Just a quick one while the house is in chaos

I was working on Easter cards for the family and as I made them, I figured I might as well share them, as the painting and minor repair etc. will mean the house is chaotic and getting to do actual crafting is tricky.

eastercardDownload

I am also experimenting with a new way to add the PDFs. Not sure how much I like it but we will see when it publishes how it looks! Sometimes, “improvements” are not!

Anyway, easy peasy. Print and cut the quadrants then pop them on a cardfront. These fit an A5 card but should be easily trimmed to fit a 1/4 US letter size or perhaps even a few others.

Darling daughter is mad keen on anime, and she has been missing her annual trip to HyperJapan for the last few pandemic years. They did hold it online in 2021, but it’s just not the same. Anyway, kawaii cute cards are perfect for here, and these bunnies made me smile. Hope you find them useful if you need a quick card!

I’m curious – is it better to do a card with the front arranged so all you have to do is print and fold on plain printer paper? I always cut the high-quality printed PDF images then stick them to the front of an actual card base, either a commercial one of one made from quality cardstock leftovers. But I always wonder if more people would prefer the easiest and most basic option. LMK!

My card stash came in handy….

As I am still not really going out, obviously I would hand-make cards rather than buying them. I suppose I would do that anyway, but sometimes you might see a fab store-bought card that is so perfect you just have to buy it – or pilfer the design + words for your next handmade attempt! For Valentine’s Day I had a few cards pre-made, from my a-card-a-day efforts last year, so I had lots to choose from.

I picked two that were in a similar vein:

What I was reminded of was the technique I used of cutting the intricate Cherry Lynne die into different shapes for the focal points:

Yeesh. Sorry about the hot spot reflecting off the silver mirror card heart! The interesting thing is the post that outlined my experiments with this die is old – 2012 to be exact – and these were only a few of the options I played with back then:

I still love this die and loved using it again. Maybe you have one and this will make you want to drag it out and use it!

Ornament cards and a Envelope punch board trick!

So on Friday I added a PDF that has both little folded cards and circle tags to punch. In the past I have made ornament cards for my darling daughter, for her to give to friends at school. Lately she is more interested in picking cards to give out herself, so I have been a bit out of the habit of doing them. But while I was sorting out the top menu of Christmas goodies I was looking back on previous ones and I thought I would make a set to use in case of drop-in guests. Nice to have a stack of signed, in envelope cards that you can just grab if you are caught unawares! Two seconds to scrawl a name (top tip – have a pen stashed with the cards!) and hand it over. All you do is print then cut and fold the cards:

then punch out the circles. I find a medium scalloped square fits the cards perfectly, but you can also use a slightly larger circle or a plain square. Punch the hanger-hole and ink the edges…

then stick the round motif on it with some fun foam or foam squares (or not!) to pop it up, and add a hanger and slip it into the card:

The tricky part is the envelope, right? Well I have one of those envelope punch boards and I thought Perfect! but, then, Nope. The cards are 2.5 inches and is there a square instruction for the board? There is not, or at least not for the one I have. I think there is a different punch board for gift cards, the Mini, but I don’t have that. So I tried to be a bit logical and came up with the solution! I need to experiment a bit more, but I think it works for all squares.

Take your card measurement (in my case 2.5 inches square) and double it then cut you beginning piece to that size.

Align the left edge to the size of your card (in this case, 2.5 inches) and make your punch then score (as per the usual instructions)

Rotate, punch and score as normal and you will have an envelope that perfectly fits your card! It measures just shy of 3 inches square.

To be honest the 3×3 one would have been fine but I like the idea that I can cut the paper and punch without trying to read the stupid writing on the board. I find it very hard to read. What’s wrong with black text on cream so it’s easy? Old eyes struggle, or at least mine do. So for square cards, at least, I can just wing it with a formula.

Result!

Cards from tags

I really liked the tags I shared this year, and wanted a large number of easy cards, using minimal supplies. I thought they could be just the thing and they were!

From a single sheet of 12×12 paper (cut to give me four 4.5×3.75 rectangles, four 4.5×4.5 squares and one 3 x 2.75 rectangle) and a single print of the tags PDF I made nine cards. I added a handful of bits from my Christmas bin but nothing special.

