Monogrammed notelets and a quick tutorial

One of the ladies at church wanted me to make her a set of monogrammed notelets, so I took the challenge on with my Cricut. I showed her a few samples last week and she chose the background and floral border punch, and asked me to put a relatively simple monogram in the center.

I wanted to do a classic oval monogram with her last initial in the middle and larger, but I couldn't make it work out the way I wanted it to, so I switched to the more modern rectangular format. But that was too plain, so I made a floral accent for the frame to spiff it up a bit. If she likes these, I have another dozen card bases prepped and waiting for their monogram. The hardest part of the challenge was finding an appropriate alphabet for the lettering. I wanted it to be curly and to SEEM ornate, but if the lines are too delicate or intricate the Cricut won't cut it without tearing the paper. The vine on the frame is really as fine as the Cricut can go. But I was very happy with it in the end, and I hope that Judy is too!

 

PS. Want to make the simple folder? It's dead easy - just take a regular sheet of cardstock and a scoring tool (I used a bone folder and a metal ruler.) Score the cardstock about two inches from the bottom, then score vertically in the center - but don't forget to do TWO lines so that your little folder will have a spine. Fold the bottom up and fasten the two ends of the flap into a pocket (I just used green staples), and use a hole punch to make small holes further up the cardstock on either side of the spine and on the outside of the card. 

Thread a ribbon through the holes and it will serve to hold the contents in place and to fasten the folder closed at the same time. This folder will hold a dozen flat cards and envelopes if you use an 8-1/2x11 base. If you want make your folder thicker, you'll need to use a larger sheet of cardstock and trim it down to the height you need.

Let's get Hopping!

Hi everyone! It's Bloghop time! I hope you're ready for a busy day... I've seen some of the entries already and they're wonderful! If you've been following along with the hop you should have come here from Nancy's blog... if you didn't, you can find the start of the hop on the Stars and Stamps blog: http://www.owhstarsandstamps.org - there's a full list of hopping blogs there in case you get lost. As you probably know, Operation Write Home collects handmade greeting cards and notes of encouragement to send to the folks who are serving in the military overseas. I love making cards and sending them in whenever I can - anywhere from 30-250 cards in a batch depending on how much time I've had to make them lately. Did you know that you can squeeze a full 100 A2 cards into a flat-rate priority envelope if you pack them into stacks of 25 and wrap a sheet of plain paper around each pile? And it's only five bucks to mail the envelope? That's a bargain in anyone's book! But even if you can only send in one or two cards, it will make a difference to somebody's life, and that makes it well worth it. The only hard-and-fast rule is no glitter - it's a safety hazard to the troops because it could shimmer in a pair of night-vision goggles! If you want to use store-bought glittered items on your card, give them a good hard rub with your fingers first - some glittered papers could go through a hurricane without flaking, but others are totally unsuitable. If even one speck of glitter comes off on your hands, save that item for your own stash and use something else instead. Glitter that's embedded in acrylic or 100% sealed into plastic is perfectly safe, but even one particle of loose and flaky glimmer is too much for safety.

Now on to my entry-proper...

I was scratching my head about what technique to share with you today... and I decided to share my new toy - my cropodile. I'm sure everyone knows what a cropodile does - it punches holes and mounts eyelets with the squeeze of a lever so you don't have to bang and thump and disturb the neighbours when you're making cards at midnight... they've been on the market for the best part of a decade, but I preferred brads, which don't need any kind of special tools to set. Then I saw a pink cropodile on sale and thought 'what the heck'... I was immediately impressed, not just by how easy it was to set an eyelet into my card, but by how much else I could think of to do with it.

The cropodile has not one sized hole punch incorporated into it but three.  The eyelet-mounting end has a little poky prong to hold the eyelet in place, and if you put a sheet of paper in there, it'll make an extra-small hole for you. If the paper doesn't pierce all the way through, poke it to the back with a needle...
The only snag with the hand-held cropodile is the depth of the tool is very limited - you can only poke holes near the edges of your card and not in the center or along the inside fold. Which is why they also made a larger table-top version with a full 12-inch reach (one of these days I'll have to get one of them!)

So what to do with all of these holes? Here are just a few ideas for you...

