Mickey Birthday wish.

     Still haven't finished all of those college cards, but I'm getting closer, ha ha (another one has gone out the door - see I'm getting there.) However, I do have a card for today and a finishing touch on another. I thought it might help for some inspiration on finishing the inside of cards, which can be a stumper at times ;- )

     First up is everyones favorite Mickey Mouse. This card is for my neighbor's grandson, who is turning 3. I used the Mickey image from the Mickey and Friends cartridge (the fourth key) and all it's layers at 3.5 inches. I set it all up on my Gypsy so I could position my pieces precisely, because my mat is currently only sticky in some spots >.< I need to clean and re-stick a few of them, since I do have more than 1 not-very-sticky mat. The Gypsy however lets me decide where I want each piece to cut and place a few of them in those exact spots. Very helpful. I also used the Gypsy to weld the letters for the sentiment from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge which does have a shadow font for it's main font (nice touch!) The blue card stock was embossed with Sizzix's Texture Plates #2 Square Dancers.

     On the inside I used Lettering Delight's font LD Walt. Using Print Shop, I set up the sentiment first in red and  then in black and laid one over the other to give it a shadow. The signature is in Helvetica, which I thought I'd changed to something else, but evidently not, ha ha on me.  You can find a link to Lettering Delight on my sidebar. I cut out the number 3 from Plantin Schoolbook with the basic font and the shadow at 2 inches and popped it up.

     Over the weekend, it was Parker's grandfather's birthday (he has his pilot's license.) Now I'd made his card back in Nov. for Crafter's Digital Art Center's Challenge at the time, but hadn't totally finished the inside. It is an easel card and here is the card and how it appeared then (this part still looks like this ;- ) You can find the details on this card here.

     Inside, I used LD Chaplin, LD Lively (for Good Times) and LD Wedding (for the signature) from Lettering Delights for the fonts. The plane graphic comes from the Print Shop software. The details for the rest is at the same link as the front, since that was all done in November.

     As always, thanks for dropping by. I love hearing from you so much, so please leave a comment before you go ;- ) have a wonderful week!

I'm finally back!

     Well, after getting some party clean-up done I ... have created ... a ... card ... (and there is a sigh of relief).  Toady's card is an anniversary card for a woman who was my high school English teacher, way back in the day. So, I made a card with kind of a  retro 60's feel, to fit her day, not mine (well I was close) ;- ) I used Core'dinations Black Magic with a light pink core, but the pink is hard to see in the photo.  The embellishments are from me & my Big ideas, Ellen Krans edition of Soft Spoken. I used gel pen to color in the "O".

 
     The inside sentiment was done digitally, with Print Shop using Harrington font. I embossed a stamp from Inkadinadoo's spring mini assortment with clear embossing powder. The hearts and "Love Birds" are part of the same embellishments as on the front.

     What would I do differently? I would space the heart didn't have to go over my name ;- ) I might change up the inside embellishments to vary the card. On the front, I might raise the the whole line of embellishments and stamp a sentiment underneath. I also might use a darker red core of Black Magic.

     Our party went well and the weather was wonderful. Not too hot, a bit overcast (which is good, since we don't have much shade in our yard) and no rain. We had about 45 people or so. My DH forgot to snap any photos, probably too busy playing volleyball, esp. since my DS had been talking volleyball smack the day before and there were reputations on the line ;- ), so here are a couple of photos of the food from last year (basically the same, only the table clothes have been changed.

     Makes you hungry, doesn't it? You didn't even see the desserts. If your ever in the area at the end of June, you should stop by and join us. You'd be very welcome.

     Our new puppy did wonderfully, though he was exhausted before it was half over. He now has a name. It's Shadow. Though I still fell he needs a middle name and that one isn't clear yet. The other day, he was Shadow the Pirate because he he said "Arrrgggh" to me. So we made it, "Talk like a pirate day," here. Here is a recent picture of Shadow.

     He will get his first days of having a neighbor let him out, this week because, we have Vacation Bible School at our Church and that will put him in his crate for longer than 3 hours. It's good for him to get a trial at this, while he's little though.

Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a note if you have time. Your comments me a lot to me. Have a wonderful week!

Hats off to the graduates!

