Thanks card and covered notebook

I just couldn't find much crafting mojo today even though I had most of the day free to do whatever I want after buying the hubby the NASCAR 2011 game. I love that he spent hours today just designing his own car! It's so cute. So I trolled the blogs, checking out what others had done. Then I finally forced myself to work on my need to do list and, rather than doing laundry, chose to make a thank you card for the neighbor. He was kind enough to weld the muffler from the chipper so that Matt could chip up the branches he pruned from the fruit trees out back. So we bought a six pack of the beer the neighbor likes for the next neighborhood "safety break" and I said I would make a card to go with so we could take him his little thank you. I finally turned out this one. I played with some We Are Memory Keepers foil I bought yesterday while checking out what was new at the local scrap booking store. I gave it an aged look with some distress ink, used the same ink on the mat, added some texture to the background and a little Stickles around the edges and called that good. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the inside. The paper is plain black on the outside, but has this delightful shimmer on the inside.

So then I puttered around for a while with no direction watching thriller and horror movies on Netflix (but no good ones) until I came across this little book I found at Craft Warehouse (for all of $1 I think). I am so happy with the little notebook I did a few weeks ago and am so in love with that paper (thankfully I have a whole pack of it that I bought at the CKC last month) that I decided to finish it off in much the same way. It's a quick project, but I'm really happy with everything except the corners on the back. If you look really closely, you'll see that I made an error on my angles and cut them wrong for mitering. Oh well, I still like it.

New inspiration from CKC and the Disney/Pixar blog hop

So I've spent the last two days at the Creating Keepsakes convention. I went by myself on Friday and then yesterday took my Mom for the first time. It was a ton of fun, but I do have to admit that after a little while, all the booths start to blur together. It's much better if you can look at a few for a while and then go do something else. Despite the blur of the booths, my mind is filled with ideas, but I have projects I have to finish before I can really start letting the ideas pour out. A co-worker announced that she is leaving and her staff members came to me and asked me to do a "goodbye book" for her. I've done several of these in the past and they are really simple. It's just a picture of each staff member and a place for them to write her a little message. Usually, they are a snap, since I've kept the format, it's just a little updating of staff names and pictures. But it's been a while since I've done one and I didn't realize how many people have come and gone, so it took a lot longer today than I anticipated. But, it's ready for the pictures of the new people that her staff are getting for me. So maybe another hour or so sometime this week and that will be done. When I needed a little break from the digital manipulation, I finally found the time to cover this little notebook I bought a couple weeks ago when out shopping with my sister. It was a "green" recycled book that was pretty blah looking. I found a package of this argyle paper at CKC that I just loved and I had the ribbon on hand. A little glitter pen (that doesn't show up well in the picture) and voila... All I can say is that covering the front was a breeze, but it took a bit of time to figure out where to put the slit for the pen holder and the circles and slit for the elastic band, but it looks pretty good. The other to-do item on my list today (other than laundry) was to writes a few cards to friends who need a little pick me up. It seems like there's quite a few lately who have been going through some rough times. So if you read my blog you know that I have a bit of a stash of cards right now, so I didn't really need to make any, but I saw an idea in the Boxer booth at CKC about a card that says "I'm all ears..." and I knew that was perfect to send to a friend to remind her that whenever she needs someone to talk to, she can call me. So I went ahead and made a new one today to send to her. I guess I was more than a little inspired by the Disney/Pixar blog hop yesterday. They did a wonderful job with that one and if you are interested in seeing the hop, it started here.

First set of cards featuring the Natural card base

So here is the first set of cards from my weekend's card-making frenzy. The box of cards was the Natural set from DCWV. I love that the colors are a little more masculine so it gave me the opportunity to make some more masculine looking cards.

A productive weekend

The hubby and I decided to spend our three day weekend camping... in the snow. Yup, there was about an inch of snow on the ground when we got to the campground, but since we have an RV (with a furnace), it's not really a big deal. We were toasty warm the whole weekend. What I couldn't believe was the number of people camping in tents. Crazy! Fortunately the snow was pretty much melted by the end of the second day as you can see here.

It was our first weekend with the new satellite dish in the RV. I couldn't believe how easy it was to set up. But I have to confess there's something very decadent about sitting in the RV watching all the same shows I would be watching at home with the same DVR capability we have at home to pause TV. Matt was thrilled to watch hours of NASCAR while camping. Because it was so cold outside, we only went for a couple of walks so we watched a lot of TV.

Most of the time, I was making cards.... 76 of them! I had picked up boxes of the DCWV the Natural and La Creme card bases at Jo-Ann's when they had them on sale a few weeks ago and the mat stacks to go with. I had packed a limited amount of supplies, mostly punches, ribbon, my Irock and a few embellishments. When I was done, I realized that I hadn't missed my whole stash of supplies but had been able to made do easily with what I had there. There was only one card base that I didn't want to use because I knew I needed something from my room that I hadn't brought with.

Overall it was a pretty good weekend. Camping in the snow was kind of fun, Chewie had a great time watching the Canadian geese and other birds (yes we take a cat camping, usually two, but this time Tigger didn't want to come with), the satellite worked perfectly and I got a lot of cards made up for future use.

So the weekend was great, but this week is killing me with several people out so I'm trying to cover three jobs and still do my own. Yesterday I started at work at 6 a.m. straight through to my evening speaking engagement, so I didn't pull in to the garage until 10 p.m. Then today there was lots of drama I could have done without so, even though it was more of a normal work day, I feel like I've been through the ringer trying to get everything done. I'm too tired to do more tonight. I'll add pictures of some of the card styles later when I'm a little less zombie-ish feeling.

