Quick thank-you card.

     I needed to make a quick thank-you card for a secretary at Church. I needed her to do something for me and waited until the last minute to ask >.< She was great, so I thought a thanks was in order. I was pressed for time and the stamping isn't great, though it's my 3rd or 4th try. Since it's late, I'm going with this one, knowing that she will be thrilled that someone said thank-you at all. So steal the idea if you like, just stamp neater ;- ) (Kind of embarrassed to post this actually.)  All the stamps are from Inkadinkado.

     I had better placement in other tries, but the Thank You stamp was on the block crooked or twisted in some way. Kind of weird. Sometimes getting a card to people is more important than, spending so much time on each card that you don't get some cards made at all. There are so many people that I would love to send thank-yous to or thinking about you, but I can barely keep up with birthdays and anniversaries. I've decided to try to make some quick and simple ones for these times and save the more labor intensive ones for the special occasions.

     I'm going to be out of town for awhile, so I won't have any posts until I get back. Then I'll have to kick things into gear, because I still have those graduations to do, plus June birthdays and such. Oh, yeah and a puppy to train soon after that ;- 0 Time marches on! Hope you are enjoying a wonderful weekend and have a beautiful week ahead. Hugs.... debbie

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!

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!

First card of the New Year

     Ok, here is the card from yesterday. I had decided I wanted to do a shaped card and liked this postage stamp one from Cricut's Birthday Bash cart. It was one that I had chosen on my Gypsy when we took my son back to school. I had decided to make it 5x5. First problem, no 5x5 envelope. There was no square envelope on the cart, so I figured I'd use my Ultimate Crafter's Companion. Find info Here. DH insisted I get one at CHA in Chicago after he saw it demonstrated. Isn't he supportive ;- ) Second problem, there are directions for a 6x6 and a 4x4 envelope. Did I mention these were suppose to be quick cards? There is I line between those to make the 6x6 and the 4x4 envelopes so I decide to see if it will make the right size envelope. Through a bit of trial and error, I find that if you use a square of cardstock 8 1/16ths you will get an envelope 5 1/8. Perfect for a 5in square card. Easy peasy!
     As I mentioned yesterday, these cards I'm making are for our Church Youth Director to give to volunteers and teens as she needs them. I decided to go with the snail image that Birthday Bash uses with the stamp card base (snail mail) and to make it a thank-you card. I cut the snail and all it's layers at 2 inches. I then decided that although his face cut out well, I'd draw it on, rather than glue my fingers, or run it through the Zyron. The snail was made with misc. scraps from my scrap box and the background paper was from the Imagine More cart from the Cricut Imagine that I left over from another project. My snail is a snail and does leave a trail, ewww, with Viva Decor glitter liner. The "Thanks" is from Gypsy Wanderings on the Gypsy (also pre-compiled on the college trip) cut at 2 3/4 inches. The flower gems are from Kaiser scrapbook. The sentiment on the inside is from Church Chatter by Clear Dollar Stamps. I love these stamps for this type of cards and use them often.
     Now, there are some things I would have done differently about this easy card. I wouldn't have colored in the antenna on the snail (Statlightz Glitter Gel Pen). I just dont like the look, but sometimes what's done is done, move on. I also should have inked everything, esp. the card base. I thought of this after everything was put together, but I've learned from experience that if I do it at the end, I probably won't like it or will mess it up and then I've ruined the whole card. So I left it. I also question the color of those gems,  but I like them, so not sure. The snail should be placed farther to the right.

     So, today I was going to make it easier (wasn't that what I said about yesterdays' card)? I picked the Bird on the Branch image from the Imagine More cart on the Cricut Imagine. I cut in layers to glue it on an A2 blank. However, (were you ready for a however), the rectangle isn't A2. I trimmed off  the right and left sides to make it mat on the A2 blank (we're just going brut force today - EASY). Then layered the rest of the pieces and pop-dot the bird. The "Thanks" came from Cricut's Lyrical Letters cart filled with a pattern from Imagine More on the Imagine. On the inside, I printed just the bottom layer of the same image as the front and cut it down and also printed the bird on real dial size of 1 inch (bird only). The sentiment is also from Church Chatter by Clear Dollar Stamps. I placed the bird on an oval cut by the Imagine from it's installed shapes because otherwise the bird blended in.
     I also started another card, which I will finish and show next time. These aren't great cards, but my goal with these are to be relatively fast. See I've added a modifier now. But I do want them to have some level of detail or texture.  Let me know what you think. Thanks for reading my babbling.