You're a Jewel

I'm not much of a card maker, unless it's birthday invitations.  But recently, while we were in NYC, my cousin and his wife watched our boys for a couple of days.  I wanted to thank her so I made her a card.

Not being much of a card person I needed something quick and easy.  And since I was making it for a girl I actually got to use girly colors.  Yay!

I used SCAL to cut a crown.  Since there were cut outs in the crown I also cut a blackout version in white to layer behind.  I thought I'd show you this shot of my computer because it lets you see how easy it is to figure out exactly how much paper you need for each cut.  Love that!

Here you can see the two papers I used to cut my crown.  The first time i saw someone lay out a Cricut mat like this (with multiple colors of paper) it was like a light bulb went off.  So I just had to share it with you too.

At some point I got two packs of these cards with my initial on it.  I don't use them much so I thought I'd just alter one for this card.

The crown was almost big enough to cover the M, but not quite.  So I took a pink sharpie and colored in the areas that might show.

And placed my crown on the card.  It is hard to see here, but the white shape was layered under the gold.  It peeks out a bit from behind the jewels.  And what kinda crown doesn't have jewels?  I had fun using some nice big bling on this one!

Ok, this here is my new favorite trick! Are you ready for this one?!?!  When I am making a title out of stickers I use my ruler to help me.  I stick just the bottom of the stickers onto the edge of the ruler and get them all lined up how I want them.

Then I stick the top part of the letters onto the card or layout.  Finally, I gently pull the ruler off the bottom while holding the top with my fingers. It's not perfect, but it makes it so much easier to get everything lined up just right.  I learned this trick from Noell Hyman over at Paperclipping.  She has so many awesome tips on her site!

And here is one last peek at the card I made for a jewel of a friend.



















Are you a card maker?  Have any fun card sentiments to share?  Someone done something extra nice for you lately?  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Graduation Cards

This week we celebrated 3 graduating seniors at our church.  About an hour before the party I realized I didn't have any cards!  Then I remembered this post over at Eighteen25 and knew I could throw together some adorable cards!

Cute right?!?  These papers are, of course, courtesy of Crystal.  Have I mentioned I love her stuff?  Oh, yeah...you probably knew that already.  :)

I'm thinking I did an awesome job with time to spare.  I was ready to print them out when...I discover I'm out of ink.  GRRRRRR!

So 10 minutes later I had these!  I grabbed some pattern paper scraps and cut them like a mad woman!

Wrapped them in some of this adorable twine from The Twinery! Love this stuff!

Cut some slits and add some cash!  And I had to handwrite the sentiment but at this point I was down to the wire.  Kids were already in the car and my husband was honking at me.  :)  But I left the house with 3 graduation cards!  (Thank goodness for the garage sale cash sitting in kitchen!!)

Have you had to throw together something crafty at the last minute?  Link us up and let us see!

Teacher Appreciation Week

As many of you know, this week is Teacher Appreciation week.  At my son's school they are having a spirit week in honor of those awesome teachers!  Today we were to send a note or email to a teacher we appreciate.  My son made his own but I wanted to send something too.  And the girls at eighteen25 gave me the perfect one!

I made this exactly as they did here. (free download alert!) Plus it meant I got to head to Starbucks for gift cards, sleeves, and a little something extra for me...venti, decaf, caramel macchiato, single shot, with whip (I know, I like sugar milk with a splash of coffee).  :)  I made one for each of my son's teachers.

I got this lovely twine over at The Twinery.  Their sample pack was perfect for me!  Just for fun I made one card with green and one card with turquoise.

On Thursday the spirit activity at my son's school is to bring flowers.  I decided to take my own twist on that.  So I made a pencil bouquet.

I grabbed some scrapbook flowers, fancy brads and some glue dots.  In the dollar section of target I found these adorable green pencils which made the perfect stems.

Here is the whole "flower."

Some glass beads in the cute flower pot I picked up at Michaels made the perfect base for my bouquet of pencils.

I designed my own pencil topper but I found the poem here.    I decided to also attach it to a pencil.  I love how it turned out!  Most of the digital products on this topper came from Crystal.  Check her stuff out.   It's awesome!

Have you made anything fun for a teacher in your life?  Link us up in the comments so we can share the inspiration!

Cuddly Animal Invites

It's that time of year again, for me...birthday invitation time!  My youngest still LOVES Mickey, but we are branching out a bit this year.  His newest obsession is Go, Diego, Go.  So we are having an animal rescue party.  I knew that I had to find a way to use some of my favorite svgs from SVGCuts.com, the Cuddly Animals collection.

Since this party is just for family I only needed 7 invitations.  I made one more to put in my son's baby book.  Rather than make all the cards the same I chose to do a different animal on each one.  More fun for me.  :)

I knew I wanted to print the title directly onto the cards.  So I made a file in Photoshop with the appropriate dimensions.  I used the type tool to add my title.  Then I did a search for free animal print digi paper.  I added some animal print and clipped it to the title.  For a tutorial on how to do this see this post here.  Clipping works the same if you are working with a shape (as in the tutorial) or with text.  Just be sure you use a bulky font so that you can see your paper.

