Tag adhesive foil

2025 Cards

CraftyK Leave a comment

My annual card gallery is here! Check out every card created in 2025 by month of creation. The end of 2024 brought on just shy of two dozen new cards. Each year I strive to improve, learn and try new techniques and create some beautiful cards. 2025 saw twice as many with 49 new cards created. I started up my Ko-Fi shop at the end of 2024 where you may find some of the cards below listed for sale.

I set out the year to grow in the card making space. This meant posting about it and at the very least making at least one card per month.

For 2026 I plan to release a post each month with the cards made the previous month. There may be a little more info about how they were made, but I still strive to keep my musings short. I feel that you shouldn’t have to wait all year before seeing all the cards created.

Use these as inspiration for your own cards!

Most of my supplies are second-hand, so I’m not always able to point to where you can buy more.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

See finished projects on Instagram @craftyk.3

and watch live on Twitch CraftyK3

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2024 Cards

CraftyK Leave a comment

If you don’t want to read the nuances about the cards I created in 2024, this is where you can see them all by month of creation. After the surge of cards made in December 2023, I hope these cards don’t disappoint. I’m also hoping you see an increase in quality and creativity.

Use these as inspiration for your own cards!

February

May

June

September

October

November

December

Follow current projects on Instagram @craftyk.3
Also on Snapchat

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Grandma turns 90!

CraftyK Leave a comment

It’s not everyday you know someone who has been around for nine decades. My husband’s grandma now has. We’re having lunch with her to celebrate along with other members of the small family.

Her husband also reached 90, however he didn’t live much longer after that. We didn’t know his birthday would be the last we saw him well. Such is life, some people get more of it than others.

The card I had made for my husband’s grandpa can be found here. I came up with the idea easily since he was a former farmer and was always asking about how the farming community has been doing in Iowa and Nebraska. The card was a hit, so I had some pressure with getting this second card right.

I went through a few different ideas. If you want to see some of the inspiration cards I found on Pinterest you can see my Birthday Card board here. The first idea I had involved wallpaper. The second idea had me trying to print a border from a design pattern pack I downloaded recently. This was my third attempt.

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I found cardstock that had flower like the printed pattern I wanted to use. (That did not go well at all!) I knew I wanted to use my scripty stamps for happy and birthday, which left the 90th. I wanted a big bold font and found that Impact does the job nicely. I used gold adhesive foil for the letters.

To make sure I spaced out my glitter glue dots evenly I created a dotted line box in Illustrator. In a way I designed the elements in there, then used some of it in the Cricut Design space for the cutting. Like the cutout behind the 90 I drew around the 90th typed in AI. I made the layers different colors so it would pull 2 mats for the Cricut to cut on (the paper and foil). I printed just the dotted line box and made sure it fit inside of the frame, since I wanted the dots inside.

Double sided tape and foam tape were used to put it all together. The stamping is directly on the cardstock base. The foil has weird patterning on it from the press n’ seal I used, it wasn’t holding and the sticky stuff really sticks when you push it on too hard. Does give it an interesting texture though.

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from the side

Stormtrooper Line Up

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My nephew Ben is going to start amassing quite the collection of Star Wars cards from me. I made one for his birthday last year and another for May 4th. Now he will have a more intricate card with Stormtroopers cross stitched on it.

This card is part of my 2019 project to finish one cross stitch card for every member of my mom’s side of the family who is over the age of 5 (had to draw the line somewhere). I am now in February and getting them done about a week before they need to arrive.

the pieces

This pattern came from an official Star Wars cross stitch book. While it is available in Whole Foods, I went with Amazon (same difference right?) since it was slightly cheaper. I recreated the pattern in WinStitch so I could mark the stitches off as I went. The book doesn’t stay open the best either, so this was the easiest way to work.

It took a few days to complete the whole thing. Dark fabric 18 count is hard to work on! You need so much light to really see what the heck you’re doing. The black was even harder to see. Luckily a few days before I started my husband needed extra light and borrowed my knock-off ice light. After much frustration I remembered the light was in the next room and grabbed it for my purposes. Boy did it make a difference!

the 'troopers

I was able to see what I was doing and finish stitching with much more ease. After I finished that part I pulled out the handy Cricut to cut my frame and text.

For the frame I wanted to have the cutout closer to the top of the card and give a little breathing room around the heads.

The text I did in Star Jedi font (pretty sure it’s on dafont.com) and added the lines at the top and bottom. I decided to do one long line of text and probably should have split it up. I think it still looks ok the way it is. Not sure that I got it straight though, I tried a few times laying it down before going with it.

inside

On the inside of the card I used a couple of pages from an old daily calendar. I’ve been using these for my Star Wars cards and felt it was another good use of them just to add some color to the inside.

Stitching

Started: January 30th
Finished: February 3rd

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front of card

Customized Thermos

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I’ve been seeing more and more customized products, mugs, tumblers, wine glasses, etc. Before the end of last year I thought people were just magical being able to create such items.

