Cards – Father’s Day and Birthday

Yesterday I spent some time making more cards…Father’s Day is fast approaching and more guy birthdays!  I always seem to struggle with guy birthdays.  Anyway, today I have CASE’d my good friend Tina’s Father's Day offering.  For Father's Day I did one of each of the shirt and fishing vest offerings.  I changed them up a little by using solid colored paper for the guy’s shirt and a patterned tie and handkerchief for the pocket.  These papers are from the Tradewinds paper pads from DCWV.  For the fisherman’s vest I used Kraft paper and inked up the edges with Vintage Photo ink from Tim Holtz.  I used a circle punch for the sleeve holes and the same for the collar indent on the front of the vest.  I added some twine in the pocket with a swivel attached to the end.  In the other pocket I put a small fish hook attached to some thread hanging off the pocket.  Thanks to my hubby for letting me raid his tackle box!

Father's Day

After finishing these cards I decided to make some for the guy birthday’s coming up.  I created the shirt card once again with papers from the Tradewinds paper pads and added a birthday sentiment inside.  When I was working on the earlier fishing vest it reminded me of a card sentiment stamp I had that goes perfect with the fishing vest idea…so a couple of more vests later I have cards with happy birthday stamped on the outside and on the inside the sentiment  “It’s your day…catch all the fun you can,” great play on words for the fishing concept!  Again, I added swivels and small fish hooks to the pockets to add more authenticity to the cards.  

Shirt Birthday Card



Fishing Vest Birthday Card



As I was finishing these up…I realized you could make the fishing vest for a gal also, I know some gals who also enjoy fishing…hmmm…another project for the next time!

Imagine, Create, Enjoy!

Explosion Boxes

Awhile ago, my friend Tina taught a few of us how to make Explosion Boxes.  You’ve seen them, an ornament sized box that once you remove the lid, its sides fall open and you have different pages to put your pictures on.  My first attempt actually turned out pretty good.  I made a box to memorialize one of our Disneyland Trips when the kids were smaller.  

Side of box



Box exploded!

So my niece Teri, wanted explosion boxes made to hold her two children’s annual school pictures for their entire school careers (they are college and post-college now).  I set to work.  Since the box was going to cover all ages I needed the papers to be generic and not age specific and at first glance to show the difference between boy and girl.  For Johanna’s box I chose papers that had purple, pink, olive green and pale yellow.  I paired that with patterned papers from Cloud9Design the Brittany's Castle collection.  

Outside of box.



Inside with heart labels!



Since my niece was the one who was going to be putting the pictures in the box and I didn’t know in which order she would put them, I wanted a way for Teri to be able to label each picture for the school year during which it was taken.  Teri is not a scrapper…she is a seamstress.  I wanted this to be easy for her, so I came up with the idea to print on matching cardstock the years of school, K through College, and punch them out in the shape of small hearts.  In this way Teri could order the photos however she wanted in the box and just match the appropriate year and heart.  To personalize them even more, I decided to make the top bear each of the kid’s names.  If there was any question about whose box it was, it would be easily discernable.  Well the finished product doesn’t have their names, but it bears their initials and while they both have the same initials, I think I’ve made them different enough for anyone to be able to tell which box is Johanna’s and which is Jameson’s. 

Johanna's lid.

I used the Cricut Tie the Knot cartridge for the letters.  They have beautiful swirls attached to the bottom of each initial.

Jameson's box.



For Jameson's box I was struggling with knowing which papers to use.  It's hard sometimes to find papers that can be used for guy projects that have some personality.  While attending my recent kraft class, I found this paper pack that my friend Jayne suggested might work.  I chose papers from Tim Holtz’s Retro Grunge pad in green patterns for the insides, blocks and tabs, and added a dark blue, a lighter green, and a brown shade for the layers of the box.  For the top of his box I chose a star and I used his first, middle, and last initial in a simple font.  I made the years of school on smaller stars, again so Teri can mount them on the appropriate picture.  I loved this paper pad because it had some pages that had pre-sized squares in 6 x 6 and 2 x 2 inches and this allowed me to use some of the smaller pieces for tags to insert into the pockets.  Here is a look at the inside.  

