Trucks, Cake and Frogs

I spent a little time in my craft room on Friday making some birthday cards.  While my craft room is still a mess I was able to carve a little room out for myself on my table and came up with some pretty cute cards (if I do say so myself).

Using a red and white patterned paper on a red background I put a strip of black with some red ribbon down the middle.  I then stamped my images on white and mounted them on black.  I colored in the truck quickly with some markers and decided to mount that whole image on white.  I used some dimensional eyes and my loader was finished.  I then adhered the stamped images to my card.

I made this card out of brown paper and started by taping down a large rectangle of dark blue.  I then mounted a strip of blue argyle paper onto another strip of brown and adhered that to the left side of the card.  I stamped my image on white and colored it in with colored pencils.  I mounted that on brown also and adhered that to the card slightly overlapping the argyle paper.  

My last cards uses one of my favorite stamps.  I just love this little frog!  I used a white card and some green on green striped paper to make the background. I stamped my images on white.  I used some glitter on all the pink flowers and the pink heart.  I then mounted everything on blue and tied a pretty little bow around the flower strip.  Using my word punch I punched a small strip of blue, folded it in half and slipped it around my stamped frog image securing it in place with a black brad.  I then used my double sided tape to put everything onto the card front. 

Linking Up With: Titus 2 Tuesday, 

Cute Little Dragon!

   My son requested a How To Train Your Dragon party for his birthday this year.  He got a new blanket with Hiccup and Toothless the other day and just loves his blanket so much.  It doesn't hurt that we're listening to the How to Train Your Dragon books on CD and we've seen both the movies.  Toothless is an adorable little dragon.  Within a day or so I had tons of great party ideas after searching Pinterest for party ideas.  But I had no good invitation ideas.  Being a card-maker I was NOT going to buy any but I really wanted something that had to do with dragons or eggs or vikings.  So I kept looking and looking.  I found a few cute dinosaur and monster cards that I thought might work.  After playing around for five minutes or so I came up with the most adorable Toothless invitation.  Even if I did use some unusual tools to do it.

Isn't he just darling?!   I love when I surprise myself like that!  Here are the instructions for how I made my dragon card:

1. Cut paper to 4 1/4 x 11 and fold in half.

2.  Form the rounded nose of the dragon at the bottom of your card.  I ended up looking around for something to trace and believe it or not the perfect shape was my Kitchen Aid Mixer blade!  I traced the shape using an embossing stylus pen and then cut along the line with my scissors.

3.  Using my large oval punch from Stampin' Up! I cut two yellow eyes and affixed them to the card front fairly close together and at a slight angle.  I then punched two black circles using the 3/4" circle punch and used double sided adhesive to affix them to the center of the yellow ovals.

4.  At this point I had what looked like a snake and I was stuck for ideas.  So I searched for pictures of Toothless and found a few simple drawings and crafts that showed him with his ears and scales.  Inspired I drew what looked like a W with an extra point at the top of the card to form the dragon's ears and scales.  I then cut them out and asked the kids who I was making.  They all knew right away that it was toothless.

5.  Finally using my stylus I traced a few bumps and circles between the eyes going up toward the scales/ears for his scales on his face.  They don't show up well in the pictures or really even all that well in person but I just felt like I couldn't leave his face plain.

Family Valentine's Day

  Valentine's day is probably my favorite holiday.  I know most people love Christmas, but for me the holiday is just to much.  Valentine's day is much more my speed where a little love, attention and devotion are all that is required.  I look for something new to make the day special each year without breaking the bank and make sure that all my guys feel special and loved.  This year, I accomplished it all with just a few choice recipes.  We started celebrating Valentine's day as a family a few years ago and we've never looked back.  Gone are the days of trying to find a sitter or make reservations; and I don't miss them at all.  My husband and I have plenty of time alone and the boys seem to be growing up faster and faster.  It's nice to spend meaningful time with them and on Valentine's all my guys are showered with love.
  We typically buy a small box of chocolates for the boys but this year they got some new sleds (since most of their sleds broke already).  Unfortunately, they opened their sleds last week and so I knew they'd have nothing but a card to open today.  I realized around 6 o'clock last night that I hadn't even made their cards yet either.  So I quickly set to work and made cards for all three boys plus my husband.  It's not easy to make 4 cards in an hour but I did.  They aren't the the most "wow!" worthy cards I've ever made but I was pleased with how they turned out and, even better, so were the boys.

This one was for my husband 

 
















   I spent the morning making some Dove heart peanut butter cookies for dessert.  I made the boys Valentine's day heart pizzas.  I even cut the pepperoni pieces into hearts for them.  It only took an extra two or three minutes but the boys thought that it was amazing!  We topped off their dinner with some cupid floats.  I put vanilla ice cream in their glasses, topped it off with some Code Red Mountain Dew and gave them each a Twizzler straw.  They were happy and felt pretty special. We ended our night with a family movie; Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.  It was great.
 

