Thank You Note Cards

     Hi everyone. Hope your weather is getting spring-like. Ours was warm today, but they are saying snow again. I guess that is early spring around here. The robins were checking our our birdbath and squirrels were climbing the bird feeder pole. I've got to get a new way to stop them from doing that ;- )

     Today's cards are made for the Elders at our Church to give to the volunteers who teach the confirmation classes, as well as the 2 teachers who teach a teen Bible class at the same time and the 2 people who provide the meals during those evenings. That make a total of 16 cards, 8 male and 8 female. I decided to make something quick and easy. On cards I made, for the same purpose, for the volunteers who teach Sunday School, I varied the paper colors (for the men and women) and used the same stamps. On these, I decided to basically, make my own paper with stamps, so these motifs would have to be varied for the men and women.  That was much easier for the women then men. I had seen a card on the Hero Arts blog a while ago that had sparked an idea. I've always liked making my own background paper anyway and that's what Dwita did, using a flower stamp and a multi color stamp pad. Instead I used 2 different Hero Arts  flower stamps and 2 colors, stamping them randomly around a Hero Arts Thank You sentiment. I lined the inside with cardstock which I embossed with a Sizzix flower border and stamped with  stamp from Clear Dollar Stamps Church Chatter set. Easy Peasy!

    As usual, men not so easy to come up with. I finally decided to use the Hero Arts wood grain stamp. I really like the realism of this stamp, but it can be hard to work with. I decided it was best to put the paper on the stamp rather than the other way around, to get it to line up. The paper was smaller than the stamp, so I had to be careful, because if my fingers touched it, I would get the ink on the back of the card. This really becomes a problem when you are doing so many in a row, so I would put a 81/2 x 11 piece of scrap piece of paper over the card before pushing it against it, so I wouldn't transfer any ink from my hands to the card back. I also found that my wedding rings were living funny ink marks on the front after I smoothed over the card back to transfer the ink from the stamp to the card. I'd never noticed having this problem before. I added a popped-up Thanks sentiment from Hero Arts, because I thought the front was boring. Inside I stamped the same sentiment and a Church.

     What would I do different. Well, actually the cards are a bit different. I moved the sentiments around a bit. If I was making this more elaborate, I would probably add a 3-d flower to the front of the female card and bling it up a bit with glitter, as well as add at least some stamping to the inside. In this case, 13 people have to write notes or at least sign the inside, so no room. The men's, I'm not sure, maybe some heavy twine. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a wonder-filled weekend. I love to see your comments!