Exploded box with stars!



I have sent off both boxes to my neice.  She received Johanna's a few weeks ago and loved it.  This one she should be receiving in a day or two.  I'm hoping she likes it just as much!  It's been fun.  I just might have to make a few more!

Thanks for stopping by.  Imagine, create, enjoy!

More Birthday Cards

May is another one of those months for my family...lots of birthdays along with a number of friend's birthday's, Mother's Day, graduations.  So...this weekend has been about birthday card making and attending birthday parties.  I needed a couple of girl birthday cards and some guy birthday cards.  Here is what I came up with for the gals.

This one uses paper from the Far East paper pad by DCWV.  I inked around the edges of the card and then  mounted this smaller square on the card stock after stamping the sentiment...I added a butterfly with some bling on the front. Inside I cut a smaller piece of the butterfly paper from the Far East pad and the took another piece from the pad and cut the two rosettes with my Tim Holtz rosette die.  Love that die!

Here is the next one.  I used some paper from a 4x6 pad of the K&Company Susan Winget's Spring Blossom specialty pad.  I added birthday wishes on the outside, some bling to the printed paper flowers,

and then a paper flower of maroon and yellow, a die cut butterfly below the stamped sentiment, with maroon ribbon tied around the spine of the card.  Inside is a birthday wish, a schwoopie on the bottom and another one of those fun rosettes.  I added a pop up butterfly accent along with a small maroon ribbon there to complement the outside ribbon.  Since the die cuts two rosettes, I put the larger one on the outside of the envelope to spiff it up!

Now on to the guy cards.  I used Kraft stock for two of the three cards and then some ivory card stock that I inked up around the edges to give a kinda grunge look if you will.  The first one I also used my Cricut for the sentiments on the outside.  It was fun mixing and matching from my Cricut cartridge.

These next two are similar, I liked the idea for the first one and decided to duplicate it a little on the next one.  I used paper from the new Tradewinds stack by DCWV.  It has papers that will go well for both guy and girl cards.  Can't wait to make some more.

The card on the left used ivory  card stock the one on the right Kraft paper.  I used the Cuttlebug slider die cuts to make the little sentiment tags to put on the ribbon.  Used brown ribbon, and then attached the buttons from my stash.  All in all, I think it was a pretty productive weekend.  I hope you enjoyed today's post.  Thanks for stopping by, have a great week.
Imagine, Create, Enjoy!

Mother's Day Card

I have recently gotten some Martha Stewart punches.  They are the deep edge Aster punch, the Starburst punch around the page border and corner punch and the Starburst punch around the page punch that allows you to punch anywhere on the page (i.e., in the middle of the paper).  They had been sitting on my craft table, staring at me...you know...you buy something cuz you think how cute it would be to do a project like that, and you get the item and then it sits and stares at you...at least some of my supplies do that!  Not with everything, but with a few things.  Anyhow, I digress...I decided Mother's Day was the perfect time to use these punches.  After a few attempts with the punch around the page punch I got the idea.  First of all, the way these punches are set to work, you must have evenly sized paper on all sides (if I'm wrong, someone please enlighten me!).  If you don't, you get some half punched flowers or starbursts and others with holes in them.  After I figured that part out it turned out to be pretty easy.  I used purple card stock to punch around for the background against which I mounted some pretty patterned paper from K&Company's Botanical Specialty paper pad by Susan Winget.  She makes some beautiful papers.  I stamped my Mother's Day sentiment on the patterned paper.  I then had a background to mount the butterflies I had cut with my Sizzix machine and my SU! butterfly die.  I then added a large Aster flower made with the deep edge punch out of contrasting green color and added some bling.  What card or project is complete with out a little bling.  I mounted all of this on a specialty white iced looking paper.  On the inside of the card I used my butterfly stamp and stamped butterflies on the left edge of the card, then covered one of the stamped images with a pretty, glittery, blinged out butterfly, and added another butterfly die cut from the Sizzix and added the schwoopie in the lower right corner.  I thought it turned out pretty nice.  My mother-in-law liked it which is the important part!  Thanks for visiting today.  Hope to see you again soon!