    Well despite the rain, I did get my last window box potted today and made 2 cards. The puppy and I decided to plant between the raindrops, but of course as soon as we got out, it started drizzling again. It was a good thing that I got that new window box, because as I was scooping the stones out of it, I suddenly saw the top of my table through what should have been the bottom of the old window box, Yikes!

 The first card is the same as the graduation card that I posted earlier. I did like how it turned out and I know the mother of the graduate I was making the 2nd one for liked it too, so I made the same one for her daughter.

     For the directions for this easel card, click here. The second card is for another girl from the same school, so I've used the same school colors. The pennants were made with the Martha Stewart Seasonal Cake Art cart. I used a lime green Sharpie marker to draw the green line down the center of the yellow middles of the banner to add more interest and the green backgrounds were embossed with Swiss Dots. The 2011 was done on the Gypsy with Plantin Schoolbook. The brads are Painted Brads from Recollections and the ribbon is Class Act (2010) from TPC Studio (I believe the have the same style this year too). The grad cap is an embellishment from Jolee. The background paper is from Paper Studio's Graduation Paper Pack (the same as I used for the other cards).
 

     I haven't done the inside of this card as I usually do, because I haven't decided how I'm going to finish it yet, so I wasn't sure which paper to use on the inside.

     I think the rose card is still my fav, though this is a nice change of pace. I tried a number of different things on the yellow part of the banners, but didn't have stamps small enough to fit on them. Looking at it now, I'm thinking that cap might need some perfect pearls on the edges to give it some bling and more dimension (though it is 3d in person ;- ). 

     Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment so that I know you were here. Your 2 cents means very much to me. Have a great and blessed rest of the week.

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!

Friends are turning 65?!

     Having my son home is making  it hard to get a card done, every other day. I am soooo glad he is home. I'm just not getting as much done ;- )  I have to have this card done for a party, so I thought I'd better do it today. I used my Expression and Create a Critter. The background paper is from Basic Grey's Granola 12 x 12 paper pad. The bear is cut at 2 1/14 inches and popped up on the card. I used a bunch of scraps for the layers. I used a white gel pen to highlight his eyes. The pinwheel and hat are from the page with the cat from the same cartridge. I used Blueberry Pie paper from Archivers and some scrap yellow pattern paper with white swirls in it. They didn't show up well  in the picture and I was too tired to re-do them, sorry. I went over the swirls with the clear glitter gel pen and added a button with Martha Stewart twine. I also added yellow Viva Decor Pearl Pen to the ball at the top of the hat. The hat and pinwheel were popped up twice as high as the bear. The words were cut from the Phrase on the page with the cat at 2 inches with paper from Basic Grey's Granola and the Blueberry Pie. The top layer was run through the Big Shot with Swiss Dots and popped up. The dots have glitter added by the clear glitter pen as well.

     On the inside, I used the Blueberry Pie paper and a striped pattern from the Basic Grey Granola pad to form a mat for the computer generated sentiment. The fonts I used are SNF Jester Fool (from Scrap n Fonts), Rasp (for the word "age") and Tabitha. The embellishment at the center top, is from JoAnn Craft Essentials Birthday adhesive bubble icons. The candles on either side of it were give to me by a friend as part of a present with a number of other mixed embellishments.

     What would I do different? Maybe add some inking. What do you think? Thanks for stopping by and sharing some of your precious time with me. If you have a moment more, I'd really love to hear from you, so please leave a comment. Thanks!

Valentine for a friend

     Today's card is my first easel card. I cut the base card stock at 11 x 4 1/4 inches. I then scored and folded it in half making it an A2 (5 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches). I then scored the front in half (2 3/4 inches) and folded the opposite way (up and out from the card).  I attached a piece of patterned paper from Paper Studio, to a piece of 5 1/5  x 4 1/4 white card stock, to make it stiff enough. This I then attached to the piece of the base that was folded out, attaching the folded piece to the top of the patterned piece. You might want to try the card closed and easeled before gluing, to be sure you understand the orientation of these pieces. That was the way it worked for me, because just looking at pictures wasn't enough.  I'll try to post a side view of the card tomorrow, so you can get a better view of that.

Here is the card easeled. (by the way I don't think that's a word ;- )

     The top heart was cut on the Expression using the Storybook cart at 2 inches, from pink glitter paper (use multi cut and raise your blade setting for this). The one underneath was suppose to be a shadow, but I used the dot feature key by mistake and it works. The second heart is from the Accent Essentials cart. The main image is cut from the red card stock and the main image with the shift key is cut from the pink glitter paper, also at 2 inches.

