Simple Card: Vellum Floral

Supplies: Base card (cream)
Vellum flower punch outs (pink)
pink calligraphy pen
vellum sticker quote
Xyron adhesive tool

Run 20 +/- vellum flowers through the Xyron to make them into stickers.
Place the stickers in 4 rows of 5 (for the size I selected ) with basically no overlap.
Add a sticker, quote or other embellishment as desired.
Write inside in the calligraphy pen.
Done!
Bonus: Make one more flower into a seal for the envelope.

Tool Time- New and Found

Recently, I'm trying to curb purchasing new embellishments -- and focusing on tools -- Today's purchase- a swivel craft knife to use with some of the templates I've had for ages, but which don't work that terrific with the regular craft knife.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

This week, as I cleared out a few boxes of papercrafting supplies (dead ink pads, etc.), I came across not one, but TWO previously unused Xyron machines-- one is small 1.5" wide and the other is the full size- 5".  Insert something-- paper, a die cut, whatever, and it turns into a sticker.  Gracie and I had fun testing it out. 

I used them to make a few birthday cards-- nice, even coverage on the back of the picture-- good adhesion to the project.

I have a huge number of September birthdays, plus 2 weddings, a couple of get well soons, and other events.  I end up making a new card almost every day.  I'll post the photos in October, once they've been delivered to their recipients. :)

Happy Crafting!

Make it Work Wednesday: A Simple Wedding Card.

OK- So I have three cousins getting married in the next year-- that means a minimum of 6 wedding/shower cards ... and it has been a wonderful excuse for picking up little hearts and wedding embellishments over the past couple of months...

This makes a standard small card-- Finished size 4.5" X .55" +/-.  Could be adjusted for larger card-- don't want to go smaller...

Supplies needed:

Papers:

Vellum Quote

4X4" pink card scrap

base card and envelope (I chose black & white for this formal wedding)-- I actually picked the one in the window of this box from the La Creme collection. 

Assorted embellishments

Front cover: dress, silver heart, "soul mates" or other word embellishment, silver open heart with gem,  round gems in clear (1), light pink (1) and dark pink (1)

Interior: vellum love quote, silver ribbon, 2 dark pink gems

From your Basics Kit: craft knife, ribbon threader punch, clear liquid glue, Created with Love stamp, silver stamp pad.

Steps

1: Center pink scrap on front of card so some of the black and white pattern shows around all sides.

2. My "open heart with gem" sticker had a red gem which is cute, but doesn't work with my silver/black/pink theme, so I popped it off, put a dot of glue in its place and used tweezers to put in the new tiny pink gem to match the color theme better.

Originally, a red gem, which was OK, but PINK was better.

3. Also, I loved the "Soul Mates" embellishment, but when I put it on the card, it LEPT off the page, because it had not one, but two layers of foam tape on it, so I carefully cut the bottom layer off-- which didn't change the look of the sticker, just kept it from JUMPING UP AND BITING the bride on the face.

This is a CRAZY amount of dimension for a small sticker.  

4.  Apply stickers in  whatever style you like.  For me that means dress in the middle/on an angle... hearts on either side, words at the bottom, and gems on left.  Some people would keep everything on the pink card, but I prefer breaking the lip a little bit so most is on pink but some goes over the edge. 

5.  The inside was also a little challenging-- because vellum, while beautiful, can be a total pain to work with, adhesive-wise.  I have ruined some lovely sentiments with a glue dot that shows through the vellum... So, I tend to apply other things (brads, eyelets, etc.) to hold the vellum onto the card... I decided, since the sentiment was almost the same width as the card to just attach it directly to the base card.  This made sense given the look, but is a little harder to do, since punching holes into the top of the landscaped card was impossible.  

6. So first, I punched holes through the vellum, then laid the vellum down and scratched a tiny line onto the card where the holes were.  

7. Then I put my craft knife through the holes just enough so I could pull my ribbon through them, then threaded through the vellum to connect the two.

8. I'm not usually big on bling inside a card, but I added round gems (same as front) in the center of the ribbon and cut the ends in matching lengths and >< on the ends.

All done!

Finish it up with the "handmade" stamp on the back -

A simple and elegant card-- very easy to make and impress the brides in your life with your mad card making skills.

Enjoy!

Yay, A Follower

Even if it *is* my sister.

XO, Global Momma.

Tool Time Tuesday: Crafty Essentials Kit

I'm busy-- who isn't-- and I have to craft on the fly... and I was hating pulling 7 boxes out to do one little card.  So to make it simpler, I came up with a crafting basics kit that I can use for most of my paper projects... and some others. I keep it close at hand and "shop" upstairs in my stash for specific papers and embellishments for projects.

