Quick and easy cards

I know it's a VERY long time since I've used this blog... but I've had the misfortune to become chronically ill, and crafting has dropped way down my priority list. When I do craft I'm going with very simple designs that use premade decorations wherever possible to minimise the amount of moving around I have to do. I found these gorgeous flowers in Ross, and they inspired me to make some cards using a vase stamp and a leaf punch.

The first is a get well card for an elderly church member who broke his hip. Paul's eyesight is deteriorating, so I went for bold bright colours to make it easy for him to see the card and to cheer up his hospital room.

I also had the sad occasion to make a sympathy card for my brother-in-law's wife... I used the same tools, but added a filigree cross stamp for a background and used a sympathy prayer. I made it in two colours because I wasn't sure which background would work better, and I put a pre-printed sympathy poem on the inside...

Mooning around yet again

I literally dreamed this card up last night... I almost got up to make it at 3am, but I decided that it would keep till morning. At last, my train border punch gets put to good use. (You could also count this for the camo challenge, because I cut up one of the 'camo'-style sheets to get the dark moonlit green...)

More brown cards

I know it's not Autumn yet, but I love the browny vintage colours, even if I never make fussy lacy cards!

Martha Stewart border punch $4 at Ross! Butterfly is a metal charm, and sentiments are from a printed sheet.

Trying out my texture plates. Top card uses a diecut.

And just so you know that I don't ALWAYS make brown cards here's a couple of oddments with my new border punch.

I made some cards this week

My shoulder is finally better for real and I've been able to start making cards again. I designed a simple MOM card for the kids to make at the library and I spread the lettering out on the sheet so that I could use the negative space for myself. I've got another 18 in various colours still waiting to be used! If you're wondering about the butterfly, it's a lovely metallic sticker. I finangled some scrap cardstock into little hinges for the wings, and then I rubbed cornstarch on the back so that the sticker wouldn't stick to the card in the mailing box. The other cards are playing with simple punched shapes and scrap cardstock.

A Flower-pot card

I CASEd this card from a lady on the Christian PaperCrafts board... and it turns out that she got the idea from Split Coast Stampers and there's a tutorial right there! I didn't use the tutorial, I figured out how to make it from her photo, but the basic design of mine came out pretty much the same as the original except I glued the sides of my flowerpot pocket, and I left the back of the pot sticking up to give the tag and flowers more support, because they seemed a bit heavy. You can see the tutorial HERE. I can't link to Anita's version because the board is members-only so nobody can see it, but hers looks pretty much the same as mine only with a tag on it.

I cut the flowerpot by hand. Fold a sheet of cardstock lengthways instead of the way you fold a regular card, and then cut it in half. Fold the top inch or so down to make the flap, and use a border punch on the top edge. Unfold it again, and trim a very small edge to make the flowerpot pot-shaped. Slide a card-front into the card and measure the edges, then trim it off so that it will fit into the pocket.

Wrap a ribbon around the flap and tie it off in a bow or a knot. Use a gluedot in the center of the flap so that the ribbon can't slide off the card. If you want to add a charm or a punched tag, make sure that you put it on BEFORE you knot the ribbon! Glue the top edges of the pocket to hold the card together.
Alternatively, wrap the ribbon around the entire card and tie it off. People will 'open' the card by sliding the ribbon off.

Punch or cut your flowers and leaves and glue them so that they fit into the pot without the backing card showing through. (Put glue on the bottom half of the top flower/s, and the top half of the bottom ones! Leave the other half unglued so that the bottoms of the flowers hang over the edge of the pot like a real plant.)

I cut my flowers with the Cricut and the 'Make The Cut' software - the flowers came from their free online gallery... but you could use any large hand punch, or any flower shape. The Don Juan cartridge that came with my Cricut has a flower that would work just as well. They're cut from plain cream cardstock and chalked for a more delicate colouring than ink or markers...

Cards I made this week

I usually make two or three cards at a time using the same basic materials... that way I can play with my idea and not waste cardstock/paper. Here's some I made this week.

