Last Minute Cards Made Easy!

Hey, do you procrastinate making those handmade Valentine’s Day cards? Or are you like me, and you’re so busy, you just haven’t had time until now?  I have a bad habit of not making my cards until the day arrives, and I know there are others like me, so I wanted to send out a quick post to share a couple of ideas.  You could make these cards this afternoon, and no one would be the wiser!

I used products I had on hand for both of these fun cards, so it’s a great way to use up a few scraps! All you need is a pretty embossing folder (or two if you want them to be different), a background stamp, two different sized heart punches, a heart die (or use the large punch on both cards), some bakers twine, a bit of ribbon, your sentiments, an assortment of cardstock, and ink.  Oh, and don’t forget pop dots or dimensional foam adhesive to add interest.

I used mostly Stampin’ Up products for this, because that’s what I had on hand, including the papers, both punches, and ink.  I can't remember where the larger heart die came from.  The embossing folder was an old Stampin' Up folder called Elegant Bouquet. The background stamp was Gorgeous Grunge, which retired a few years back.  “Love” was from Close to My Heart’s #C1480 from the Roxieworkshop. “I HEART YOU” is from the Stampin’ Up And Many More set.

So what are you waiting for? Go make those cards!

Crafting in Paradise

Looking outside today, it's hard to believe that just a week or so ago it was snowy and cold here in the Dallas area.  Having just come back from a cruise with the Denton County Aggie Moms, I was not happy to be stuck indoors wearing layer upon layer of clothes to keep warm.  Now it is warm, and I want to be outside, soaking up some sun!  So for all of you who are still deep in the throes of winter, who are aching for some sun and tired of all the snow, here's a little something to help take your mind off needing another layer of socks....

Picture this, a warm Caribbean breeze is gently blowing through your hair, the warm sun kisses your skin while the tide licks your toes and keeps you cool.  A fruity drink with a pretty little umbrella is in your right hand, and your left hand just found your favorite song on your iPod.  

Hours later, after a delicious meal, you head to the Conference Center, where you and your friends can while away the hours working on your scrapbooks, cards, or other crafty projects.  Everyone is having a great time, learning new skills, creating beautiful things, and enjoying each other's company.

You get to do this for SEVEN DAYS.  No dishes, no laundry, no work...just you, your crafts, your friends, some fun workshops, and a cruise ship full of more fun and activities that you could ever imagine -- and it's all included in one very low price! 

Sounds like heaven, right?  Well it can all be yours for the very low starting rate of just $741, which includes 7 nights accommodations, meals, workshops, 24-hour access to our crop room, plus lots of goodies, gifts, prizes, and more.  Payment plans are available, and your deposit of $250 will hold your spot. 

But hurry!  These rates are only available through May 29, 2015, and once our allotment of cabins is filled, new bookings will be at the current market rate.

 

Today's card is a fun one I made a while back when I hosted a "Cruise Week" open house.  I listed the supplies used below.  This was a really simple card, and I had a lot of fun making it.  It features several layers, with the stamp and "You're Invited" popped up over the embossed piece.  Here is a picture of the card face before I embossed the background and added the stamp and sentiment:

It looks a little plain without the embossing, don't you think?

Supplies:  Stampin' Up Very Vanilla card stock, "Oh, Hello" stamp set, "Square Lattice" embossing folder, Baked Brown Sugar, Costal Cabana, Crisp Cantaloupe, Pistachio Pudding and Strawberry Slush inks.  Close to My Heart "Post Card - Travel Series" stamp set.

 

Valerie's Layout 1

As I mentioned on Monday, I’ve spent the last few months really working to finish up some UFO projects that have been lying around for a while.  If you’re wondering what UFO stands for, it’s an old term I borrowed from a crochet group I once belonged to, and it stands for “UnFinished Objects” meaning any project you’ve started but never finished.  I’ve had so many of those UFOs over the years that I could fill a house with them.  Oh wait…I did….ooops!

Yes, my house is full of unfinished projects, and I am doing my best to try and finish them!

Today’s project came from my UFO box (I have several boxes, but let’s not quibble over semantics).  Valerie Jackson of Creative Sanctuary designed this layout as a class for our 2013 cruise.  We made enough class kits for the instructors to keep a set, and I am just now getting around to working on mine.  Here is Valerie’s original design:

Since I am just now getting around to this layout kit, I didn’t have access to the matching floral stamps Valerie used in the class, so I had to change it up a bit.  This gave me an opportunity to pull out this motif stamp from Paper Parachute.  I’ve been dying to use it on something, and I think this was a great place for it.

As you can see, my layout is just a little bit different from Valerie’s, but I think it maintained the same overall look and feel.  I just love the color combos in this Close to My Heart paper series, don’t you?