What is going on?

So today at work I had just got off the phone with my co-worker whose mother-in-law died yesterday, when I hear another manager right next door on the phone with her employee whose mother died suddenly over the weekend too. It's just such a shock to have two co-workers lose loved ones so suddenly in the same weekend. Since I was tired tonight, I simply revised a previous card so I would still have time to clean up my craft room a bit, clean the kitchen a bit and get to bed pretty early. Good night all.

Sympathy card and slide SVG

I got a voicemail yesterday that my co-worker's mother-in-law was not doing well and likely would not survive the weekend. So this afternoon I resigned myself to creating a sympathy card. The DCWV La Creme mat stack I picked up on Friday evening was the perfect paper. But I needed something different to go on the card. I had looked at the buckle set of SVGs on SVGcuts.com the other day, which made me think about using a slide, but I haven't bought the set yet. So I looked through the files I have and couldn't find one. I didn't find one on the Fabulous Finds cartridge that was really what I was thinking of either so I decided to try my hand at finally making my own in Inkscape. It didn't take long and I had exactly what I had imagined. I cut it out of the cardboard from the packaging of a case of the hubby's diet Mountain Dew and then out of the scraps of the paper from the inside of the card. A little black ribbon, a few punches of an edge punch, a few swipes of tape and voila:

Unless you are familiar with that stack, you probably don't know that the flowered paper is flocked so there's lots of texture on this card. So if you want to pick up the slide I made to use in a project of your own, you can download it here.

Card making frenzy

Wow, I can't believe how long it's been since I posted. Really, I've been very busy and I have been crafty, but just haven't finished many projects lately, but I did want to share with you one crazy card making frenzy I just finished in late February.

I was out of my stash of handy, pre-made cards and needed a few in hurry for thank you’s, get well and birthday greetings. I was perusing the local Michaels when I saw the little DCWV Citrus mat stack. I was really drawn the cheerful colors and prints. I thought, I can make that work for some simple cards. Sure enough a card making frenzy was born and boy did I have a blast.

In only a few hours spread over a couple of days, I made up a whole stack of cards. It was so much fun, I've already bought another mat stack to do it again. I love how all the colors coordinate together beautifully so the "trimmings" work as accents on another card. After I had started, I realized that there’s enough paper in the stack to make three of each card combination and it worked out perfectly that there was always a glitter paper for the front of the card and plain paper for the inside. That also means that making a lot in a short period of time is a snap. Plus it doesn't take much in the way of supplies. Literally I only used my cutter, a few edge punches, a corner rounder, my eyelet tool and ribbon hole attachment, some ribbon, a couple of flowers, a few brads and buttons, and my handy ATG. Wow the list seems long there, but it really doesn't take up much room in my handy-dandy little crafting tote, which means that stack that is waiting to be made into cards is destined for our next camping trip.

It was pretty inexpensive too. I think I paid less than five dollars for the little stack with my coupons, plus $1.50 for nice heavyweight linen from the local paper supply from a ream I got with a great coupon and $1.72 for the matching envelopes (only because it wasn't as good of a coupon), about five dollars in tape (I think I went thought a whole box of ATG tape and I always get that at Michaels with a coupon), and maybe two or three dollars at most for the embellishments, which were from my existing stash (so does that really count? Okay, I'll count it but I'm not counting the costs of all the punches and other tools.). So that’s about $16 for about 36 cards. I think that’s a great value considering what store cards cost nowadays; although, come to think about it, I don’t think I’ve bought a store card in years so I don’t honestly know what they charge anymore. My husband certainly thinks it a great value because it kept me occupied for several days. :)

I left the cards fairly plain with room to add a sentiment on the outside, and plenty of room for a quotation, verse or greeting on the inside. But those I'll add at the time to avoid having a stack of "Congratulations on your retirement" cards when I really need a "Sorry about your rotten luck on the slopes, hope you get out of that full body cast soon" card, which of course I never seem to need except when I don't have one on hand.

The pictures aren’t the greatest because the glitter (and that highly polished wood of mine! ha ha) reflects a lot of the light in my craft room, but they give you an idea. The last picture is the stack of cards in my card keeper, minus about five that I’ve already sent out.

Mojo Monday inspired

Boy it seems like I'm making cards like there is no tomorrow anymore. A co-worker is having surgery soon and I wanted a card that we could all send to him. Argh, yes, the dreaded masculine card. So I headed out to my favorite websites to find some inspiration and decided to use Mojo Monday this time. I love this argyle paper from DCWV. I've used it on several cards and I think it goes well on a masculine card. I just had to make one little change to one of my Stampin' Up stamps to remove the I and hand-insert "We". Fortunately I was able to put it together in minutes and still make the Cricut class tonight.

Oh, and I should add that my helpers were quiet tonight. Tigger has adopted the extra chair in my craft room and Chewie found a hidey hole in the entertainment center (or maybe I should call it scrapbooking center since it only houses my scrapbooking stashes now?).

One last thing, it seems that no matter where Matt leaves his jersey, Tigger finds it and camps out. Maybe he's dreaming of the 'hawks bringing home the Memorial Cup? Considering they are 10-2, at the top of the WHL US Division and have the most points of any team in the whole league, that dream may become a reality.