Paper Bouquet

My friend and roommate from college is getting married next month. One thing she wanted was a toss bouquet made of paper flowers. This is the third rendition and I think it's very much like my friend. She loves it and said had she seen it earlier, she would have saved $800 on flowers and just made these for everyone to carry. :)

Each petal (the green flower has 6) is made from a square of copy paper. I used 4.25 inch squares so I could get four squares from each sheet. You fold the square into a petal, glue the individual petals into flowers, and then I used hot glue and pipe cleaners for stems to put it all together. I finished the flowers off with pom-pom centers which really made them pop.

I'm happy with the result. If you had been privy to the other paper bouquets, you'd understand just how happy I am with this.

Military Appreciation

This weekend was Military Appreciation Day. I took that as a cue to make a dozen of these patriotic cards on Friday night.

Stamps by Studio G and Hampton Arts.
Embossing Folder by Cuttlebug.
Generic cardstock.

Box #2

My second big box of cards will be on its way to Dixie of OWH tomorrow. This one contains 243 cards. Since I started sending cards at the beginning of the year, I have mailed 336 + 10 + 243 = 589 cards. Considering my goal was 365 for this year, I'm thrilled. I know the summer will be even more productive for me since I don't have to work. I'm making a new goal of 100 Christmas cards this year (four or five are done already).

In trying to pack up my box, I was really aiming for a large flat rate box. I couldn't make enough cards to fill it up, so I stuffed what I could into a medium flat rate box. Turns out, there was even a bit of space left in it. I even had more cards to put in, but my OWH stamp is MIA. Gasp! I have torn a good bit of the house apart looking for it and have come to the conclusion that it got swept into the trash with my scraps. Tomorrow after work, I'm going to be brave and dig through the garbage bag I put out yesterday. Yes, this is gross. But, I want my stamp back! If I can't find it, I'll have to order a new one and I might actually spring for a custom one with my name. :)

I won't be making Fourth of July cards because that deadline is the end of the month and I won't be mailing before then. I might work on some Back to School and Halloween cards next, but my main focus is now going to shift to Christmas. As a teacher, I won't be doing the Back to School cards in the summer. If I don't do them before school lets out, I will skip them as well. I don't wish for summer to end! I bought some Christmas ornament paper for 10 cents per sheet at JoAnn's this weekend. Each sheet has 25 ornament squares. If I am dedicated, that could mean up to 50 Christmas cards right there. I had fun playing with my snowflake punches and rhinestones last week to make "Let it Snow" cards and will definitely make more of them. Another card I'll be doing is my Christmas palm tree. Then I can also make duplicates of my personal Christmas card from last year with a nativity scene. Finally, I have some ribbon that looks like Santa's belt. I want to use some red card stock, attach the belt, and heat emboss "ho ho ho" in white. I have so many ideas, I need the time to get working on them!

Funky paper

I have a bad habit. It involves buying multipacks of patterned paper at Tuesday Morning. I have the idea in my head that using 25 identical sheets of paper isn't a problem since I'm making cards for OWH. What I need to remember is that I can get 6 card fronts out of one sheet. That would be 150 cards with the same paper. So maybe it is a bit of a problem that I keep buying them. They're so cheap! And the paper is better quality than I can usually get! So, I keep snatching them up.

One that's stumped me is an American Crafts rose themed paper. The colors are lovely, but outside my normal pallete. The paper has foil, so some roses are copper foil. Quite pretty. And darn near impossible to do anything with.

Finally, this weekend, I was making a shower card for a friend and told myself I should try once again to use this paper. I realized that some of my recently acquired cardstock (from Ollie's!) had the right shade of yellow to coordinate with the rose paper. Suddenly I had papers that matched each other! A number of layers later, I had a pretty card.



This evening, I decided to make another dozen, swapping the bridal sentiment for OWH-appropriate themes. I'm almost done, except for the fussy cut roses. Those can be saved for tomorrow.

Things with Wings

The OWH Mid-Week Throwdown is "Things with Wings" and I wanted to avoid butterflies and birds because I knew they'd be common choices. I thought I had a fairy stamp but don't. Instead, I found an angel, so here's an early Christmas card to share. The patterned papers are from Colorbok and the angel stamp is from Studio G. The image is heat embossed and then inked/chalked with a variety of colors.

Another tie

Not satisfied with my earlier cards and inspired by designs that Ann H. posted on Facebook, I tried an additional tie example. This one I love. I like the colors a lot better. I am such a sucker for the lime and olive greens and anything in between!

I folded the tie from a 4" square of MM paper. I used a star brad from Colorbok. The green cardstock is American Crafts and the background patterned paper is from Pebbles. The pocket is 2 and 3/8" tall with a corner cut off. The collar started as two 1" high rectangles and I just laid the right sides together and sliced off the corner into a point. Glossy Accents for collar buttons. Edges inked with studio G green ink.

I thought about adding a pocket square with a sentiment, but decided not to go there quite yet. Perhaps if I do another installment of this card. :)

Neckties to go with the shirts!

OWH came through today with a new necktie tutorial. It's the perfect companion to the shirt tutorial from last year around Father's Day.