This is what the card looks like closed, except when it lies by itself it pops up a bit, so the ends don't seem to line up at the bottom, but they really do.

     On the inside, I used patterned paper from Paper Pizzaz, cut at 3 inches, at the top. I attached a piece of red card stock at the bottom, that I punched with a Martha Stewart punch and then I added pearls. I used pink ink to stamp  a sentiment to a piece of white card stock and then embossed it with clear embossing powder. The stamp was a $1 stamp from JoAnn's. I then added epoxy stickers from EK Success.  I printed my personal sentiment digitally and cut it with a scalloped oval nestability.

     What would I do different? Well, I'd meant to dry emboss the red paper on the inside and I think I'd still like to see that. Also I think I would have cut the inside red piece bigger, so that I could center the way the punches ended up better and the trim it to fit, instead of cutting first and then punching. I am really happy with the paper though. I'might have done the Happy Valentine's digitally, but I was trying to use 1 of only 2 stamps I have and the other didn't fit. Well, there you have it. I hope my friend likes it. thanks for spending your busy time with me. Let me know that you stopped by.

Fishing Card

     Well, the centerpieces are done, finis!  I wanted to post a picture of the teens with finished product, but I forgot to get permissions, so here is a fun photo of some of the vases.

     So, moving on, today I made a card for a friend's father, in his 90's. He is in a Nursing Home and enjoys getting cards and since he use to like to fish, I decided to make a nostalgic fishing card. It's an A2 card (5 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches), which I matted with a 5 1/4 x 4 inches piece of maroon card stock, that I embossed with the Sizzix Texturz Texture (I know it sounds redundant to me too) Plates Kit #2, design Diamonds after rounding the corners on the bottoms of both pieces. I then used the Expression with Accent Essentials cart to cut the Label shape at 3 3/4 inches. It's titled Shape #48 in the handbook and you use the shift key to get the filled in shape. The paper is Gartner Studios, BonVoyage - World Map, available from Hobby Lobby.  I made sure I featured the midwest, because that was where he lived. I did this by test cutting with typing paper and then just removing the cut image, without removing the mat, I had the blade return to the next line, and putting the piece I wanted to cut in place of the cut image with the area I wanted to be sure to showcase, showing through the hole. You should remove the typing paper at this point. I then moved the blade horizontally to the right and had it repeat last. The fishing boy is from  the Cricut cart, A Child's Year and is cut at 3 1/4 inches form Recollections Neutral card stock collection with a black shadow. I added the buttons, tied with doubled thread, since I couldn't find my black floss and the twine color I have doesn't go with the card.

     On the inside I matted it with black cut at 5 1/4 x 4 inches and patterned card stock from Recollections called Time Frame Second Hand Argyle Dark, cut at 5 x 3 3/4inches. I did the sentiment digitally using Lettering Delights's Shelly Script. The font is sized at a large 36 to help him read it. That piece is cut at 4 3/4 X 3 1/2. I stamped the 2 candles with a stamp from Hero Arts's set Cupcakes. The flames are colored with a yellow glitter Starlightz pen and a pinkish-red Gelly Roll pen at the center of the flame. The stripes on the candles are a peach colored watercolor pencil by Staedler. I used it just like a colored pencil though. It was the only thing I had to lightly color the candle in the colors of the card.

     What I would change? I'd remember to round the corners of the  black mat and the diamonds paper before gluing them together on the inside ;- )  I'm not sure about the buttons. They looked needed when I laid it out, but after everything was glued on I wondered if I shifted things and did I really need them. I do like the pattern on the big button, which is hard to see (maybe if you enlarge it.) It kind of matches the diamonds. I should have used card stock instead of printer paper on the inside, because I can see the pattern through it. I'll need to remember that next time. Well, thanks for looking and spending your limited time her. Let me know what you think!

Centerpieces... Nearing the home stretch

     Well, where we last left the saga was with the need for a trip to the dollar store. Nothing is ever that easy. They didn't have any vases with thin necks that weren't hugely tall, but they did have a couple of Valentine vases. We brought one of those home and another, thinner vase to work with and make decisions.  We decided we liked the Valentine vase, but since it was wide, the wires would tip over. We knew we had a lot of sand we could fill the vases with, but that meant we had to line them, so the sand wouldn't show. Of course the vases weren't exactly cylinders, but slightly tapered. Here is a photo of DH working on a template for the paper liners.