Olive green pre-folded cards, heart corner punch, Martha Stewart leafy border punch. Punch each corner of a 2-inch square and fold them in to make a medallion.

Pink embossing done with my Fiskars Scrapboss. The pink is not this lurid btw - the scanner made it much brighter! Red was scraps of Christmas paper.

The idea for these cards came from the Stars and Stripes blog, but I adapted it to my own use with ribbon.Sentiments are stickers and so is the flag (it's metallic silver...)

Scrap bookmarks

When you cut a sheet of 8-1/2 wide cardstock down to six inches wide so it will fit in the Cricut, you're left with a two-and-a-half inch wide strip... after using the Cricut for awhile, you've got a LOT of them! lol I'm making some of them into bookmarkers for the Friends of Gilda. They're very quick and easy to make - you just find some scraps that look nice together and add a few stickers or vertical stamps, and sandwich some pretty ribbon in between them. No lumpy embellishments because they're made to go in a book and they need to be flat! If you're wondering what size they are, they're 7 to 7-1/2 inches long and 2-2/12 inches wide depending on the scraps. The one with punched edges are a little smaller because the border punches trim 1/8 inch off the paper.

Pansy cards

These pansies are based on a tutorial that was posted to the Stars and Stamps blog this week. They're actually really easy to make - you need five punched petals and you trim two of them in half to make the smaller petals. The tutorial used a large butterfly punch and I don't have one, but I figured out how to get a similar result using a small seashell punch. My flowers are a lot smaller and fiddlier than hers (because of the size) but I love how they came out. I guess mine are violas. One nice thing about flowers - no two of them are ever exactly the same, so it adds to the verisimilitude to use different colours and slightly different petal shapes. :P You can see the tutorial here.

365 Cards Days 53-54

Scroll down for a one-week catch-up entry. Another one is coming because I've got another whole week to catch up! But now here's the last few days' cards.

Day 53 - Front, Back and everything inbetween
I don't usually decorate the inside of my cards, so I had to think hard about this one! I kept it simple and used a recurring jigsaw piece theme on the pages....

Day 54 - Fancy Folds

The example for this was a square card... but I cut the design down to size and used a regular-sized card to make a mini-version. I used a nice printed card for the front and cut a panel off the front, and I folded a 4x6 cardstock mat in half to make the inside panel (I folded it backwards so I'd have the white front to decorate and you can see the printing when you open the card, but it's still light enough to write on with a black pen.  I echoed the printed flowers with a 3D flower to hold the front panel closed.

Catching up on 365 Cards

I went back and did the two days I missed out on...

Day 24 - 'Terrific Ten'. Use at least ten different patterned papers on your card. I used a large heart cut out of a catalog, inked a small border, and used ten different scraps of red paper to punch out hearts for a border. I decided it needed a little more, so I went back and glued a tiny pearl bead in between each heart.

Day 25 - Do It Yourself - make your own glittered brad or pearl. Okay, I cheated and used my failed card from yesterday's challenge for this. I'd made a fake bow with a brad in the center and I added glitter embossing powder to it (some got onto the bow too...)

365 Cards Day 27 - I'm touched

This one was a lot harder than it sounds! Make a card using at least eight different elements, and each element has to be touching at least two others. My first thought was a bunch of flowers... I made this card and then I realised that while the bottom half of the card fit the requirements perfectly, the sentiment at the top wasn't touching anything! So I added some flowers... and then I had to add some leaves to meet the 'three' requirement because I put the flowers in the wrong place to fit. After that it was such a busy card that while it fit the challenge I decided to cut my losses (and the card) and to split it in twain.

I cut the decorated part off the card and placed it on its own base with a fake bow. And I attached some pretty paper to the top part to make it into a useable card too.

And then I made a fresh card for the challenge...