Cupid floats 

three heart pizzas for three cuties that stole my heart years ago

   

Christmas Cards

    This year I made a few varieties of Christmas cards, once again.  I used to find one stamp set I liked or a layout that really made me excited and mass produce all my cards but over the last couple of years I've been making several different cards as the mood strikes until I have all 40 or so cards that I need.  The above card was made using green cardstock, starry vellum paper, some silver twine, blue cardstock, and then my image was stamped on white paper.  I then colored in the globe with marker and put crystal effects on the whole thing to make it 3-dimensional and shiny. 

  This card is my favorite (sorry the picture isn't the greatest-- we had quite a few dark, gloomy days around here).  I liked it so much I made three different versions using different shades of blue paper for a total of 12 or so cards.  I used blue paper for the card and made sure I had enough extra scraps to cut out a backing for my snowflake stamped image so that they'd match.  I had some snowflake vellum paper and used clear tinsel ribbon from Stampin Up! to embellish the card.  I stamped my snowflake image on white paper using embossing ink.  I then used heat and stick powder and sprinkled the entire snowflake with Dazzling Diamonds glitter from Stampin Up!



   I loved the simplicity of this card.  I'm not usually a simple card kind of gal and tend to lean towards the more is more philosophy but once I finished this card I really loved it.  It's another card that I ended up making a dozen or so of in a variety of blue shades.  I used my snowflake punch from Stampin Up! and punched out a white snowflake.  I added a rhinestone gem to the end of each "arm" of the snowflake and stamped my sentiment "the little things" in Whisper White craft ink. 

Valentine Cards

     It's funny; I got into paper crafting because I really enjoyed making my own cards.  I stumbled upon Stampin Up! fairly early on and loved learning all the new stamping techniques, acquiring new card making tools and naturally progressed into scrapbooking as it became popular.  I now find it almost difficult to come up with cards.  I don't think it's so much the lack of ideas as it is a general laziness towards making cards.  I don't tend to enjoy card making as much as I enjoy scrapbooking and so when faced with a bunch of cards I need to make I usually opt for a simple, easy design that I can whip up fast.  All four of these cards were made in an hour this morning.  I was under the gun to make all my valentine's for my guys and I'm pretty happy with the cards I came up with (sorry, the photos aren't really the greatest).  They're a bit more "girly" than I'd usually make them since I used pinks and hearts and flowers but hey, it's valentine's day! 
     

   Using a large sheet of dark pink paper for the card background I used a lot of black to accent my layers and make it a bit more manly.  I found black checkered ribbon for the bow and then just layered black, white, black, and pink paper stamped with my rubber "I LOVE YOU" stamp.  I added a few embellishments to the hearts using tiny stick on rhinestones. 

   Using the other half of the pink paper I made the second card.  I found several scraps of pink patterned paper in my pink scrap bin that all coordinated really well together.  I mounted each one onto a piece of black paper and set them down on my card front re-arranging them over and over again until I had a design I liked.  I then used a small square of white paper and stamped my frog image in black ink.  I colored the image in using my markers and adhered it to the smallest pink square.  The sentiment inside reads "have I toad you lately that I love you?"

    I used red paper for the background this time and ran the card through my Big Shot using a fancy flower embossing plate.  I cut small semi- circles out of the two sides of the card for my ribbon to thread to and used double sided tape to hold it in place.  I then stamped my words onto white paper, mounted them onto a patterned red paper, then onto black and back onto white.  I placed the multi- layered sentiments onto the center of the card and added a few more sticky rhinestone embellishments the card between the letters L O V E.

  For the final card I used the remaining red paper for the card and placed a slim black ribbon at the top of the card, tying it into a bow.  I stamped my heart image (twice) onto a long strip of white paper and trimmed it to fit my card.  I then mounted that onto patterned red paper and then a thicker strip of black paper.  I used my markers to color in the hearts and backgrounds and attached the whole thing to the card front.  

It's begning to look a lot like Christmas...

....everywhere I go.  OK, it's not actually looking like Christmas yet, but I do have lots of friends who love the holiday and like to remind me of who many more days, weeks and month we have until the big day.  My sister in law is starting a new crafting venture and asked me to be a crafter for the month of November.  I have many types of crafts I like to dabble in but I am most comfortable with making cards and scrapbook pages.  I finally decided to do up a bunch of Christmas cards.  I figured if nothing sold I'd have most of my Christmas cards done!  I then had to decide if I wanted to sell the cards individually or in a set, if I wanted them all the same or different, how much I was going to sell them for, etc.  I think pricing is the hardest thing to decide!  I like my cards but I'm honest enough to realize other people spend hours longer than I do making really beautiful and intricate cards.  I'm not an intricate detail kind of person, but I want to make sure I charge enough to cover the cost of the materials and the time I do spend making them.  I thought I'd find the actual card making a bit stressful knowing I was going to be selling them but I love how they all came out!  I hope you do too!  So here's a little sneak peak of all my holiday cards. 


