The card you never want to make

The father of one of my best friends passed away today. Rest in peace WLK.

An AnyHero card and a few more kits

Sandy challenged us to post an AnyHero card on the OWH wall tonight in honor of State of the Union tonight. I opted for a simple design using one sheet of striped paper from cloud 9, a "thanks" stamp from an unknown manufacturer, and a star punch.


Yesterday, I worked on a few more kits. My favorite one is this cute lion/giraffe combo. I cuttlebugged the orange cardstock, used decorative scissors to trim the DCWV patterned paper, and used clear stamps from Studio G.


This tiger stamp from rubber stampede doesn't get enough love. I find it hard to color because my inks tend to smudge it, so I chose to leave it white today. A few eyelets and another sheet of DCWV paper, and I was all set!


I CASED this card from Sandy who copied it from a store. It's fun and easy to put together.



OWH Cards made in 2011: 85 (Remember how my goal was 365 for the year? I'm on a roll!)
OWH Total since December 2010: 145

Kits- a first attempt

Hi! It was a busy OWH weekend for me. I re-organized my craft room a little and mostly put things away that were out of place. It made it SO much easier to be productive!!!

I'm hosting my first OWH party on Friday and I have a couple of friends coming who don't have much paper crafting experience. Kits are a must. I had no idea where to begin because I've never made kits before. I looked up some hints on the OWH Stars and Stamps blog and was on my way in no time. It seemed to me that I was doing the majority of the work without the fun of a finished product, but it works. I'll get better at doing these in the future, I'm sure and it will be worth all the work when I seen the results pile up on Friday night. Maybe next time I'll ask some friends to put together a kit also.

I ended up with 79 kits. Some are easier to finish than others. One requires embossing with the Cuttlebug and coloring. Another requires stamping, using a border punch, and distressing edges. I made dozens of paper flowers for two different cards.

Here are my kits and the assembled results. With my samples, this is a total of 90 spring cards for OWH. With all these cards made, I need to think seriously about ordering envelopes.

79 kits, complete with tools/stamps/inks.

Some variations on an Easter card:

Easter chick:

My favorite, an Easter bunny:


Father's Day:

Mother's Day:


OWH Cards made in 2011: 80
OWH Total since December 2010: 140

Sketch #52 from OWH

I just recently found OWH in December but they celebrated one year of Sunday Sketches this past week.

Here's my contribution! I started with some coordinated patterned papers from Colorbok (I think?) and a circle of my new sparkle cardstock. Notice how it's completely sparkly and completely laminated in to be OWH friendly?

I made the card and then just needed an embellishment. I see that OWH is already looking for some early Fathers' Day cards, so I went with a #1 Dad clear stamp from Studio G.

I also found these great super hero stamps at Ollie's recently and just realized that they could be good Fathers' Day cards, too. The one on the left makes me think of scuba now which was not my intention- oops!


A birthday card for my aunt.

Simple to do, yet really nice. The colors look better in person, so I need to get better with my photography.

Unused, Unloved supplies

Who doesn't have craft supplies that have been sitting around for years and haven't been used? Only people who aren't true crafters, I suspect.

OWH posted a mid-week challenge which asked us to use supplies that have been hanging around for a while. Timing on this was perfect because I had just come across some supplies at my parents' house during the holidays that I'd been neglecting. Perfect for this challenge were some 8.5 x 11 papers with printed borders. I never did 8.5 x 11 scrapbooking, so I was always at a loss for how to use this paper. This paper dates back to 2003, so that tells you I've been struggling with it for 8 years! I also used a pre-cut border strip that I've used maybe 1 out of 20 in the pack. Again these were from 2003 or 2004. My last unused supply was a set of two punches that make a cupcake- I loved them when I bought them a few months ago, but never used them.


To make this card, I started by trimming off the right and left borders on my sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper. Then I cut two 5.25 inch pieces of what remained, one at the top and one at the bottom. I had a seam along the center of the card which I covered with the teal strip. The medallion used the cupcake punches that I just had to have when I was at Target.

While this card looks different than the ones I've been making lately, I think it's a pretty good use of supplies which I have ignored.

I caught a link to a video about "paper quilting." I'm planning to host my first OWH card party in three weeks and I was looking for some simple ideas. This may not be simple, but it will appeal to one of my guests who's an avid quilter.

The basic idea is pretty simple. Use up coordinating scraps in small squares and piece them together like a quilt. Finishing the rest of the card was considerably more complicated. I count 18 pieces of paper on each card and that would probably overwhelm my guests.