To house the kit, I'm using a real tackle box, not the pink one from Michaels, but the kind John would love from the outdoor gear section of KMart, or whatever.  I get all the compartments a girl could want-- and 1/2 the price.  But it is ugly brown and tan.  It's a fine tradeoff, and if I had issues with it, I'd cover it, but I feel no real need to do that.

Here is my essential craft kit that I'm working with these days

• Tools
• X-Acto knife
• black fine-point Sharpie
• scissors
• pinking shears- the real, old-fashioned fabric kind, not the funky paper-cutter kind...
• standard flat paint brush
• Crop-a-Dile (double hole punch and eyelet setter-- AWESOME- see photo below)
• ribbon threader punch
• flower hole punch
• measuring tape
• tweezers
• compass
• wire cutter
• small wood dowel -- you never know when the glue will be too hot to handle, etc.
• Flower and heart punches- small
• Ribbon
• Silver
• Gold
• White
• ivory trim
• Tags - a handful (cardstock, vellum, metal trimmed)
• Punched cuts- miscellaneous- squares, circles, flowers, trims
• Adhesives
• regular glue stick
• glue gun & extra hot glue sticks
• adhesive runner
• Craft Bond- clear glue fine point and brush point ends.
• adhesive squares
• double-sided tape
• adhesive dots
• Black Stamp Pad (Staz On in Jet Black)
• Stamps
• "Created By"
• "Made with Love"
• ladybug
• bee
• Chinese symbols 
• heart
• Happy Birthday

That's everything that fits in the kit.  I also work on a 12x12 self healing mat.  I still have 2 or 3 open areas for future "needs".

The Crop-A-Dile:

Organizing My Craft Stash

I am convinced that organizing and reorganizing my craft stash will set me free.  Sometimes, it will even keep me out of Michael's.  For a while, anyway.

A few months ago, I started cleaning out the boxes and boxes of stuff we had in the basement... And I realized, when I found 13 half used bottles of Aileen's Tacky Glue, that I needed to make some changes.  Serious changes.  So I bought boxes and baskets and shelves.  Unfortunately, you can't buy time.  And there is no Time Lottery to play.  But there is a long weekend.  And I have spent much of it organizing my stash.

And I bought a 24 pack of Martha's glitter.  It had to be done.

Here are the directions to make some of the cute little things I've done:

• For loose letters:
• Take a 3 ring binder with baseball card-type plastic protector sheet inserts.
• Dedicate one page per letter
• Pop out the letters and put them in the different pockets to make them more visible
• For alphabet stickers (on a sheet)
• A photobox is perfect for this.  Just sort by color, add tabs to mae it easier to pull what you need.  For oversized sheets, use the 3 ring binder above, with single page plastic inserts instead of 9 pockets.
• For the huge sticker and die cut stash:
• Take 12X12 or 12X12.5 (white .5 margin at the top) scrap book paper
• Fold in half, print side to print side.
• Fold down front half  about one inch so you have a 5X12 pocket in front.
• Glue down the front flap (this is just for pretty, it could be skipped if you aren't into it).
• Glue up the sides, close to the edges, leave top open.
• When completely dry, write labels right on the top of your "file"
• Some Examples
• Baby Die Cuts (frames, icons, etc.)
• Baby Stickers
• Baby Words and Quotes
• Floral with Brads
• Floral Die cuts
• Floral Punch outs
• Floral Stickers
• Floral Words and Quotes
• Tags- Blank
• Tags- Graphic
• Tags- with Words
• You might not have a ton of baby stuff- so make just one folder for Baby and put everything in there.  But I am anal.  One category will not suffice when 3 are possible...
• Put these in a alpha order in a large 10X14 plastic box.  With a lid.  Lids are, I'm finding, essential for good organization.
• Voila!  You now know about your entire sticker collection, so you can skip the Jolee's aisle at your local AC Moore.  Just testing you.  You know that 40% off coupon (50% on Labor Day) is burning a hole through your mind you read this.
• If you have a bulging folder in your craft file, break it down into smaller categories or reinforce the sides with tape -- or try out brads or grommets or whatever.
• You might want to put an example or two on front.  I do this a lot with my pre-punched shapes.
• If your category is holiday related so you don't need it all the time and you can stash it at the back of your closet until needed, you might want to consider making it is its own box. 
• For example, Christmas. Apparently, last year I was smoking crack at Michael's and thought I'd stamp all of my own cards.  Yes, really.  I'm sure 2011 will be my "homemade card from a doctoral student" year. It's September.  A girl can dream.  I already have 10 done!  65 to go!
• So I have a Christmas themed photo box and threw all die cuts and stickers in there.  And a mini box of stamps.  Too many Christmas stamps. Alphabets are still organized as above.
• For buttons-- I found cheap glass spice jars and sorted by color and put them on a shelf.  Cute!

More ideas later! 

Happy Crafting!

Oh My God: It's Another Blog.

And it's about crafting. And family.  And work.  This should be interesting.