I decided on sets of four and some are mixed batches

Some sets of four are all the same (don't you love
 the little shine of the rhinestones?!)



Love the sweet bunny! 

Another mixed set

The last mixed set

Happy Easter!

  Yes, I know I have the wrong weekend, but I did make Easter cards this year for my guys and I have yet to get around to blogging them.  Sorry, what can I say?  We've been very busy around here.  But today is one of those days I'm planning on locking myself in my craftroom and getting a bunch of scrapbooking/ cardmaking done.  Wish me luck; my plans don't always work out the way I hope so we'll see if I get to write another post later or not.

        I don't love these cards; seems like lately I don't really like anything I've been making.  Cards and scrapbook pages keep disappointing me.  I don't know if it's because I always feel so rushed for time or if it's just that I've lost some of that passion and I'm just going through the motions.  Anyhow I thought I'd post some photos of last year's Easter cards.... though now that I look at those I don't love 'em either.  Maybe my expectations are just a bit to high after seeing all the wonderful creations everyone else makes on Pinterest.  Seriously, many of those pages and cards just blow me away!



Monthly Stamp Club

     Last night I met with my local Stampin Up! demonstrator at our monthly stamp club.  We made a very adorable bunny treat bag and a cute get well card.   While these are not my own creations I have so much fun with these classes.  They remind me of techniques I don't think to use often and give me new ways to use the supplies I already have.  Plus, while I freely admit I'm a bit lazy with my card making sometimes most of the cards are more intricate than I think to make on my own.  Lots of layers, supplies, cuts and intricate work I don't always go through the work of putting together myself. 

For the card oval windows were cut in the yellow card and the umbrella paper using the big shot.  We then tied a pretty blue bow and used the modern label punch to cut out the words and a the pink strip that goes behind it.  We cut the pink modern label punch piece in half and attached it to the words so that it made a border at the end and then attached that to our card front. 

With the card front done we turned to the inside.  A white piece of paper was run through the big shot twice; once to cut it using the labels collection framelits and once using the cloud embossing folder.  We then used some blue ink and a sponge to lightly shade the clouds blue.  We stamped two boots in versamark and used pink embossing powder to emboss the boots.  We colored them green with an ink pad and a blender pen and then covered both boots completely with versamark ink and clear embossing powder.  Once embossed it gave the boots a nice shiny rubber boot look. We attached the boots inside the window using dimensionals. 

It was adorable and I loved having most of the cutting already done for me! 




























 My Favorite project though was this adorable bunny bag. 

How could you not love this bunny? 

He's so adorable! 

The original picture we were going off of had a cute little pink bow and a white bunny (still totally adorable!) but we made ours out of brown and pink paper and the demonstrator mentioned making a hat or something for "boy" bunnies.  I immediately thought of the baseball caps I make using the large 2 1/2 circle punch so that's what we did.  I loved the girl bunnies and the pink bows but with all boys in my house a girl bunny was  not in the cards for me! 

I did however, make bows for everyone else!  Everything was already punched and cut for us so all we had to do was use a sponge and some ink to create shading on the shapes.  That said I think I can walk you through what you need to make this since she was kind enough to send us home with a template! 

The body of the bunny is made using the top note bigz die  & the big shot.  The ears are made using the medium oval punch (for the pink) and the small oval big shot die.  The eyes were cut using the 1/2 in punch and the cheeks are made with the 1 1/4 inch punch.  The nose is the new small heart punch.  The feet use the extra large oval punch, 1" circles and 3/8" circles.  We used white gel pens for the highlight on the eyes and the cheek dots.  After I cut my cap out of the large punch I folded it up and inked around it for shading as well and used a dimensional so that the brim remained popped up and then I used the white gel pen to make the lines.  We then attached our bunnies to the bag and turned the bag over to add his tail, which was made with the small scallop circle.

 I can't wait to fill it with candy and give this out for Easter!

Birthdays, Birthdays, Birthdays!

       I spent my morning making 5 birthday card for all the birthday parties we have coming up (well, most of them anyway).  Sine I had so many to make I tried to keep them all fairly simple.  I was also able to use up a lot of scraps since I only used full sheets of paper to make the actual card itself and scraps for everything else. 


These two cards used my butterfly punches.  I just love butterflies and these cards are so simple.



I just could not resist adding a little bling to this one!  I used a gem brad on the ribbon and a row of small rhinestones down the body of the butterflies.  

I also had a few cards to make for the birthday boys!  These truck stamps were just too cute not to use!

Using striped blue and brown paper and some dark navy these cards were prefect.  I embellished them using Stampin Up's chocolate ribbons and some pieces from the Hodgepodge hardware kit. 

I finished up my card making with one final Lego inspired card.

Using an assortment of circle punches, some pup up glue dots and some contrasting paper I made an adorable card.  The number was a leftover sticker I had and the clip was also part of the Hodgepodge hardware pack.