Question of the day:  What’s your favorite color combo?

Christmas in July

Today I am thinking about a little Christmas in July.  This is about the time of year that I start thinking about Christmas gifts and Christmas cards, and I make all kinds of plans to create all kinds of handmade things.  I wind up getting less than half of them done, but it’s nice to think and plan, right?

When I make Christmas cards, I usually pick out one design and make a whole stack of the exact (or near enough) same card – 100 of them to be exact (although some years my design turns out to be a little more time consuming than I originally planned, so I’ll scale it back to 75 or 80 and finish the rest after Christmas.  Why so many and why finish more after Christmas?  I have a mailing list of 60+ people.  The count fluctuates from year to year, but it generally stays in the 60-75 range.  I make extras because I never know who will send me a card that’s not on my regular list, and I always like to send them one in return.  Then after Christmas, whatever cards are left get sold online or donated to “Cards for Soldiers”, “Operation Write Home” or some other charitable card-giving organization.

Since I only do one kind of card each year, I have a lot of Christmas card ideas that I never get to use.  Last year, I took a card workshop from Valerie Jackson of Creative Sanctuary in which we created these handsome Christmas cards.  These cards demonstrate some really fun ways to use Close to My Heart stamps, inks, and papers.  I really enjoyed making them, but since my cards are pretty much already planned out for the next several years, I didn’t know what to do with them.  I finally decided I should just package them up and sell them on Etsy.com.  And since I’m thinking Christmas in July, I’m thinking this is a good time to get them posted, so I did.  You can see these cards and some of my other Etsy projects here:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/craftyneighbor

I think I’m going to pull out some of my older cards that are lying around and put them on Etsy, too.  I have so many cards and projects lying around here, and since I’ve started this whole “clean out and reorganize the craft room thing” (that’s taking forever, btw), I really think I should purge myself of these craft projects that are just hanging around and serving no purpose.  I’m also getting ready to start sorting through some of my excess supplies and selling them off on Ebay and Etsy, too.  A while back, I read a tip from another crafter who said she was stuffing supplies in a USPS flat-rate box and shipping it to the highest bidder.  What a great way to get rid of a lot of miscellaneous, mixed up scrapbooking supplies!

Speaking of an excess of miscellaneous, mixed-up craft supplies…this past weekend, we had our semi-annual scrapbook garage sale, which amounts to having our own little Christmas, or at least it felt so to a lot of crafters.  This year’s sale featured 15 different vendors with almost 40 tables of merchandise for sale, and we had shoppers lined up outside the building waiting for the sale to start.  I tried not to do too much shopping myself, but I know there must have been some really good bargains out there because I saw a lot of crafters making multiple trips to get their purchases back to their cars!  Cross your fingers that we will be able to get the venue again in the spring, otherwise we might have to move this event to an annual occurrence, rather than twice per year. 

Well, that’s it for today.  I am on a mission to get some of my leftover sale items sorted and posted on Ebay and/or Etsy.  I need to get these stacks of boxes out of my house ASAP!  I have company coming in two weeks and I can’t even get to the bed in the spare bedroom.  Oops!  Thanks for subscribing to my blog, and I hope you’ll read it again tomorrow!

Last Birthday for March

Today is the last day of my birthday cards series.  I had hoped to post more, but we’ve had so many events in the works that I didn’t have as much time to work on them as I planned.  I did enjoy focusing on one theme for the whole month, though, so I think I’ll continue that for April to see how it goes. 

Don't forget that tomorrow, April 1, is the beginning of The Craft Squad blog hop.  Our theme for April is “Hoppity Hop Hop”, so you can be there will be some really cute Easter projects hop hop hopping your way!  I can’t wait to show you the projects I made.  I did not one, but three Easter cards, and they are just too cute for words!

After I made my three cards, I had some scraps left over, so I made two more cards, one of which I will share with you today as the last birthday card for March.

If I could remember where the paper came from, I would tell you, but to be honest, I think it was something that came in a multi-pack I picked up at some scrapbooking sale.  I just loved the color combo and had to have it.  The cardstock is Stampin’ Up Bermuda Bay, Old Olive and Very Vanilla.  I also used the Stampin’ Up oval and scalloped oval punches and the Create a Cupcake stamp set.  The rest of the card was a series of Cricut cuts.  The filigree square was cut using the Cindy Loo cartridge and I backed it with a square of Very Vanilla cardstock.  I used Close to My Heart’s Art Philosophy cartridge to cut the rosettes.