Time to look for truly SIMPLE cards that are also elegant. I plan to rely heavily on my Cuttlebug embossing folders because they give a classy look to an otherwise simple card. Thank goodness I have a few weeks to get things together (and a possible snow day later this week).


Papers above are scraps from the leftover bin. I can't ID many of them, but I know there are some from K&Co and some from Heidi Grace.


Melanie from GinaK is giving away a great stamp set. Go to her blog and enter to win until the contest ends tonight.

OWH Sunday Sketch #51

The OWH blog has a new Sunday Sketch posted. I loved the sample card's use of the circle as an image element instead of a sentiment. I decided to look for something that could work as the circle first as base my card around that.

I found Colorbok's destination rub-ons in my stash. The compass had colors I liked and was the perfect size to fit the sketch dimensions. Flipping through the stack of rub-ons, I spotted this cute car. Perfect! Just to amp up the masculine element, I added some argyle paper and weathered looking eyelets. I love the look, but I hated these rub-ons! They need a TON of pressure to adhere and it took several minutes to adhere each image.

Diamond Fold Tutorial

Over on OWH's blog, I saw a tutorial for a Diamond Fold Card. I'm not a huge fan of unique folds, but I thought it was worth a try.

I chose some green cardstock- striped on one side and solid on the reverse. I measured the 4x12 piece as indicated, and put my bone folder to work.

The hardest part of making a card for me is always getting the right combination of papers. I'm not a color genius (but yet, I never buy the coordinated kits from SU and other companies) so I end up with a paper tornado in my craft room more often than I'd like to admit.

I was thrilled that I folded it right on the first try! The paper doesn't want to lay flat though, so next time I might choose a slightly lighter weight cardstock. Yolanda gave us a great idea on her blog. She added a small envelope on the back so there would be more room for a letter because this card doesn't provide a lot of uninterrupted writing space.

Here's what I ended up with.

Papers from Big Lots (unknown manufacturer) and K&Co. Ribbon from JoAnn's.

On a roll

Remember how I said in this post that I was setting a goal of 365 OWH cards this year? Well, now that a week has gone by, I'm wondering if perhaps my goal isn't quite right. I have started this year off on a major roll, thanks in part to excitement over new supplies I got during the holiday sales.

Here are a few recent projects:

Supplies: DCWV Spring stack, SU Curly Label punch, Studio G stamp, Cuttlebug embossing folder, Target $1 bin ribbon, unknown green cardstock.
Supplies: Unknown papers from value pack at Big Lots, SU stamps, hardware from Dollar Tree
(How do I rotate the picture??? Oh well!)


Supplies: DCWV pp, cricut label, inkadoo stamp

First Cards of the New Year!

While I should have been grading papers tonight, I decided to make the most of the last hours of vacation and make a couple of cards in between writing lesson plans and getting ready for the kiddos tomorrow.

I looked at the sketch on OWH's blog and did my own interpretation (aka I didn't measure!) which is similar to theirs.


I got to use my awesome new robot and "you rock" stamps as well as musical paper clips snagged at Staples in entirely too large a quantity. Here are my results:


I also figured I should post my first card of 2011. I mentioned in my last post that I did some damage at Michael's and JoAnn's over break. This card contains a stamp I had been hunting for recently, "Wild About You." I have so many animal stamps, I knew I needed one with this sentiment.

Top card: $1 stamps from Michael's and DCWV Rockstar stack.
Bottom card: SU monkey stamp, DCWV Animal crackers stack, Wild for you $1 stamp at Michael's

2011 total: 4 cards

Starting 2011 with a goal!

I've been away from OWH's challenges for a while because I've been visiting family and wasn't near my supplies. It's a shame because Sandy came up with some great challenge themes and I had enough time to be crafty.

Over my Christmas vacation, I purchased lots of new crafting supplies (too many, to be honest). So, I'm going to set a goal for my OWH cards for 2011 in hopes of using these new supplies and not feeling guilty about my purchases. If I use them as intended, then I will be happy.

I've thought for a while about my goal and I decided that an average of 1 card per day is a reasonable goal. I might do more than this, especially during the summer and if we have any snow in the next few months. I won't do a card every day- my schedule doesn't allow it, but I'll do a few cards a couple of times per week. In addition to these 365 cards I've promised, I will be hosting a card party later this month. If it is well received, I'll host a few others this year.

Looking forward to being crafty in 2011!