The tags were cute enough to provide a nice focal point, and I thought they looked good even just plunked on top of a square of paper like so:

but just adding some little extras like fun foam to pop bits up from the surface, little bits of ribbon or small punched elements, and a bit of red ink to add some depth, they became a bit more like finished cards and didn’t really take that much time at all:

I didn’t have as many of the square card bases as I thought, but I found these two kraft ones that worked great:

I am not sure how many more I need, but if I do, it’s good to know that I can whip a bundle up in a flash.

Result!

WOYWW 653 – still with the cards

Happy WOYWW all! Nearly the end of another year. Jeez. Where does the time go?

I am still deep into the cards, with only a few left to make to complete the list (plus a few extras) – I wish there was a WOYWW address list that we could request. I know I had some addresses when we lived back in Basingstoke, but once we moved to Dorset, they seem to have gotten lost in the shuffle. Maybe we can organize that for next year….

My desk was once again in a proper state (as of Tuesday early in the AM)

and the bad light doesn’t really do it any favours. You can see the tags I shared on Monday and I had a plan for them beyond, well, tags. Hours elapsed and a quick tidy (who am I kidding? also HOURS or tidying) and:

A tidy pile of cards (and the rest are already down on the table with a bunch of stuff that needs to be mailed or hand delivered) and another duplicate! Not my fault this time either – these seemed to be in a scrapbooking kit of some kind and the same template was in both of two different ones.

Cute enough but unopened and unused. {sigh} Maybe I’ll open one up and see what I can make, if I find the time. I’ll share the cards tomorrow.

So then just the If You HAD To… cards:

Hummmm. Tricky. I am not fast enough to run from light-sabre wielding mobsters, nor cute enough to talk my way out of the debt, so gotta pick Vin’s head as a … I’m gonna say table cause no way to eat soup or salad from a head, unless we go to a VERY dark place….

Happy Holiday-month WOYWW!

Christmas Card extravaganza!

I showed a pile of bits from a card kit I bought probably 10 years ago from one of the shopping channels. I always meant to have a play with then every Christmas since I bought them and never managed it.

There is a LOT of stuff in the kit. And it seems like even more when it is spread out all over the desk LOL!

I looked thru the book and picked out the bits for the cards I really liked and made those first. This is one of my favourites:

I like both versions. And I love the Ho Ho Ho ones as well.

I made one very like this but not from the kit, a long time ago and still think it’s cute:

I am not a fan of this one, but I wanted to see how it came together so I made it. The left is the card closed and inside when you open it, on the right. Sorry for the poor lighting. Winter and all that.

So I have a huge pile of bits still left and many of the remaining cards leave me a bit cold. These two seem to be complicated for the sake of being complicated! And the end result I don’t care for.

These two use a ton of stuff that could be used to make many multiple cards that are much cuter!

And this one is just plain ugly!

So now I will have a look at the bits and maybe marry them with other things in my Christmas bin, and see what I can come up with. Should be interesting!

Heads up for all: I have been working on 2022-2023 calendars. As I have mentioned I am not sure how long my old program can be used. My Mac is from 2009 and at some point I am going to have to give it up. When I do the ease with which I make my calendars might go away as well. So I am working on a handful that I know are always popular and making ahead for 2023. I will be adding them thru December, on Saturdays. They will get collected into the Calendar Making menu at the top and be there well in advance of when they will be needed! Then, if my Mac dies, you will be good for a couple of years.

I haven’t made any holiday gift tags yet, so that may appear at some point soon. Any requests? Drop me a comment!

Well, that was a surprise!

Sorry about the snafu and super late post yesterday! I had created a post, and thought I saved it and scheduled it, but them The Hubster came home from skating and I asked him to do a back-up on my machine (he keeps the back-up disk in the car so if the house burns down the disk is safe) and I guess I messed up the date and time of the post. It might have published but been placed in early November rather than December. Oh well. It’s in the right place now.

So today I am able to share some progress on the cover:

I want to add the word STORAGE under ATC and maybe edge the whole thing with the gold, but it needs a little bit longer to dry.

The big news is…Christmas cards! Going back to a tried and true design, printed the embellished.

Some Happy Christmas and some Merry, depending on which side of the pond they go. I did a post AGES ago on how to make these. Maybe it will be of interest? And there is a set of kraft-background printables as well as the white background here. You can see these (made from the kraft version) are cute too.

I have to get a wriggle on because stuff mailed to the USA is taking a while and I want to make sure they arrive before Xmas. Most will go in packaged with the gifts, but the odd one might go on it’s own.

WOYWW tomorrow!

