Birthday Cards

My co-worker's twins will be one year old tomorrow. Here are some cards I made for them. All cards were made with acrylic paint. The animal stamps are $1 foam stamps from Michaels. The circus tent is from a stencil set also from Michaels. The Oh Happy Day is from a Fiskars set.

The ribbon is a $1 roll from Michaels. It's a little retro, and I really need to find more uses for it.

Listening to Christmas music, maybe

So one of my fave radio stations has already started playing Christmas music. KOST 103.5 fm or www.kost1035.com has a live music. If only my Quicktime would work! I don't know what the problem is. I have the latest free version. When I click on the ListenLive button, a Quicktime symbol with a question mark comes up. So I will be denied Christmas music while I'm at the computer. My boombox (does anyone still call it this?) doesn't get super good reception. My other options are to: 1) go to bed because my clock radio is programmed to the station, 2) forgo Christmas music until the next time I'm in the car, 3) put in my Christmas CD's

I guess I'll forgo for now. I'm not going to be before 8 pm. I'm not putting in a CD because I'll forget to change it out, and I'll end up listening to the same 12 songs all night long.

Plus, I think it's a little ridiculous to start Christmas songs before Thanksgiving.

A Trio of Butterflies for Caardvarks Challenge

Here is a trio of butterfly cards for the sewing challenge.

The butterflies are made of velveteen ribbon (found in the floral and craft section). They were tied with coordinating ribbon on sale at Michaels this week 5 spools for $1. What a deal! The butterfly trails were stitched using 2-ply DMC embroidery thread. I tried a few different trails, and I don't know which one I like best. Maybe tomorrow I'll try a double trail with 2 butterflies.

There Thanks was hand written using a black brush pen. The For You sentiment is a $1 stamp from Michaels. And the last card has no sentiment yet. This will go in my any occasion file.

Basket full of flowers

This is for the caardvarks challenge to use stitching. I can't take any credit for this card - I case'd it from a Martha Stewart card idea booklet. Worse yet, I didn't even buy the book. How bad is that? At least I gave her credit.

If I do this again, I will use a darker color green, and a heavier weight thread (or even yarn). Though it's not shown, Thank You is stamped on the inside.

The basket was stitched freehand using light weight crochet thread. The flowers are EK Success paper punches.

Inking the edges

I love to ink the edges of paper. I think it adds more definition and dimension to the paper. It also hides the white backing or core of the paper/cardstock. (There's nothing wrong with the white outline. Some people like it; I only like it in certain applications.) It's easy to use the ink pad to get the edges of square or round paper, but how do you get into the crevices or curves? Especially if you're talking about a diecut piece or a finely cut out stamp.

In cases like that, I use a marker. Make sure the back side is facing you, and edge around the paper with the marker. It won't matter if you accidently write on the paper, because its the back and won't show. I've done it on almost all of the cards posted.

That's my tip for the week. I hope someone finds it useful.

Card for WSC27 Challenge

Here's my card for Beate's weekend challenge. I thought I'd do several cards - I really like this layout. But the weekend's been way too busy. So this is my first card. I'll probably post several more cards this week, just to get the ideas out of my head. The flowers are EK success paper punches. The saying is from a Fiskars stamp set (I think it's called paisley). The paper is from Provo Crafts slab.

A few more birthday cards

I made these birthday cards for a few co-workers. The first one is just like my previous post. The card and the pink border paper are cardstock. The flower paper and the silver paper are origami paper. The flower boquet is by Cuttlebug. The ribbon is by Trim it Up from Michaels. This is going to a very nice lady at work. She's great to work with, and much to my dismay, she was just transferred to another group. But I can still eat lunch with her.

The flower boquet is pretty significant because we both like gardening and flowering plants. We regularly exchange plant cuttings and seedlings.




This birthday card is for a male coworker. I ususally have a hard time making the cards neutral or masculine. I hope this fits. The star and streaks were cut out free hand. It's hard to see, but the streaks say "MAKE A WISH".