The backstory: I wanted to create my own stencils so I wouldn’t have to rely on other people’s designs and size constraints. I started looking into flexible plastic (still haven’t gotten any) and how to cut it with more precision than an exacto knife and hand drawn lines. That’s when I stumbled on a product called the Cricut.

Upon this discovery my husband set out on a journey to find which machine and starter kit would work best for my beginner needs. I ended up with the Explore Air 2 which had just come out and a huge variety of items to try out.

thermos_0718_01My favorite item so far has been the adhesive foil. I have a variety pack of metallic adhesive foil that I have used on a variety of cards and paper projects. This is the first project where I am using the foil on a much used item.

I’ve had this thermos for many years, as you might be able to see it’s a little beat up, the paint is chipped…it’s seen better days.

I wanted to get a purple one, but can’t find it in stock. So I am still using this one and wanted to make the leap to making something that’s popular. Luckily I have a graphic design background and understand Illustrator, making the Cricut less of a learning curve than it seems to be for many new users. I drew the camera in Illustrator and exported my SVG file to cut out my pattern.

I know the foil isn’t considered “permanent” but we don’t use the dishwasher so I think with hand washing it should stick for a while. So far it’s made it 3 days.

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Class of 2018

CraftyK Leave a comment

This was a fairly fast project. 2 colors and my first design out of WinStitch. I’m still figuring out the program, it seems a bit on the clunky side. I could just be spoiled by using Adobe for so many years and having many customization options at my fingertips.

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In progress

The framing took a while. I had to attempt to re-cut the matte, that didn’t end well. Then trying to get the tiny letters cut out with the Cricut to stick semi-straight onto the matte board was a frustrating mess. But hey now it’s done and it can be wrapped and packed.

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Stitching

Started: May 15th
Finished: June 3rd

Framing

Started: June 4th
Finished: June 6th

To the Graduate

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This card is for my husband’s cousin. Today is his graduation party. I made this card the weekend before. Completely my own design! It was a bit of trial and error to make my own tassle.

This card I relied fairly heavily on the Cricut. The ‘Congrats’ is cut from Cricut‘s adhesive foil. The hat I drew and cut from wallpaper I have on hand.

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The tassel was an interesting thing to make. I have some jewelry making supplies from years ago when I thought I could make jewelry (ha!). Anyway I would say don’t use memory wire, that stuff is stuck in whatever size it comes in. I did find a more flexible wire that wasn’t silver that worked really well to hold the thread together. (You might recognize the colors from my Mother in law’s Mother’s Day card)

I am planning to make another of these cards for my niece. I know her school colors, so I will work on a tassel in those colors and maybe integrate them more throughout the card. But for something generic and graduation, black and gold works well.

For the inside of this card I cam up with a “brilliant” way to put money in without it falling out right away. Using mounting tape I attached my white cardstock piece to the inside of the card. Since it’s raised slightly I was able to slip some money in behind the message and it stays pretty well!

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This card has a lot of pieces that needed to be assembled, but I was able to do it all in maybe an hour or less. I was working on 4 cards that day and different pieces were cut and assembled at different times.

 

This post uses affiliate links. This just means that if you go to the site and end up buying something I’ll get a small percent, this doesn’t increase the cost to you at all. 🙂

90th Birthday

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There are only 2 living grandparents left in our family. They are my husband’s paternal side. On May 2nd his grandfather turned 90 years old! We went to Des Moines, IA that weekend to celebrate with him.

The night before I did a mad rush to make a card. It went over really well since they love art. Something handmade is different than the store bought cards. Apparently I did well enough that at first they thought it was purchased and were impressed it was so on the mark.

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I chose green paper since it’s (finally) spring. And my paint options at home are limited, so I chose a yellow because it would be bright enough to stand off the green. Not on purpose, but a bit John Deere nonetheless.

How it was made:

The letters were created in using the writing feature of the Cricut. The barn and tractor were cut using the Cricut as well. These are the gold adhesive, so they are shiny and stick to the paper easily.

 

 

This post uses affiliate links. This just means that if you go to the site and end up buying something I’ll get a small percent, this doesn’t increase the cost to you at all. 🙂

May the Fourth Be With You

CraftyK Leave a comment

For the first time I’m planning ahead! I thought about doing May 4th cards in March and finally got around to them mid-April.

These aren’t perfect by any stretch. I still can’t get placements correct on the Cricut. The biggest downfall of their design space when you go to make the item, you have to start over placing items every time.

T2S photography

The mishaps continue on the inside of the cards. I decided not to write with a silver marker as I did for my nephew’s birthday card (scroll to the bottom). Instead I attempted to make insets with cardstock. While the first one was too narrow and the second one was quite askew. Using double sided tape there’s no going back once you put it down.

Something else to work on and improve as I keep trying to create more appealing cards.

T2S photography