Lakeside Bear Z-Fold Card

Hello friends!  Today I’m sharing the fun-fold card I made for our nephew’s special day. It’s a standard A2 sized card - as much as I love 5x7” cards they cost more to mail so I’ll be saving those for hand deliveries as often as I can. I was actually pretty happy with how this one turned out and I confess to making a second one to have on hand.

Everything I used is from my stash and likely retired so I didn’t make supply notes. The stamps are an older Stampin’ Up set and the patterned paper is from a 6x6” package by Paper Rose. A little foam tape for dimension and this card mailed for a single stamp. $1.75 for a stamp for mailing to the US. Crazy!

Slimline Back To School Card

Hello friends …. Today I’m sharing a Slimline card made for our eldest granddaughter for going back to school. She truly loves school and the hardest part of her illness is how much of it she has to miss. The high school teachers help her keep up, by posting the lessons online so that makes her VERY happy. 

She is on the Transplant List for a double lung transplant, and when the call comes in she will be in hospital for at least three months. She’ll be anxious about falling behind even though that would be the last thing on most teen’s minds. 

I made good use of a 12x12” patterned paper sheet with school themed borders printed all across it. It was perfect for a slimline card and I have a bright red envelope to put it in. I added some shimmer and it looks like I forgot to photograph the inside though.

Since I had made supply notes, I can list them below:

Supplies used:

Patterned paper - I Love School, Echo Park

Twine

Rainbow Packing Tape, cut into strips

Apple Stickers - Amazon .ca

Braniac - Photo Play (You Rule)

Enamel Dots - Your Next Stamp

Jeep Scenic Birthday Card

Hello friends!  Today I’m sharing a quick and easy birthday card for Masculine Card Monday here on my blog. I actually made this back in January!  I cut down a strip of scenic 6x6” patterned paper that was added to a slightly larger piece of rainbow holographic card stock. I stamped some dots (on the front and the inside) and popped up the sentiment strip with foam tape. 

Inside I added a sponged panel as a plain white one was just too blah. 

After years of writing supply notes as I make cards, I have to say it’s quite freeing just to make a card and not worry about keeping track of everything I used. Everything is older and from my stash.

Ducks & Bunny Birthday Cards

Hello friends! Here are a few more Birthday Cards - these ones use printed panels from Hunky Dory in a farm theme. They are nice and cheerful and I think the nursing home residents enjoyed them.

I have a plastic envelope filled with sentiments - I’ll stamp several at a time and add the extra’s into the envelope. So I don’t keep track of who makes which stamp. Makes it much faster to finish a card when the sentiments are done and ready to go!

I don’t use a heavyweight cardstock for these cards, so often add a 4 x 5.25” panel inside where I can add the greeting. Since there are layers on the front adding this panel inside helps to balance the card.

When cutting down a letter sized sheet of white card stock for these panels, the first thing I do is trim it to 8” wide and save that 1/2” strip. I also save the 1/2” strips from cutting the panels to 5.25” length and they work great for sentiments.

Below is a peek at the inside, with all of them done the same.

Supplies used:

Little Book of Farm Animals - Hunky Dory

Sentiments - from my plastic envelope

Inside sentiment - Lots Of BD2Stamp, the Stamps of Life

Cupcake Birthday Cards

 

Well hello friends! I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted and holy smokes have things changed with trying to post on social media. I ended up taking a break from sharing online, and when I was ready to come back I had a new laptop. Which meant my photo editing program needed to be updated and all my actions and brushes (I use Photoshop) were gone. It was such a chore to try to edit the photos so I just didn’t bother uploading.

I had somehow injured my hip mid April and was in a lot of pain with very limited mobility so sitting and trying to figure out photo editing AND uploading to Instagram etc was beyond me. When you are in pain - and on strong pain meds - it’s hard to think clearly. I can now say that I am finally turning the corner and have much better mobility and a lot less pain. I still can’t go up a full size step but I can now do a 3” one!! Thank goodness for physio therapy.

In May I suggested to hubby that I wanted to 're-do’ part of my craft room. I pictured going through the drawers etc one at a time, and showed him a few cabinet options. Again, I was thinking sometime in the future. I could only stand for about 10 minutes at a time because of the hip injury so knew it would be a long haul project. My hubby does not do long drawn out projects, and immediately started emptying about 2/3 of my room, dragged out the old cabinet - which was initially our daughters and she was happy to take it back. He showed me a couple of cabinets that he thought would work - paper and dies are HEAVY - and placed the order. Let me tell you, I had craft stuff EVERYWHERE in our main living area. 

It took me WEEKS to go through what remained in the room, get it all re-organized into the new cabinets, and then purge what came out of there initially. The night I got the last bin emptied and we had our living area back was cause for celebration!  I love having everything organized and easily accessible but mostly out of sight. I have room to work again - my work space just kept getting smaller and smaller because of STUFF. 

With this injury, I really came to terms to how much paper crafting stuff I owned that I was not using … just keeping it for someday. Of course, I had also stopped purchasing craft stuff - haven’t really done much in the past couple of years. I have continued to make 25 birthday cards each month for my Mom’s old nursing home as well as most of our families cards. That being said, I didn’t get Canada Day cards made or even our July Ice Cream cards done. But I’m back on track now and just finished Back To School cards for the grandkids so I’ll have them ready at the end of the month. 

Meanwhile, I’m here to share these birthday cards made for the nursing home. I used my very favourite Sheetoad layout, the August 2023 one. Now I’m off to see if I can get the pictures uploaded to Facebook and Instagram too!

Supplies used:

August 2023 Sheetload of Cards, Call Me Crafty Al

Patterned paper - Confetti, DCWV

Happy Birthday - Magic Messages, Lawn Fawn

1-3/4” Circle Punch, Stampin’ Up