February 21, 2012

Many Thanks!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day.  Now that Valentine's Day is over it's time to move on to something else.  The cards I'm sharing today have to do with projects I submitted to CardMaker Magazine last year.  The projects had to do with a color challenge.  The magazine picked several colors to be used on projects.  The colors were brown, orange, olive and turquoise.  The colors all go well until you get to the turquoise...wow!  I was lucky enough to find 2 patterned papers that had ALL the colors in it.

This first card uses the Stampin' Up two-step Owl punch which I love, love, love!  It's so freakin' cute!  It's hard to tell but the dark stripe on the left is brown...not black.  The owl's little shirt is one of the patterned papers with all the colors I found.  This is a cute, simple card.....but not chosen for the magazine.


The next card also uses a Stampin' Up punch - this time the two-step bird punch.  Not quite as simple as the first card.  The turquoise circle is a Spellbinders 'Lacy' circle die.  I like the patterned paper for this card - you see both of them and they don't look bad together.  This is a cute card too, but again....not chosen for the magazine.



This third card is a little more detailed.  It's called a criss-cross pocket card and very easy to make.  I saw a couple of youtube videos and really liked it so I decided to give it a go.  The turquoise piece on this one is also a Spellbinders die but this one is called 'Beaded' circle.



This is what it looks like open....cute huh?



and................this one WAS CHOSEN to appear in the CardMaker Magazine November 2011 issue.  This was actually my fourth card to be published by this magazine.  My first card was already included in one of my first posts (Hanukkah waterfall card).....I'll post my second and third cards in a later post. 



I'm currently working on some projects to submit to the magazine so wish me luck........

Well, that's all for now - thanks for stopping by and I'll see you again soon!

Heidi

February 6, 2012

hello from the heart

Hello my friends....it's getting closer and closer to Valentine's Day and I have FINALLY decided on my card design.  I've changed about 6 times and what I've come up with is totally different than what I started with.  Sometimes I have these great ideas and when I play around with them they either (a) don't look like what I expected or (b) are way too time consuming to mass produce.  I know, I know - Valentine's cards aren't normally cards that are massed produced  - usually just made/sent to loved ones.  But I LOVE making cards so for many holidays throughout the year I give cards to my co-workers at Assurant Health and Archiver's plus my family......it can end up being upwards of 35 cards. 

This first picture shows the supplies I pulled out to use.  I liked the Valentine paper I had in a paper pad called 'Four Seasons' by The Paper Studio.  Once I decided on the patterned paper then I picked the red cardstock for the background.  I woke up one morning (scary how I dream about this stuff - LOL) with the idea of wrapping twine around a thin piece of matted cardstock. It's not an original idea since I've seen it done bunches of time but I did dream about it for my card...what can I say????.  I knew I wanted to stamp my sentiment on white and decided that kraft paper would be good to go with the brown twine.  Kraft paper and brown twine aren't usually considered 'valentine-y' but I happen to really like pink, red and brown together.



Then I look at my supplies and try to figure out how I want to make the card.  Since I knew I wanted to wrap the twine around a section of white/kraft I decided to use the words paper and the striped paper half and half so the twined piece could be used to hide the seam.   I made one card and kept track of the sizes needed.  Once the card was done and I liked it - I did all the cutting and prep so I could just sit down and mass produce them.

                                            Card size is 5.50" x 4.25"
                                             Words paper  4" x 2.75" 
                                             Stripe paper   4" x 2.75"
                                             Kraft cardstock 4" x 1"
                                             White cardstock 4" x .75"



The sentiment on the front is from a collection from PaperTrey Ink called "Vintage Picnic Sentiments'.  The inside sentiment (not shown) is just a wood stamp from Northwoods Rubber Stamp that says 'Happy Valentine's Day'.   ***Disclaimer:  if anyone I work with from Assurant or Archiver's happens to see this post before I deliver my cards...please act surprised when you open it.  ****  Here's a picture of the card



That's it for now....I hope you enjoyed it....see you again soon!
Heidi