     While, he worked on that I cut out hearts from Plantin Schoolbook, with the Roly Poly Feature Key sized at 2 1/4 inches to fill page. I made them in both pink and red. They were embossed with a number of different embossing folders.  My DH even learned how to use the Big Shot ;- )

     Next I used the Gypsy to cut out the Emoticons, Phrases (these were sized smaller) and Speech Bubbles (also sized smaller) from Smiley Cards. Spent a "fun"evening gluing all that together. 

     As I mentioned in a earlier post, I hid many of the cuts to streamline the smilies, leaving out the cheeks, highlights and some tongues. I'm only slightly crazy. I think they turned out cute though.  I drew the black dot eyes on the ones, that have the large white eyes. We don't have a good way of getting 21 of these vases to Church, so we decided to take the cut-outs, vases, wires and sand separately and then this Sunday, the teens can help assemble them during Open Youth Lounge. We thought that assembled and put in a box they would catch on each other and get tangled. Here are some of the wires on my family room floor.

     And finally, here is what they will look like, except...... when my husband said he was able to get all of the vases at the dollar store he stopped at this morning, they were the wrong vases. Just noticed that after we were all done. Instead of the one I'll show you, they are full of red hearts and lady bugs. He's now decided he likes the ones he bought better. Good! Done! Also we have red tape, but no black or pink, right now. Hope to tomorrow. I had yellow, but I forgot the smilies have black backs, also have white, but thought pink was better for the speech bubbles. So, this is a close approximation.

     Well, considering they assigned this to me because when we did the Hoedown and centerpieces were mentioned, someone said, "We'll talk about that if there is time." I knew that meant no centerpieces. I said that I could cut something and all I did was cut a Scarecrow from Oct. 31st, a Cowboy boot from Just Because Cards and a Pumpkin (can't remember which, maybe from Stretch Your Imagination on Blackout), made them double sided, and attached them to straws which we then stuck in tin cans, this is amazing. LOL Thanks for following this od(d)yssey. Should be retuning to cards and such again, but maybe this helped inspire those moms out there stuck on banquet duty. If so, costs for 20 = $12 in wire and $20 in vases. The sand was free from our town ages ago and the paper was donated from the Church. The reason I gave you the cost for 20 is because the 2 sets of wire only made 20 we have to spend another $6 to make 1 more. It's never easy ;- ) Have a wonderful and blessed weekend.

Birthday card for a Friend

     Today's card is a more typical card for me. It's for my friend Gywn. Typically when I make a card for a friend I try to tie it to that person. I don't make many general cards. In this case the image will be a penguin, because Gwyn has often considered that her symbol. She uses the word penguin to tell people how to pronounce her name, so that they don't mispronounce it Gwen. So it's convenient that she has a January birthday. Let me show you the card and then I'll tell you how I made it.

     I used the penguin from the Cricut Create A Critter cartridge. I cut the penguin with the layers at
2 1/4 inches on my Cricut Expression. I used the Gypsy to lay the whole card out first to make sure the words would fit in the space of an A2 card. After I had all of the penguin layers set out, I choose the phrase, "chillin'" from the same cartridge. I sized it at 2.5 inches wide and it was cut out of the DCWV Holiday Collection Christmas Stack. I realized it would be too similar to the background paper and since it was already the shadow cut, I made a second cut out of black and sized it 1.45 inches high. The original cut was 1.35 inches high, so I went up one tenth of an inch to make  the background cut. Due to the fact that the cuts are curved, it's not really a shadow, but I placed it so that it shadows as if the light were below it. I used the Cricut cart Lyrical Letters to type out "on your Birthday" at 1 inch high on the Gypsy and then welded the letters of each word except for the B. I tried the letters smaller, but the smaller letters didn't cut well, esp. welded. The orange cardstock is from Cord'inations. the rest was scraps, so I'm not sure. I used a pearl gem to dot the "i".  I used the Cuttlebug Divine Swirls folder to emboss the background layer with my Big Shot. I embellished the "chillin'" with Diamond Stickles, even adding icicles. here is a close-up.