365 Cards Day 22/23

Yesterday's challenge was to make a card inspired by Alice in Wonderland. I've actively avoided any version of it other than the Disney cartoon of my childhood, so I have no clue about the new movie and no interest either. I found some really sweet Alice in Wonderland clipart online at Disneyclips.com and I made an abortive effort to paper-piece a sleeping Alice... alas it was a total disaster and I had to trash it.  My cutting skills just weren't up to the job of aligning the edges and Alice came out looking like a giant mutant space alien! (no I didn't scan/photograph my disaster... use your imagination! But you'd be better off just using the clip on the left. I still think it would make a lovely card - I'm just not clever enough to pull it off, and I'm out of coloured ink for the printer...)

Time for something simpler... I had some cute teacup stickers a friend gave me - there was a tea party in Alice in Wonderland. How about a simple girly tea-party card? The sticker was too elaborate to be a small part of another card, but not quite large enough to carry the design by itself, so I made a punched border and stamped a little edge.   The white layer is on the front of the card and the pink is the back. It needed a little more 'bling' so I used some pink plastic jewels on the border and I'm very happy with it.

Today's challenge was more up my alley - make a card using a stencil. I don't use them often but I've got  ton of stencils!  I dragged out a birthday stencil and made myself a card. I added a sentiment from my stamped image box... and it needed a little something extra. I dug around in my embellishment box and found a tassle I made for a Christmas card and didn't use, and I hung it off a star brad.

A 365 Cards Weekend

I'm quite proud of myself - I devoted most of my time this weekend to the Operation Write Home Bloghop, and I still managed to get my 365 cards done as well. I've made every card so far, and for the last two weeks I've been ON TIME!

Day 21 was to make a 'Noisy Card'... I don't have any little bells handy so the easiest way to do this one was to make a shaker box. I'm not very good at them and I really don't like the way this card came out - I wanted the nice metallic sparkly sequins to stand out so I made the background fairly dark and plain... it looks a bit better IRL because you can see the shine. But the sparklies in the shaker keep glueing themselves to the sides of the box instead of shaking around, and it's definitely not one of my greatest successes.

Day 22 is Super Sketchy Sunday. I love flowers, so this week's sketch was a natural for me, and I tried to make my card as close to the design as I could. I had a nice yellow card background recycled from a greeting card, and I made nice big punchy flowers to go on it. It took forever to make the 'sideways' flower! I've never done one before so I was making it up as I went along. I all the petals out and glued them into shape so it would look like the flower was partway open.

The other tricky part of this card was the ribbon. I wanted to use that pretty woven ribbon and to make a knot or bow in it, but the ribbon is one-sided and it just looked silly! I fiddled around a bit and made a decoration that showed the top of the ribbon on both sides and glued it onto the card. I was going to put a small sentiment up at the top of the card but I decided that it really didn't need it. A few poppy leaves were enough, and I drew the flower stems in with a marker.

More Scraplifted cards from the OWH Bloghop

If you're looking for my actual bloghop entry, please keep going down the page. I've made a few entries of scraplifted cards this afternoon, inspired by cards others have posted. I loved the elegant simplicity of this design by Stephanie... alas I didn't have the right stamps to duplicate it, so my version is more an 'inspired by' than a scraplift.

I stamped the treetrunk with the side of my acrylic block... it didn't pick the ink up evenly but I kind of like the effect. I stamped the leaves with an old leaf stamp... the big blocky 'tree' needed nice big flowers to set it off so I used two different sized flower punches with shimmery pink paper and finished the flowers with gold brads.

The only part of this second card that was stamped is the tree-trunk. I used a diamond border and just kept stamping until I had something vaguely tree-shaped. I used punched leaves and to make the flowers more three-dimensional I folded up the petals before I glued them down, and I put little pink sparklies in the center.

Scraplifted cards

I'm getting lots of inspiration from the Operation Write Home Spring bloghop! Here's a card I've scraplifted already... I just loved Kate's circle-punch flower and delicate floral background.

I've been looking for ways to use my circle punch, so it was just right for me to try. Only I liked the look of the flower with six petals rather than five, and I used my 'tree' punch to make the greenery. And lastly, I used a super-giant rhinestone for the center of the flower...it's made the card come out rather dark and shadowy on the scan, but it's really a nice cheery orange. Orange isn't a colour I use often... but I'm very happy with this card.

