Back 2 School

I committed a design taboo. It wasn’t fully intentional, but it’s how things worked out. The back 2 school text ended up being 3 different fonts. By the end I thought I spelled school wrong I was searching through so many fonts.

Three of the four backgrounds are wallpaper and the super busy background is scrapbook paper. Each card was customized for a different kid to fit their personalities and interests. The kids loved them!

These cards are simple, with the text being the most complicated part. Weeding and then mounting them took the most time with assembly.

Happy Kitty

Hopefully you like cats. I do. I have 2 of them. My cousins have several cats among them as well. The cousin who is getting this card however had to give up his cats after finding out one of his kids is allergic. Yet the whole family still loves cats. They are all getting a cat card to at least have a non-allergy causing cat around. I cannot guarantee the card is free of cat hair either. I usually have one on my lap while attempting at stitching.

happy cat thread

This pattern is part of a set from a quilt book. I tried to highlight the symbols and colors I would need, yet missed the pink. It’s not in the picture when I started, but I had to go find some pink for the ears by time I was done.

stitching top

This was a pretty fast pattern to work on. It was the designing of the card that took a while.

I had no idea where to begin. I went through both paper drawers a couple of times before finding the blue geometric patterned paper from a book I bought last year.

The pattern was small enough to add some stamping with a birthday message. That paper was easy to find, I find myself using it a lot. It’s not white and has some character to it.

bottom view

I used my Cricut to cut out the blue paper and ivory paper for stamping on. I have a corner rounder cutting thing I used to round the corners. I was lazy and didn’t design the box in Illustrator and the Cricut program doesn’t allow for rounded corners.

After stamping I decided since I had my clear embossing powder by me to emboss just the word birthday. A little got on the letters above, but not enough to change the effect I was going for.

front of card standing

For not having a clue how to start designing this card I think it came together really well. Bringing in the additional element of the stamp helps offset the smaller cross stitch design.

Stitching

Started: May 9th
Finished: May 11th

Follow along on Snapchat!

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front of Happy Cat

Thank You Embossed

As I get deeper into card making I find there are even more things that I don’t have. So many of these things seem like staples in other crafter’s collections.

The latest item I didn’t have? An embossing machine. While I do have a Cricut, embossing isn’t really its strong suit.

My birthday was this week and I decided to throw out an embossing machine on my wish list. My mother-in-law actually bought me one! And my aunt provided some cash. With that and a gift card (also from my mother-in-law) to the craft store I went to get some embossing folders.

turquoise card with flower wallpaper and embossed Thank you

I got some patterns and a few text ones. One of those being “Thank You”. The rest I had to order online, since the in store selections are pretty slim. I also got some direct from China through ebay.

I was so excited to try my new toy and folders I got some paper and went to work.

white card with silver wallpaper on top of the words thank you embossed

I needed cards to say thank you to the two people who made it possible to start embossing. I thought it was very fitting to use the machine and accessories to say THANK YOU!

Follow along on Snapchat!

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Happy Birthday from the Party Elephant

It’s finally here! The post I promised in March. It’s the elephant birthday card for another cousin of mine Casey. She is obsessed with elephants! I am hoping that no one else has made her an elephant card, or at least not with this pattern.

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This is the earliest photo I have of this project

I officially started working on this January 30th and finished April 23rd. I even took a photo of everything when I started, but it seems that photo is lost forever. I can only assume I took it on Snapchat.

This cross stitch pattern was hand drawn, small and full of quarter stitches. cards_0518_11

Like the Panda birthday card I used the “diamond” embellishment at the bottom. Makes the card more 3D and jazzes it up a bit. cards_0518_12

To cut out such a nice square to place the cross stitch in I used my nifty Cricut. Because I made so many cards in a row I was able to better compensate for placement on the screen vs where it actually ends up cutting. I’m not sure if this is because of their quarter inch no cut zone or what, but it still drives me nuts.

On the inside I used the fancy scissors to create an insert. Since the paper is dark blue I wanted something to help balance my cross stitch back and the right side inside. And now I have a pretty place to write my message.

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And another birthday card to a cousin this year is complete!


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