A Little Bundle of Cards

 

I put together a package of cards to send to my Aunt.  She mentioned wanting some Christmas cards she could send out, so I made her a little bundle of 10 Christmas cards with envelopes, along with 6 Any occasion cards and 6 tags.

Here’s a sampling of the Christmas cards:

The eyelets are Making Memories, as are the eyelet letters and woven labels.  The white ribbon with red edging is Martha Stewart.  The other ribbon is bulk.  All the patterned paper was from various stash.  I mounted all the card fronts on Basil Cardstock. 

Now I need to get to work on her actual Birthday card to accompany the package.

Pysanky and Thank You Cards

I know it may seem like I’ve stopped creating, but I really haven’t.  It has slowed down quite a bit.  Life has thrown some unexpected hurdles in my way – but in doing so has inspired a new project I’ll be working on. 

Years ago my Aunt gave me a nice Creative Memories Album that she had started for my Dad.  She had done a number of pages already which included some pictures of him when he was younger and also some treasures like pictures of my great-grandparents.  The intention was that I would pick up where it left off and put together pages of his later life, grandkids, his horses, etc.  I never got around to doing that.  Now that his time here has come to a close I’m feeling inspired to get moving with that project.  I’m still in the organizing phase of it all, but it is moving along.

I also worked on some more Pysanky!  I used patterns for these 3 new eggs.  I’m getting a better feel for the colors and applying the wax.  This is such a relaxing hobby.  So here are the latest 3 eggs.  Maybe I’ll get brave again for the next one and work on an original design again.  We’ll see.

 

 

Next Tuesday marks the end of the school year for my kids.   We had an extended year due to lots of snow days that needed to be made up.  With everything that’s been going on, I didn’t get as much time to work on their Teacher’s cards as I’d have liked, but I think they turned out well in spite of  it.  I put these all together last night using only things I had in stash already.

 

View Full Album

 

The papers used are from Basil (the card itself), My Mind’s Eye, DCWV, and Making Memories.

Embelishments include flowers from Prima and Petaloo, ribbon, Making Memories brads and charms, Me and My Big Ideas icons sticker, and Basic Grey chipboard letters ink’d with Tsukikek pigment ink in Coffee Bean.

I dug out one of my old D.O.T.S. stamps for the “just for you sentiment” and because I’m such a great stamper (laugh) I went over the image again with a matching pen.  Maybe one day I can enlist one of my stamping friends to tutor me. :)

Sultan Bakery

I surprised my friend Holly this morning by calling her and asking if I could take her to breakfast or lunch for her birthday.  Breakfast it is!  She told me about this great little place near her house, which I had never been to, and we decided to meet there.  If anyone lives near Sultan, Washington and has not eaten at the Sultan Bakery, you are missing out.  It’s located just off of Highway 2 on the north side of the street and if you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it.  It’s one of those charming ma and pop shops that are all (sadly) disappearing.  This little place was fabulous!  The food was so very good, so obviously fresh and portions were big enough to feed 3!  Even in this poor economy it would seem people can’t stay away from this place.  There was a consistent flow of people the entire time we were there.  I’m glad we got seats!  Don’t let the name fool you.  It’s more than just a bakery, they have more breakfast choices than you can decide on, and (if I remember right) I’m pretty sure I saw sandwiches for the lunch crowd too.  I will definitely be eating there again.

This is Holly’s birthday card.

• Papers: Basil Cardstock, Three Bugs In a Rug - Color Me Pink; a touch of pink & The Back Porch; Florence, White fiber paper from stash
• Making Memories –Buckle embellishment
• Ranger - Inksentials Memory Frames
• Ribbon from stash
• Me & My Big Ideas – icons stickers

And Then I Cracked It

A good friend of mine has been making Ukrainian Easter Eggs known as Pysanky.  I have always loved these eggs.  My Grandparents had a few over the years that they had brought back from various vacations.  I’ve never known anyone who has made these beauties and so the thought never occurred to me to attempt to make any myself.  The art form itself is over 2000 years old and has been passed down from generation to generation.  After a bit of information gathering from Jennifer, a bit of browsing around, and getting more inspiration from Jennifer’s sister Melissa’s eggs - I ordered a kit from Ukrainian Gift Shop.  It arrived about 3 days later – talk about fast, and I didn’t even expedite the shipping!  I sat down the next day, sketched out a design and gave it a shot. 

After dipping the egg into the second color dye I dropped it while applying the next layer of wax… oops.   It’s a pretty good crack, actually, but it managed to hold together while I finished it.  I’m not sure how long it will last in the long run though.  When I mentioned this to Jen, she let me know she had cracked her first too! I guess dropping your first egg is some kind of rite-of-passage or something.

So here it is.  My first attempt at making one of these eggs.

It’s not great, but I call it a good first attempt.  The design only barely resembles the one I sketched out and the colors aren’t what I’d pick if I did it again, but I learned a lot!  I think I’ll be sticking to the designs that came with my kit for the next couple of eggs to get more comfortable with it.

Mom

It was my Mom's Birthday on Wednesday.  She must be coming up on 30 now ;). We sure miss her and we're looking forward to seeing her in about 4 weeks, when she comes for a visit. It's been way too long! The kids are really excited to see their Grandma.

Have a great birthday, Mom! We love you!

 

Papers:

• Three Bugs in a Rug - Color me Pink, Blush
• The Paper Company - Flocked Stripes with Flowers
• Basil Cardstock (frame insert, upper right cir. & inside)

Rub-Ons:

• Sticker King (flower border)

• Little Yellow Bicycle (It's Your Birthday, Time to Celebrate + Swirls)

Embellishments:

• Ranger - Inksentials Memory Frames

• Making Memories - Vintage Hip Trinket Pins

• Making Memories - Shaped Clips (Swirl)

• Prima Flowers

• Baby Blue Embroidery Floss

• Small Red Button

• Translucent Baby Blue Ribbon

Knot Tree Cards

I made some ornaments for an ornament exchange a few years back by tying knots in some fabric strips and then hot gluing them onto cinnamon sticks in the form of Christmas trees. The ornaments had little wooden stars at the top, and a hanging loop made of floss. I thought they turned out cute, and they smelled quite nice.

This past Christmas, as we were decorating our tree it dawned on me that those little trees just might look just as darling on the front of a card. Cinnamon sticks were a bit bulkier than I like to put on cards that will be traveling through the mail system. I wasn't sure how well they'd hold up, and thought they might crumble (at least a little) so I decided to use flat craft sticks in their place for the cards. I stained each stick using a Dew Drop Pigment ink pad. Instead of stars for the toppers, I used the yellow buttons I had laying around.

I embossed some using my Cuttlebug embossing folders. I doodled a border on some, and others I simply stitched around the edges using my sewing machine (without thread) to make a border.

For the sentiments I used a few different products. Mrs. Grossman's stickers: Card Captions Christmas adorn the inside of quite a few of the cards. The cards with sentiments on the outside were made with rub-ons. I used both Mrs. Grossman's and S.E.I. rub-ons for those.



A closer look at the details:

A Blooming Artist

My mom has recently decided to spend some time developing a hidden talent. She's been painting, and she's quite good at it. She Made these very pretty hand-painted stationary cards for me a while ago. I love them so much, I have only actually sent one of them off. I love that each one is slighty different. Handmade items are wonderful that way!