Imagine, Create, Enjoy!

Gift Card Holders

Last fall sometime, I was surfing the net and found a cute little StampinUp! tutorial on some easy as pie gift card holders (I don't recall the blog or video offering, sorry).  I thought I'd give it a try since I had lots of scraps left over from my journal gift making marathon!  The paper scraps were mostly from Christmas pads but some of the patterns and colors were generic enough they could be used for general gift card holders.  I have altered the original design.  That demonstrator used solid card stock with patterned paper on the flap only; I used patterned paper mounted on card stock for the entire card holder.  The measurements are approximately 7-5/8” long by 4-3/4” wide and then scored at 1-3/8” and 4-1/2” to provide the cards folds.  They use a standard 4-3/8 x 5-3/4 inch envelope, sealed and cut in half, which provides you with two pockets.  These are glued together back to back and then glued to the card stock.  One half of the envelope holds the card you see below with your sentiment on one side and blank on the other side to personalize and the other half of the envelope holds the gift card.

On the outside you cut 3 pieces of solid card stock, patterned paper, and then your other solid card stock for stamping your sentiment or decorating as you see fit with stickers, etc.  In these samples they have Christmas holiday sentiments stamped on them.  I then glammed them up with some Stickles and some bling. Once completed, this block is adhered to the lower front of the front flap with pop dots to make it stand away from the background.  It functions as the piece that holds the flap in place once you have put the sentiment card and gift card in the envelope pockets.

The last card is more generic, although the papers, as noted above, were from a Christmas paper pad.  This one will be used for a thank you gift for someone.  These are handy little gift card holders and can be adapted for most any gift situation.  I showed them to a friend who made some for her BUNKO gifts when it was her turn to be hostess. 

Thanks for visiting today.  Imagine, Create, Enjoy.

Kraft Class



Gift Card Holder

This past Saturday I got to take a class on crafting with Kraft paper and mixed media.  The guest instructor came down from Berkeley and we had 2 and a half hours of crafting madness and fun.  We received all kinds of goodies when we got to class...more than enough supplies to complete the projects the instructor demonstrated and led us through as well as much more to continue on our own.  The first project was a gift card holder shown here.  We used a butterfly patterned paper cut to 5 x 12 and scored at 5 inches for the center fold and then at about 3/8 inch and about 1 and 1/2 inches.  The top is kind of eyeballed.  The accent pieces are just Kraft paper stamped with a couple of different designs.  We cut out a couple of butterflies and mounted them as well as some additional accents.  A cute gift card holder.


Party Card

The second project was this card.  The instructor had some patterned paper with cows on it.  We cut that to fit on the scored card stock, added the craft envelope on the left, the arrow from a scrap from the back side of the cow paper (don't you love double sided paper!).  On top of the envelope a clear button with some thread through the eyes and glued on top of the stamped area on the envelope.  Three brads to the left of the button, added the brown arrow cut on my Cricut and other accents and the words Party till...on the front of the card.  If you don't understand or know the old saying it goes "Party till the cows come home!"  Great card!

Gift Tag

The final project I completed in the class was this tag!  I've watched my co-worker Jayne make some absolutely beautiful and amazing tags, so I was anxious to get the chance to create my own masterpiece.  We started with a standard manila colored pre-cut tag, added the seed packet accent after smudging/inking the edges.  Added a ticket with some shwoopie's on it and a Kraft square stamped with a postage stamp image, along with a small film strip stuck in next to it.  I also learned how to make an apron pleat (I believe this is the terminology).  We folded the paper after inking it up and made the pleats, added a canvas inked flower on top of a textured paper flower (material by Tim Holtz) with a small brad in the center and attached to the pleat.  I then added a little bit of floral lace on top and affixed the whole thing to the bottom of the tag.  Finally to finish it off we had some paper twist ribbon which I tied in a bow after adding the little dragonfly charm.  Turned out pretty nice I think. 

Hope you enjoyed today's post.  I certainly had a blast making it all and sharing it with you.
Imagine, Create, Enjoy.