I started with just the black rosette, and then decided that the black was too dark and ominous.  In retrospect, I probably should have used the Very Vanilla again, but I added the white and had them glued down before I realized that there was no other white on the card.  The other cards I did in this series (some of which you will see tomorrow) all had a mixture of both white and vanilla, so I’m okay with the white on this one, but I would do it differently if I had to do it over again.

That’s it for today.  Be sure to stop by tomorrow for the blog hop!

August Blog Hop

Welcome back to our monthly Team L. I. Blog Hop!  We’re back from our July hiatus with a brand new theme and some really great projects.  If you hopped over from Connie’s blog, you are in the right place!  If you want to start at the beginning, you should head on over to Stamp-Patty’s.  Or you can start right here and we will cycle you around to the beginning.  This month, our topic is “Super Star” and I have a very special layout to share with you.  And in case you are wondering, yes, there is a prize to give away, so read all the way through to the end to figure out how to enter.

I have to apologize for my long absence.  As many of you know, I actually have two businesses, Crafty Neighbor and Crafty Neighbor Travel.  Sometimes they come together for some fun events like our annual Scrapbooking Cruise, but sometimes I have separate projects going on with each of them, and they kind of eat up all my spare time.  That has been the case for the last several weeks, so I haven’t been keeping up with the blog like I should.  I think I’ve got it all under control again, though, so look for more blog posts coming up soon.

Part of my absence was also the hiatus of our Team L. I. hop group.  Our numbers have dwindled and we didn’t want to bring you a blog hop with just 2 or 3 participants, so we gave everyone a vacation and hope that participation will pick up again once school is back in session.

Speaking of school, it brings me around to the topic of this month’s blog hop.  This topic was actually a reader suggestion from our June Hop contest, and I was really excited to see it suggested because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it!  My son, Steven, is something of a math and science whiz (he’s studying Physics in college -  YIKES!) and one year he competed in and WON two different U.I.L. competitions on the same day.  Now what normal kid volunteers to go to school and take tests for Math and Science on a Saturday?  Only a Math and Science Super Star, that’s who.  So here’s mine:

The papers and embellishments are part of the Close to My Heart “Typeset” collection and the banner was created using the Stampin’ Up! “Hearts a Flutter stamp set and dies.  I cut the font with my QuicKutz dies Rock and Roll and Star Mini.  I still like using them for variety, and they are so much easier to use with my Big Shot than with the original hand tool. The star background paper came from a black and white Graduation paper stack I picked up at Hobby Lobby a few years back.  They still had it the last time I was there.

I did this layout as two pages because I actually had his participation certificates, and I wanted to display them along with the photo I took of him when he came home that evening.  He was so proud of those two medals that I just had to take a picture of him with them. 

I wanted to keep this as a 2-page layout, so I had to figure out a way to put both certificates on one page.  To do that, I created a couple of staggered pockets.  The back pocket is adhered to the page about 3 inches up from the bottom of the page and then the front-most pocket is adhered at the very bottom.  I used some fun embellishments from the kit to dress up the plain cardstock and I used my printer to journal onto a pre-printed card.  [For a tutorial on how to print onto journaling cards, see my “Tip of the Day” blog post on June 14, 2012.

So that’s my project for this month’s hop.  I hope you liked it!  Now, before you hop on off to see Amanda’s blog, at http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/awoodward/blog. I want to tell you how to enter our little contest.  Once again, we will be giving away a prize on each blog in the hop.  For my blog, I am giving away these acrylic disks which can be used on a number of really cute projects (I just Googled “acrylic circle paper projects” and got a ton!).  These have scalloped edges, so I’m thinking they might make a cute mini album!  Anyway, they are yours if you are the winner of my August blog hop drawing. 

So how do you enter?  Leave a comment on this blog hop project!  You can also get additional entries by liking my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/craftyneighbor and sharing the link to this blog that you find there.  The contest will remain open through August 31, 2013 and we will announce the winners on each blog on September 1^st.  So come back on the 1^st to see if you won!

Here's a full listing of all the hop participants:

Stamp-Patty by Patty Chenail
http://www.stamppattys.com/2013/08/august-blog-hop.html 

Treasure Chest of Memories by Laura Hedgecock
http://www.TreasureChestofMemories.com/sports-memories/

Paper Crafting from Another Viewpoint by Connie Walsh
http://papercraftingfromanotherviewpoint.blogspot.com/2013/08/what-is-superstar-todays-post-is-part.html

Crafty Neighbor by Cindy Murray ••YOU ARE HERE••
http://craftyneighbor.blogspot.com/2013/08/august-blog-hop.html

Stampin' Up by Amanda Woodward
http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/awoodward/blog

Thanks again for stopping by, and good luck!  No go visit our next blog in the hop: Amanda.