I put the two together and -voila- five more Father's Day cards for OWH. :) Oh, and one "Praying for you" because the papers reminded me of that sentiment.


A close-up of one card.

A few sizing tips to share. I made the shirt with paper from a mat stack (4.5" by 6.5"). The best size for the tie paper was then 2" square. You can see some of my cards have larger ties. Those were 2.5" square. I think I prefer the proportion of the smaller ties, even if they're a bit harder to fold. I also found it was easier to put some ATG tape down the middle of the tie as I went to keep things together.

Have fun making your ties!!!

More cards for Father's Day

I made another batch of Father's Day cards this evening. I decided to ink up a stamp I recently got on eBay. I liked the lighthouse motif but I hate coloring! I knew that if I went with a monochromatic scheme, I wouldn't have to color. Problem solved. I have a lot of green and generally find greens easy to put together, so I pulled a few sheets of coordinating solid green and a wavy grid pattern green. I stamped the image, cut it out, and matted it a few times. I varied the backgrounds for fun. I'm very, very bad at making multiples. I generally make multiples with the same elements, but mix them up somewhat. My favorites are the two on the right. I might make more like this tomorrow if I have the desire. Right now, I have 42 Father's Day cards ready to go in my box.

Stamp: Stampin Up
Ink: Studio G
Papers: Pebbles and American Crafts
Eyelets: Making Memories



Close-ups

Father's Day on Mother's Day

A holiday ahead, I spent some time today making Father's Day cards for OWH. I have 36 done now and will try to make another 12-20 over the coming week. I am getting closer to filling my large flat rate box.

Here's a sampling of my Father's Day cards. They're largely composed of shirt cards because I folded 50-some shirts a month ago and needed to use them up! Even after tons of shirt cards, I still have 22 shirts left. That will teach me to fold while watching TV...I got carried away!








This one is my interpretation of this week's OWH Sketch #68.

And so it begins...

Christmas is more than seven months away, but in OWH terms, the deadline is in about 5 months. I had been looking for a stamp saying "Oh Christmas tree" since, well, Christmas. I finally found an acceptable one on eBay and got it inked up so I could finish a Christmas palm tree. I figured it would be perfect for the heroes in the Middle East to send home.


I also worked on some snowflakes on this "Let it Snow" card. It was a fun one to design, but a pain to glue down. If I get into making these, the Xyron is coming out. Doing all this gluing with a glue pen is nuts!


In other news, my cleaning was going slowly, so I decided to count my stamps (knowing this would force me to organize as I went). The total was staggering to me. 1435 stamps. I would estimate that I had less than 100 when I moved to this apartment, meaning I've collected over 1300 in 2.5 years. Oh my goodness- that's a bit embarrassing. Around 400 are wood mounted and most of the rest are acrylic. Additionally, I have over 75 punches (but never the right size) and over 50 ink colors (but never the right shade). I'm glad I did my little inventory. I think it will help me curb my collecting. At least somewhat.

I started cleaning today...

...and had to use up some scraps, so I made some cards too!


This paper was another cheap back at Tuesday Morning with 25 identical sheets for $1.99. You can see that the blue lines are glossy. I knew I needed a car stamp to go with it but I actually don't have one. I think I must have well over 2000 stamps now (perhaps I'll count soon), so I'm surprised by this hole in my collection. My new scooter was a decent substitute. A little texting lingo let me use up some stickers on a sheet with no more of the letters e, t, a, and a few other crucial ones. I used more of the grosgrain ribbon from the towels I bought at Target. Scrappy indeed!


I've really gotten into the quilted background idea recently. I made my mom's Mother's Day card with this technique as well as a love card for OWH. This birthday one would have been great last month for the funny card theme on the OWH FB page. The inside says "mine is unlisted." I love the trim on this little guy.


Another patchwork background. My new staple design. Sandy gave me the idea for cutting the sentiment as a flag on the last episode of OWHtv. I really like it.



The OWH Father's Day deadline is approaching quickly...May 21st. That's just two weeks from today. I want to have my box full by then. It might happen, but I might have to bump down to a medium flat rate box instead of the large that I wanted to send. I thought this was a perfect sentiment for OWH Father's Day cards. Since our heroes are sending them home, it'll be nice for them to tell their dads how much they look up to them. I made tons of these shirts a few weeks back, so there might be a few dozen of these cards in my box.

Blog hop inspired

I saw a blog hop hosted by the Stampin Addicts and got a little mojo over the weekend. Here are the two cards I created.

This one has a quilted look, achieved by tiling scalloped square punches. I finally used a few of the half pearls I bought about a month ago. After wanting them for a while and finally buying them in the dollar bin at JoAnn's, I couldn't figure out how to use them. All in all, this was an easy scrap card with a nice result.


Ready...set...rotate! I don't know how to turn a picture once it's in blogger. I'm sorry! This is a cute apron card. I found a similar example on the blog hop and did my spin on it. So cute!!!


Hoping to get a little craftiness in this weekend. After that, there won't be many chances until summer vacation. I have a large flat rate box that I wanted to have filled in time for the Father's Day deadline, but that's not looking likely. It's 2/3 full, but I don't see myself having the time, energy, or creativity to make 100 cards in just over a week. We'll see...