     I had meant to try the icicles before the card was put together, in case they didn't work out, but as usual, I forgot my smart idea and had the whole thing put together first. Still, I tried my icicle idea and was happy with the way they turned out. On the inside, I matted 2 pieces of patterned paper from DCWV Holiday Collection Christmas Stack  (one at 5 1/4 x 4 and the other 5 X 3 3/4) and added the birthday wishes which I had done on my computer using Print Shop. The fonts I used were Snowcaps by Simply the Best Fonts and SNF Jester Play by ScrapNfonts. Snowcaps is a free font and SNF Jester Play is currently $5, but they often have sales and I think I got it for $1 or $2. I then added  a cute penguin dimensional sticker from Recollections and an epoxy bubble icon from Craft Essentials. What would I have done different? I had meant to tear some white paper to look like a snowy base for the penguin on the front to stand on to ground him, but forgot. I probably would have used Stickles on that as well. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the way this card turned out.
     I've been asked by a friend to do a card for a 100th birthday. Time to put my thinking cap on. If anyone has any ideas, please chime in. Thanks for looking in.

Quick Card using Smiley Cards

      Finally, a card that went together quickly. This one gave me no problems and I was able to make 2 at a time, with a few design changes.  The only difficulty with Smily Cards, which is a free download to the Gypsy if you register it before Feb. 28th, (there are 4 other free downloads and it comes with 2 pre-installed carts) is there is no handbook since it is a download. You can find a cheat sheet online, but I'm afraid I can't remember where I found it. If anyone knows let me know. As I was looking for it, I found that Joy at Obsessed With Scrapbooking has a handbook on her blog Here. That would have been helpful earlier today, because the cheat sheet showed them put together, and on the Gypsy, it was hard to tell what the layers were meant to be, at least for me. So I'll go over it in case anyone else in interested. Skip down if not. The first layer of the Emoticons is the black background the makes up the eyes and mouth and goes behind the yellow circle. The shift of the key is the top layer and I cut it using Yellow from DCWV Premium Cardstock Pack in Brights. Both were cut at 2 1/2 inches. Next is the Emoticons Layers. The unshifted one gives you the cheeks, (mine were cut from peach scraps), and the shifted one is the highlight at the top of the smiley (white cardstock from Walmart). Finally, the next element of this image is the Phrase. The Thx is unshifted and I cut it from grey scraps on 1 3/4 inches. The shifted Phrase is the speech ballon and it was white cardstock cut at 2 inches. For some reason they didn't look like the Thx fit inside the balloon on the Gypsy screen when both were at 2 inches, so I cut it smaller.
     The first mat is yellow from DCWV Premium Cardstock Pack in Brights, cut at 5 1/4 x 4. The aqua piece was cut from Core'dinations paper at 5 x 3 3/4 and I ran it through my Big Shot, using Sizzix Texture plate Petite Daisies, from the Texturez Starter Kit. I didn't think the embossing was very deep so I sandpapered it lightly to bring it out more. On the inside I used the same yellow paper and made a black circle using the base emoticon at 1 inch and then the same one in yellow at 1.95 to go over (so that you could see it on the yellow background) and drew the face on it.  Actually, as I was cutting all of the pieces out, I cut out 2 of everything, because I knew I wanted to make 2 cards. I was able to use the power of the Gypsy to set up the cuts so that I could cut it all out at one time, since I could see where everything would cut-out and position the paper colors in the correct spots. I stamped and embossed the inside with a sentiment from Clear Dollar Stamps sentiments called, Church Chatter using Memento black ink.
     The second card appears below. The only differences are that I ran the aqua background through the Big Shot using the Square Patio Texture plate from Sizzix Texturez Plate Kit 2. This time I put a shim (a couple of pieces of scrap cardstock in the embossing "sandwich" to try and get a deeper emboss. It worked except for the fact that the pieces were smaller then 5 x 3 3x4 so the deeper embossing is only in the center, but I didn't mind the distressed look. I sanded this one as well. I also used aqua cardstock on the inside of this one, so I skipped the black shadow on the inside smiley face.
     These can easily be used by our Youth Director for teen volunteers or just to catch a teen doing something nice. I think either can be used for male or female, but the second is more masculine if you had to choose. At our Church or 3rd though 5th graders are making cards for military personnel, stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan to send back home to their loved ones. Everyone loves to get a card!