Last cards – Thanks, Sympathy and Just a note

Hello/Just a Note

I made a LOT of plain Hello cards, because they will do for almost any occasion, even Sympathy, as long as they aren’t too happy and vibrant.

Thinking of You/Sympathy/Get Well:

Again, Thinking of you cards can work for Sympathy if the colours and decor aren’t too crazy happy:

Thank You

Thanks/Thank You cards are the other thing I tend to need a lot of, so I made quite a few of them as well:

And lastly the couple of flip-out cards, one kinda lovey-dovey and one generic Hello:

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28 of the ones from today were for this A Card A Day project, four are old ones! 79 cards, 66 of them new. Not bad.

Time to move on….

Final Card Re-Cap

I am now very comfortable with the stash of cards I have set aside. My little stack of boxes is quite full!

I am sharing them by occasion, I guess, as the beast option. There are a few older ones that were all I had when I began this process, and if you spot them you will know how badly I needed a cardmaking session!

Happy Birthday: Men

Some of these could surely do for my gal pals in a pinch, but I think of these as more in the masculine realm:

I also have four more of the little star-squares, which I can stick on a cardfront in a few minutes, if the need arises. And I have these two older ones as well:

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Happy Birthday: Women

I have a good sash of girlie birthday cards (what I generally need the most of) as well:

I have four more of the star squares as well! And these two – the blue one could go either way, depending on the choices I make for the final embellishments, flowers or plain words:

Generic Friendship

I feel any of the generic cards would also work for a birthday if need be:

Even the lone Congrats card would do in a real card emergency! Most of these are older one – the BOY card I made for the very old Best Of British scrapbooking contest book. Now that is going back some years…. The It’s All About YOU card was made using that odd stamping circle thing and the bikini cards are from a template I downloaded a very long time ago as well.

These should last me a good year, and if not I do still have a ton of scraps that I can use to make more. And although they are probably going to be a gift, I can’t ignore the note card set. Sorry to show it AGAIN – you must be sick of seeing it by now….

38 cards from this selection were from the A Card A Day project, nine old ones. Tomorrow I’ll share the rest.

Nearly the end of the card-making…

I am feeling pretty happy with the stash of cards I have at the moment. I plan to share a good look at all of them over the weekend then I will have a good think about what project I want to focus on. I have been missing a few things, like gel plate printing and art journaling thru the 100 days, junk journal making, and stash-busting cardmaking, and I did get that new art of the fold book, so it could be anything.

So this is the last session I did. I began by setting out a selection from the sleeves in my card-making binder. Sadly it is still quite full so I will probably sort the bits in that into the envelopes I am currently using to organize my scraps of patterned paper and cardstock.

Once I settled on the bits from each sleeve I was going to use, with no real plan I just took the scraps and created the cards.

I kept the bits together and as you will have seen, I made the set of notecards and the little box from the scrap pile of Card #5.

I actually altered that card because the very small flower on it just wasn’t right – I’ll begin with that one:

I’ve complained about the spacing of the letters of this stamp set before and while the space between the h and the e on heartfelt is a little wider than ideal it wasn’t a deal-breaker for me.

Another thing I have been doing a lot of is backing the sentiment die cuts with fun foam for a more dimensional look. And unlike most of what I have seen, I tend towards a dark foam (mostly I see white) and like the vaguely shadowed look it gives:

This half-tone die is also new-ish and will make a nice stencil, I think. Here is another example of the foam (brown this time) and again, I like how it makes the sentiment stand out. I think I need a few more pearl dots on this one, not sure.

I always loved this circle die and it was not as tricky as I thought it would be to get the backing circle just behind the main area.

I still think a basic Hello card can serve many occasions, so happy to have what may seem like a LOT of them LOL! I did NOT pop this sentiment up on the foam, mostly because of all the layers of cardstock behind it, only cutting two copies and stacking them, but I think it might have looked better if I had.

And finally one more sympathy card:

I tinted the sentiment with Tea Dye ink and it really tones better with the background in real life than it appears here. Very much a case where that darn Hobbycraft off-white/cream card that is very much NOT the White it claimed to be might have been a good choice!

So there we go. I am going to try to lay them all out in groups to share over the weekend as I contemplate my next move. Sorry if I have bored those who come here looking for mixed media stuff or fun folding or whatever else I do that appeals. For someone who has always said “I am not a cardmaker” I seem to have gone down an odd path. Time to get back on track till the next time I am in dire need of cards…. Thanks for sticking with me, if you have.