More cards coming shortly! I've got to run to the store now...

Here's another scraplift for you. This one was created by Debi Rice, for her blog on cardmaking on a budget. It appealed to me as a great way to use up teensy tiny scraps of brightly coloured paper... plus I had some cute vase/planter punchies in my stash from a RAK years ago! I think Debi's card is nicer than my copy - take a look at it and see what you think!

(No, I didn't use my cropodile to punch the flowers... but I could have! lol If somebody wanted an idea for my challenge, this would work beautifully.)

Tomorrow is the Operation Write Home Spring Bloghop!

 

http://operationwritehome.org/bloghop

Don't forget to join us and start hopping... 80+ blogs have signed up and there are lots of challenges, inspirations, and blog candy waiting to be given away over the weekend! So come along and hop along...

And now to get you in the mood...
Today's challenge on 365 cards was to make a card inspired by Cotton. A lot of people are doing pure white formal wedding cards for this challenge... but when I think of cotton the first thing that springs to mind is puffy white cotton wool springtime clouds... and the next is Peter Cotton-tail himself. So I made two nice springy cards to reflect this! The first uses a pre-printed cardbase, a hand-drawn sentimet, and my 'love bunny' stamp from Inkadinkadoo with a cotton wool tail. The second is paper-pieced using hand-torn and punched papers (the clouds are some handmade paper a friend gave me...) and a little Stampin' up stamp to complete the card. 

Have a nice springy day everyone, and I hope we'll see you hopping tomorrow!

Stars and Stamps Technique Challenge Paper-piecing

This week's Wednesday challenge was to paper-piece a stamped image... it's not something I've ever done before, but I thought this little turtle would look really cute in green. I stamped two different greens and made mirror-image cards. It was  lot less fiddly than I thought it might be because you don't have to cut out ALL the tiny pieces, just the ones you want to use.

Alas I can't upload the pictures just yet - DH is in the middle of updating my computer and I don't have any image-manipulation software installed yet! (I like Irfanview for simple image-cropping and resizing, and it's FREE!) So I'll post this entry as a place-holder and add the photos asap.

And here are my scans! I mounted the first turtle on one of my scrap strip backgrounds... the second was assembled straight on the page, inked up a bit, and it needed something more so I added punchy bushes.

365 Cards Day 10 and 11

Yesterday's 'Wacky Colours' challenge was such a doozie that I had to wait to see how everyone else tackled it before I tried it myself. Orange, blue and purple is NOT a colour combination that it would ever occur to me to use together! I found a small piece of floral cardstock in those colours and added some vivid primaries. It had a dragon punched out of one side so that decided the main decoration. I stuck a piece of vivid orange behind the opening for my dragon. The card needed a little 'bling' to help seperate the layers, so I added some tiny scrap dots (from the inside of foil stickers) and I gave the dragon golden claws. It was fiddly getting those tiny little pieces into place, but I think they bring it to life... btw those two dark scalloped layers that look almost identical are actually purple and deep blue.

Today's challenge was much simpler - make a landscape/scenic card using patterned paper as the background. I love doing collages but I usually use cardstock, so using patterned paper instead took a little digging around... I'm very happy with how it came out.

365 Cards Day 6 - Stampin' Saturday

I couldn't use my craftroom on the weekend because DH was working on my computer... so I made some cards this morning instead. Here are the ones I was inspired to make by Saturday's challenge - bi-coloured stamps. (use more than one colour ink on the same stamp). I used my Heidi Grace birthday set, brilliant yellow, and Memento Ivy Green... Apologies for the lousy scans - white cards on a white scanner don't play nicely!

Lastly, here's a more elaborate card I ended up with based on the challenge - I had to stamp a LOT of daisies to get them to come out right and I messed a few of them up... so then I had to find a way to recycle the card into something useable. Much stamping later, I ended up with this card. I'm very happy with the way it came out in the end, but I won't be doing it again because those flowers are fiddly!