• if you'd like to put a bow on your card, you can poke two holes close together on the card and thread the ribbon through...
• turn a punchie or a handcut cardstock shape into a homemade 'button' in moments (to make it look really flash, coat the finished button in UTEE and give it a raised, shiny finish.)
• combine one or more of the hole sizes with other small decorative punches to make a border.
• Make a corner decoration on your card with embroidery thread or wool - punch small holes and thread the yarn through. You could also make a cross-stitch border, or other threaded decoration on a strip of cardstock.
• A row of holes can become a laced decoration. Or else punch holes at either end of the card and thread the ribbon through instead of wrapping it right around the card or leaving loose ends. 
• Punch a border just with holes! I used all the different-sized holes on the threaded strip so you could get an idea of how they'd work...

Here's a card I made using my cropodile to punch various holes... I used the largest hole for the threaded ribbon, the middle-sized hole for the border, and the smallest hole to make button-holes in my cardstock buttons.
And now for your challenge - make a card or other paper item using your cropodile for something other than just setting eyelets! If you don't have a cropodile, use whatever size small round hole punch you do have. I'm not going to be using a ruler to measure the size of the holes. :P Make one hole, make a dozen... do whatever you like. Leave a link to your completed card in your comment, and somebody will get a prize!

I hope you'll come back and leave me a note if you attempt this challenge... in the meantime, on to the next blog in the hop - Scrappily Ever After. Lainie has a very moving story to share, and a personal challenge we all can help with.

Petal Cards, Part 2

Okay, I'm back! Since a single circle was too small, I decided to link four of them together to make a square petal card. First I attempted to do it without a template just by eyeballing the sides. It looked okay cut out, but when I folded it up my angles were a tiny bit off so it wasn't square! So I made a second. This time I cut one side of the circle and ruled up a square to line the other three sides up with it... cut them out, fold them and voila. This one is definitely a usable card, and it's large enough to be viable.

Lastly, I decided to try using an oval tag template to make a smaller flower with more petals. Just cutting the tags alone was a disaster.  I didn't even bother to try folding it up because I could tell that it was way too uneven to bother! I might use it for something else one of these days, but as a petal card it's a flop. You really need a defined central shape to line the template up properly. Freehanding just doesn't work!

I was going to give up on the idea but then I remembered I had some stencils... I dug them out and located a small octagon. It was just the right size, so I traced it and away I went. The petals don't quite meet in the center, and it's too small to be a stand-alone card, but I'm really pleased with the effect and I'll use it to embellish another item.

Playing with Petal Cards

Today's challenge on 365 Cards was to make a petal card... that's a card that folds in on itself like a flower, but it can be any shape. It's easy enough to do - print out a template on a sheet of paper and then cut around it and fold it up. But when have I ever done things the easy way? I got out my colluzzle templates to see what I could come up with for myself. They actually sell a colluzzle petal card template but I don't have it - I have a selection of basic shapes and a few extras that a friend gave me.

First I tried my Flower template. The smallest continuous flower on the template made a beautiful petal shape, but it's much too small to be a free-standing card (for scale, the cards are sitting on a sheet of regular printer paper...) So I tried a larger flower, but it didn't fold all the way closed.

Okay, that didn't work... how about using a circle? The simplest circle card is to cut a circle and fold it in thirds to make a triangle-shape. It works just fine... but my circle template is way too small so again the card is miniature.

To be continued! I've got to dash... but I've got lots more cards to upload when I come home.

Happy Pastor Appreciation Day!

If you're a church-goer I hope you made a few moments on the weekend to recognise your pastor/s for the hard work that they do... being a pastor is very hard work! Our church elder asked me what we should give them, and I suggested that I could make some picture frame collages... he thought that was a good idea, so I sat down looking for a suitable poem on the internet. I found one or two that were nice, but I didn't see anything suitable for our worship leader, so in the end I decided that I'd just have to write them myself... that way they could be personalised! Three days later, I had them finished and here they are. Click on each image to see a full-sized version and read the verses. I wrote personalised acrostics for each pastor. They're not
identical, but they have the same general idea...

More One-sheet cards

I had another go at doing some one-sheet cards... and this time I took my time about it and ruled up a guide sheet on a piece of blank cardstock so that it can be reproduced at leisure! Last time I got ten cards from my one sheet - this time I managed fourteen, and there are two tiny strips of paper left over that I didn't find a use for.

Here is my template, hopefully large enough for you to read the measurements. (Click on the image to see a full-sized version.)


And here are my fourteen cards. I kept them very simple and let the paper be the star... they're just embellished enough to finish them off neatly. It was a sheet of 'back to school' paper so I made it into general 'hello' and 'just a note' cards that the Heroes can hopefully use any time.