying around my desk. There are a few journal pages as well but that will be a different post.

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T Tuesday: on my workspace edition

Two weeks in a row…can you believe it?!?! I really shouldn’t be that excited about that accomplishment.

I thought I’d jump in right away and show my crazy bad embroidery skill on my quilt label. Let me preface by saying this was completely freehand. I didn’t even draw with a pencil…just winged it…and frankly, it shows.

I decided to embroider directly on the backing piece so it was imperative that I did it before the putting the “quilt sandwich” together and quilting. Every time I get the backing, batting and quilt top out to square up on the floor and baste, my least helpful resident has to come be a pest. Needless to say I have not gotten it put together yet. Good thing I love that cat because he’s kind of a jerk sometimes.

My secondary workspace is beginning to be more cluttered, I need to work on that. You can see a small stack of fabrics that have been cut 2 x 3.5 inches. I’m still thinking that is too small to want to deal with. Time will tell. I have seen a couple really cute scrappy patterns using that size pieces. Maybe it’s just the cutting that is driving me crazy. So small…such a pain but I think it definitely could be worth the effort in the end.

Using my tea set pincushion as my drink reference for the day.

You may also notice another stack of cards…

I am still plugging away at my paper scraps as well. I did sort through and toss some junk though. I really thought I’d have made a bigger dent in it by now. I guess the takeaway there is I have a lot of stuff.

This week has us in a polar vortex. The week is packed with nose hair freezing, the air hurts my face, ice on the wall, tell me again why I live here kind of weather. The following week should be better. I’m looking forward to going snowshoeing in PE with the kids when they return to in-person learning. I’m probably more excited than they are. I love snowshoeing! So yeah…I guess I know why I live here…I love the seasons…all of them!

T stands for Tuesday
What are you doing today?

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Card making frenzy

In my ongoing effort to get rid of things, I decided to challenge myself to use up scraps to create a bunch of greeting cards. Most of these, if not all, will be donated to Cards for Kindness.

I sent in a couple dozen cards a while back but recently saw they have a need for some specific categories. With that in mind, I set my creations in that direction.

I still have a couple pounds of scraps…it’s a serious problem. I’ll keep plugging away at them. I’m sure some scraps will make their way into some journal pages and master boards as well.

Until next time…stay safe and go create something!

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Building a card stash

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been sending more cards. This, in turn, depletes my stash. Over the past week, I’ve been having fun creating some new designs using some scraps as well as previously created card bases.

I have an index card box full of precut layering pieces for cards. This comes in handy for quick card making. I also have a wooden cigar box filled with mini collages for cards or journal pages. Doing some of the mindless prep work ahead of time leaves more time for the creative process and doesn’t interrupt the flow of ideas.

I am also starting to pre-make some sentiment pieces. I grabbed my tag and mason jar punches to start. The mason jar is so darn cute. The punch itself is a bit finicky. It jams almost every single time. UGH!!!!

I am willing to put up with it though because…look how cute this is!!!! After I stamped the pale seafoam green I realized that it was beginning to look like an old-fashioned blue mason. I used a cosmetic sponge to shade in two colors of blue dye-based ink. Then rubbed the top of the jar on a gray pigment ink pad to act as the zinc lid.

I used foam tape to lift it off the page so I could add some sticker flowers to the jar. So fun!

I can 100% guarantee that you’ll be seeing more cards and postcards. They are really quite addictive to create.

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Butterflies everywhere

I’ve been sending so many more cards and little care packages since the stay-at-home order began. I had to order more stamps and really needed to make some new cards to replenish my stash.

These are my favorite type of cards. Little bits of scraps, snippets from magazines and whatever else finds its way into my scrap bin.

In 2015, I wrote an article for Sew Somerset describing my process for mini-collages such as these. I now see them all over YouTube in the junk journal community. They call them clusters.

Without even realizing it, most of my recent creations featured butterflies.

collage postcard collection

Even most of these collage postcards I made for my MIL.

