7 New Cards As Part of a Lost Challenge

Here's a bunch of cards I did a few years back for a card swap. I started the section for them as a challenge on the website about a year ago but since doing giveaways never really took off because no one comments they kind of got forgotten about. I wanted to make sure they got pushed out before the current year ended though as part of reorganizing the web site.

These cards are really interesting because the tag is attached using a tagger gun and tagger tail (like some of the price tags are attached to clothes) so it floats and moves freely on the front of the card.

The challenge for these cards was that I had to make 20 of them for the card swap but I didn't have the patterned paper to make anymore of the exact same design. I ended up redesigning the card a number of different times using different patterns and having to color coordinate between ribbon and ink and the pattern to get enough made.

Click on any of the card image to read more about how the card was make or about the challenge.

Web site reorganization - part 1

I've finally been doing some programming for my website http://www.sharedcards.com/ and just put out a newly reorganized index for the cards that hopefully makes it easier to use. The most recent 12 cards now appear on the main page. Since I posted over 100 cards in 2010, just listing them in a table chronologically was getting overwhelming and jumbled. The main listing is now by card type (Birthday, Get Well, etc) with the most recent 6 cards for that category showing. You can click on the category label to see all of them in that category. The category pages now have links to the previous and next category at the bottom of the cards. If you liked the one big page in chronological order, there is a link to at the bottom of the page with all the categories as the last category.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Birthday Wishes Cupcake

Here's another card I made to give away as a present. It's designed with neutral colors, which I guess slants it toward being a guy card with all the female designs out there. The cupcake is colored with Copic markers. The border is dotted to play on the dots that were in the words on the stamp. The background is stamped to match the curlies in the cupcake. Best of all can you believe all three of these came in a cling mount set I got at Michael's for two dollars or less earlier this year?

As always, click on the card for full directions if you want to know the Copic colors or paper sizes or just want to read all the steps involved.

Quick Female Birthday Card

Here's the female version of the last card. All I did was switch up some of the neutral or traditionally masculine colors with ones more typically associated with females. Since there were no flowers or glitter that's all it took to give this card a gender change.

I also switched the orientation. The words for this card were typed up on the computer and it didn't occur to me that I needed the words on a landscape mode for the neutral version until after I had already printed them all in a portrait layout so I went ahead and made these feminine versions.

Quick Male Birthday Card

Looking for some last minute gifts? How about giving some handmade greeting cards to your less crafty relatives who like to send out cards?

Here's a relative quick and easy card suitable for any gender that I'll be giving to someone who used to always hear things from the birdies about me when I younger. The birds are at three different physical layers because one is mounted directly to the card, another with 1/8" foam and the last one with 1/4" foam. Click on the card to get to the directions from the web site if you want to know more about it.



Happy Valentine's Day and Good Luck to Santa

I walked into the craft store Saturday and was greeting by the seasonal display area which now prominently greets customers with Happy Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day merchandise. Santa's still got 5 more nights to get everything ready, wrapped and delivered!

Hope he didn't need any last minute decorations for his sleigh.

Let's hope Cupid doesn't get any ideas about squashing the competition and make the reindeer too love sick to fly the sleigh around.

Oh! Someone! Quick! Call Santa and tell him to make sure he's wearing something green, just in case this is a warning sign that the leprechauns are planning a Christmas Eve ambush. One has to wonder where they get all that gold from . . .

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind a leprechaun visiting me and leaving me a pot of gold this Christmas, and not the box of chocolates kind either, although if that's all they can afford this year. . . Maybe Santa could bring me a leprechaun's pot of gold? or Cupid's bow?

Maybe next year my Christmas cards should end with:

Merry Christmas

Happy New Year

Happy Valentine's Day

and

Happy St. Patrick's Day ! ?

Anyone up for a challenge? Make a card that celebrates all four of these at once and post a link to it in a comment.

My Christmas Wish

Still need to make your Christmas cards? Here's a quick tip - use stickers for the main images to save time. Stickers can be really expensive in today's market but if you shop around there are a bunch of nice but inexpensive ones you can pick up on sale that have a lot of card possibilities.

I came across a pile of Christmas stickers I brought for just this purpose years ago and decided it was time to do something with them. Here's a card I've been mulling over for the past week but didn't feel like completing until today. The sticker is flexible acrylic so it adds some dimension that you can't see online but it was an odd size relative to most of the Spellbinders dies I have so I ended up mounting it on a square mat and then putting that on a baroque Sizzix Tim Holtz Alternations image I had die cut for another card I have been mulling over but hasn't quite come together yet.

The distress inking was inspired by the background of the sticker itself and I think it does a nice job of tying everything together. You could just use brown kraft paper if you didn't have the supplies to do the inking, but the inking adds more color variety and interest. I also tried to airbrush the background with Copic markers but just using the little air can wasn't much fun since its freezes up very quickly. I really need a small air compressor to use if anyone reading this is wondering what to get me for Christmas.

If you want additional instructions on the card, just click on the image to go to my website.