I also created a file for printing the inside of the invite.  This time I just used brown for the text, no fancy clipping.  I had a TON of problems getting my printer to print on the size card I had (6.5x10 when laying flat).  At one point I had to walk away so I wouldn't damage my equipment!  :)  In the end I had to trick my computer into thinking my cards were actually 8.5x11 and I finally got it to work.

Hippo

Monkey

Zebra

Elephant

Giraffe

Gorilla

Tiger

Lion (I'm keeping this one!)

On each animal I inked the edges and popped up the feet and nose for depth.  Many animals also got hit with some dry embossing.  It was a lot of fun assembling each Cuddly Animal!

I'm off to go address the invites and get them in the mail!  And then I need to figure out what the heck we are going to do for this party.  :)  I'll post more in a few weeks when I've got it all figured out!

Scrapbooking Your Christmas Card

My very first blog post ever was this one where I posted about using your Christmas card as your design inspiration for a layout.  I've always really loved how this layout turned out and thought it was a perfect way to end my yearly album.

But this year I decided to create my own Christmas card digitally which you can read about here.

When it came time to scrap this year's card I realized that I didn't want to recreate it with paper.  I'd spent so long on it digitally that it just didn't make sense to start over.  So I chose to use an actual card as the main element in my layout.  Those of you that read this blog much know that I typically scrap double layouts.  But since this is for the last page in my album I could do a one pager.  Which worked perfectly.

I cut a mat for the card and just stuck it right on top, as I would a picture.

For this mat I used a border punch.  I wanted the straight edge left on so I was careful not to punch all the way to the corner.  For more info on how to use a border punch see here.  The red mat on the red background paper didn't have quite the pop I was looking for so I added a white layer underneath the red.

Things still seemed a little too monochromatic for me so I added a thick white ribbon.  This ribbon came off a package that was sent to me.  I loved it so I threw it in my color bin and it was just waiting for me when I pulled out my white tub for this project.  Love that!

I hate dealing with frayed edges of ribbon at the edge of my page so I usually wrap the ribbon around to the back and tape it down.  I use adhesive on the front as well to hold it in place, but the tape on the back seems to work best for me when I'm trying to keep it from snagging the edge of my page protector on the way into the album.

For a little extra something I added this cute gem Christmas tree.  It gave this simple layout just the right amount of sparkle.

So quick and simple!  Gotta love that! And I have a way to remember my Christmas card always.  Perfect!

Kids Crafting

Have I mentioned I LOVE Write.Click.Scrapbook?  Cause I so do!  Today as I was trying to figure out what to do with my grumpy 5 year old I saw this post about Weekend Projects You Can Create With Kids.  I knew I had a winner!  So I popped into my scraproom and gathered the supplies I'd need.

I have a stash of blank cards and envelopes that I got in bulk at Hobby Lobby.  I grabbed 10 for this project.  The inspiration project used buttons but I didn't have any that size so I just used my scrap supplies to punch out some circles.  I hand cut some little black hats and orange noses out of my scrap stash.  And used some blue snowflake paper cut 1/2 in smaller than the face of the card.  Then I called in my boy and let him at it.

Glue sticks would have been cleaner, but I didn't have any at home so Elmers it was.  We had a short lesson on what a small dot of glue actually is.  Then I had to walk away for a bit so I wouldn't get to bossy about how things should be done.  My OCD can tend to kick in during times like these, and that's not fun for anyone.  :)

After he glued on all the details I gave him a black pen to draw on the eyes, mouth, and buttons.

Cute little guy isn't he?

When all 10 cards were assembled I pulled out my silver glimmer mist and gave them a gentle spritz.  Be sure to hold it back far enough that you don't get big droplets on the paper.

I love the subtle shine glimmer mist gives to your projects.  And this was perfect for snow.  I don't even mind the lumpiness of the Elmer's glue.  Just makes it look more like snow.  :)

The completed card.  Love this!

I didn't have enough snowflake paper to have all 10 cards match.  But I think it's kinda fun that they don't.  And while the supplies for each card are the same, each one is just a little different. I could have printed or stamped a small message inside (prior to decorating the fronts) but chose to leave them blank.  That way the recipient can decide how they want to use the cards.

We paired the 10 cards with 10 envelopes and slipped them in the little sleeve they came with.  Then tied a pretty ribbon around to match.

Once you have added a cute ribbon tie on a little gift tag and you are ready to go.

I used one of my gift tags that I made with pics from Picture the Holidays.  So fun!

These would make great gifts for Grandma, a Classroom or Sunday School Teacher, even a special neighbor.  My son decided he wanted to give them to his former Pre-School teacher cause he, "just misses her."  Love that!

And love that this project took me around 5 min to prep cause I had all the supplies on hand.  And turned my grumpy boy into a cheerful one.  Plus it kept him busy for about an hour and a half.  What a great Saturday morning project!