One even found its way onto one of the tags I made from the off cuts of the postcards.

Maybe I just have mom on my mind. She was nuts about butterflies. They always make me think of her.

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T Tuesday: card crazy edition

Another week that has flown by. Not sure how it happens that I don’t even touch my blog for a week at a time. That being said, I have been working on creative pursuits whenever possible. Well that’s not exactly accurate…I did waste a bunch of time one day on YouTube watching other people exploring the great outdoors when we were cooped up inside. somewhat organized space

Getting organized has been a priority for me over the last few months. Trust me…I’m just scratching the surface. I’m sort of an organized chaos type of person. I want to change that so I’m working in baby steps.

scrap bin

I’ve gathered my paper scraps into this bin to make them more usable and visible.

scrap bin

But along with getting organized I trip myself up… I hate waste. Throwing stuff out really bothers me which is why I always seem to have a mountain of scraps.

creative space

With that in mind, I’m continuing my efforts to use scraps in creative ways. Mini-collages for cards and journal pages mostly.

organized sentiment stamps

Now that I have my sentiment stamps all in one spot, I have an easier time finding the words I want to use.

dark 30 coffee

I wasn’t sure I was going to get this posted when I started to write, find and edit photos etc yesterday. But I guess my brain had other ideas. I woke super early this morning soI was able to sit and finish my post with my first cup of coffee before getting ready for work.

 

T stands for Tuesday

What are you doing today?

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T Tuesday: Christmas wrap(up) edition

Hello and welcome to another edition of T stands for Tuesday! You may have noticed that I’ve been gone a while. I talked about my back saga in the previous post so we are moving on to something more festive and fun!

Since we were hosting Christmas (because I love it!) I had to lean on the rest of the family to do all of the heavy and not so heavy lifting.

Even the simple things like getting a cake in and out of the oven.

The past few years I’ve made a rum cake for Christmas but this time I went for a Fireball Whiskey cake. It was so good. I forgot to take a photo of it with the icing…likely because it wasn’t very pretty.

We had overnight guests on Christmas eve…Mini-me gave up her bed and slept on the couch. Of course, this meant that she was up even earlier than she usually is. She is my early bird kid.

It was a long wait…even with me making all kinds of noise in the kitchen.

This was my favorite present under the tree…it’s hard to wrap arrows. Mini-me needed a new set for archery season which is just days away.

Marvin had to be a part of the chaos…bows are his favorite.

I suppose the whiskey cake could have been my “beverage” for T stands for Tuesday but instead, I thought I’d share the tiniest cocktail I’ve ever seen. My BIL brought this over. It wasn’t anything I cared for but the can sure was cute.

I’ve been working on purging my rubber stamps. I was so frustrated digging through them trying desperately to find a Happy Anniversary stamp since I had promised my MIL that I’d make her some cards. I had a bunch of bases completed they just needed a sentiment and the also requested “shiny butterflies”. Thankfully I have a very crafty neighbor who is willing to share. Thanks, KW!

The “shiny butterflies” have the big wow factor but are pretty easy to make. I stamped each butterfly on white card stock with black Staz-on ink. I used watercolor paint to colorize each. After completely dry, I fussy cut each and placed on a non-stick surface. I coated each one with Diamond glaze. As they dry a slight curl happens quite naturally giving them an even more “lifelike” appearance.

I have now looked through every single one of my stamps and alas…I never even had a Happy Anniversary stamp. ugh. Well, now I do…I bought a set of sentiments at Michaels. I’m sure you’ll be seeing some cards in the near future with these words.

Today is Mini-me’s 17th birthday. I can hardly believe it. 

I was planning to go out and get her favorite meal… Chipotle…but we are getting a snowstorm. It remains to be seen if we venture out or not.

Speaking of crazy storms and slippery conditions….have you seen this video?

The video was taken a few miles from our house. Mini-me had friends on that bus heading to a girls’ hockey tournament.

T stands for Tuesday
What are you doing today?

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