Moving On Up

I know not very many people read this blog.  I'm grateful for those of you who do.  I have decided to start a new blog though that is more diverse than just cardmaking.  Of course it will still have cards in it, but I needed a place to talk about other ventures in my life.  So if you are interested, you can find me over here

http://findinganeedle.wordpress.com/

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas Cards

I'm completely disillusioned with the whole christmas card thing.  I have been making cards for so many years, I put a lot of time and effort into them, and I rarely get any back in return.  The excuses are usually "I have no time".  Because You know it takes  alot of effort for people to sign a name to a premade card they bought at some cheap dollar store, stick a stamp on it, write an address and walk to a mail box.  But people always say "I love getting your cards".  So I guess its okay for me to spend hours making cards cause I have the time.

 

Anyway so since that is the response I usually get  I decided not to make cards this year for most people.  I've made cards for the people my kids and I want to thank, like their teachers.  I will make the odd card here and there for friends, but not even close to as many as I normally make.

 

 

The first three cards below are cards my two kids made for their cousins.  I especially love the reindeer card.  The others are the thank you christmas cards for teachers.

 

 

 

 

Birthday Wishes for my Oldest and Dearest Friend

When I was 10 a whirlwind showed up in my life. My Mom had met a family that had just moved to our city from England. In the family was a little girl, she was a year older than me, but she still needed someone to pal around with. My Mom suggested that we get together and see if we got along. We did. We got along famously. She was a firecracker, loads of energy, lots of imagination and boy was she bold. She was the ying to my yang. Turned out this little girl and I would be inseperable for the next three years. We were the best of friends, we did everything together.

3 years after we met, my best friend moved to Ottawa. She moved across the country from where I was. Despite the distance, we wrote letters, we even travelled to visit each other. Of course over the years distance has an affect on friendship. And while we are not as close as we were when we were 10 and 11 years old, we are still great friends. We have shared our lives.

My friend is turning 40 years old tomorrow. I can't believe it has been 3 decades since I first met her, and she is still the firecracker that she was the day I met her. So for this birthday I knew that I would have to make a pretty special card. I think I did. I think this is one of the best cards I've ever made.


I needed it to be eloquent, sort of fancy, fitting the occassion for such a good friend. I think it fits the bill. I hope that my dear friend appreciates and has the best 40th birthday ever.

Cards, I don't have no stinkin' cards

I have been distracted the last little while.  I have found a new crafty thing that I love to make, Wreaths.  I think I posted a few months ago a couple of wreaths that I have made, well I made two more. 

The first one is a lima bean wreath that I made for my Grandma for her 93rd birthday

This one is a burlap bubble wreath (idea stolen from some random sole on pinterest) for my front door.

Next up, spooky halloween wreaths

Love Is In the Air

A few weeks ago we attended a wedding for one of my husband's oldest friends.  We were very excited for this wedding to take place.   No one ever expected this individual to get married.   But he found a wonderful girl, who is perfect for him. 

 

For their wedding they asked for some pretty interesting gifts on their registry.  There wasn't much on there but the last item was "homemade or gifts that were  interesting".  We didn't have the time to go the homemade route, so we went interesting.  When we were on vacation this summer in Maine, we found a shop in Wells that made awesomely awesome copper weather vanes.  This was in fact the perfect gift for the engaged couple, a copper dragon weather vane.  They are a mix of eclectic, and well a little crazy.

 

So to go with this perfect gift I had to come up with a great card and since they said they liked homemade I thought I will make a great homemade card.  I didn't want to continue on with the dragon theme (that would have been a little much for the card), so I decided to go with the colours the bride chose for the wedding.  Her colours were white and a deep rich red.  So perfect.

 

I used this Sweet Sunday Sketch  as my inspiration to make the card.  I knew I wanted it to be mostly about the paper.   I also didn't want to have to do any colouring so my stamped images were just going to be simple hearts.

 

I think the card turned out really great.

 

 

 

 

I thought I was very clever with what we decided to write on the inside fo the card considering our gift...."may your marriage always be pointed in the right direction."  :)

Doing the Birthday Polka

So I'm so lazy when it comes to taking pictures and posting about my cards.   I have made so many since my last post, but have taken pictures of none of them, and of course they have all been divyed out to various people so no chance of taking pictures now.

Except today I actually got off my butt because I had 30 seconds.   I had to make a card for my husband's birthday.  I left it to the last minute.  Today is his birthday.   I didn't feel like hauling out stamps and ink and all that jazz so I decided it was all going to be about the paper.   When I found that I didn't really have that many coordinating solids with my "masculine" none girly patterned paper, I had to come up with something that would be pretty simple and festive.  So here's what I came up with.

It kind of looks like a happy birthday card for a six year old, but that's the best I could do today with the limited time that I had before my 2 psycho crazies invaded my crafty space.   My husband will love it no matter what because he always does.

Hanging with my Gnomies

I had a very strange thing happen to me this week.  Someone that I only know through an online community saw some of the cards that I had posted pictures of in a craft section of the community.  She sent me a not telling me how much she loved the cards and was wondering if I would make her a gnome card and she would pay for it.  "SAY WHAT?  You want to pay for one of my cards" was my reaction.  

After I got over my initial shock I offered to just make her the cards because I enjoy doing it, and knowing that it would be doing her a huge favour (her friends birthday is coming up and apparently her friend is nutso for gnome's) is all that I needed to know.

So I embarked on my task of making her a gnome card, with bright colours that had a birthday theme.  Not an easy task.  The bright colours, the gnomes were the easy part.  The birthday theme not so easy.

The gnome themed stamps that I have are from There She Goes, and all the silly gnomes are already holding something, or don't look to celebratory.  So trying to use the stamps but ditch shovels, and flowers, and potted plants that were a part of the stamp was challenging.

In this first card, the gnome is originally holding a shovel.  With some creative inking I managed to not get the shovel at all in my stamp and make it so the gnome looks like he is holding a bouquet of mushroom balloons.  I think I did a swell job on this one.

My second attempt I'm not so happy with.  The gnome was originally holding a potted plant.  I used another TSG stamp set, Make a Wish, and got rid of the plant and added in the cupcake.  My stamping and inking wasn't as successful, but still pretty decent.  I think I'm not as happy with this one as I don't like the layout or the colours I chose as much as the first.

So off I go to send my online buddy a few pictures.  Hopefully she likes either one of these, or its back to the drawing board (which is alright, its gotten the old creative juices flowing a bit)