Response of Peace and Love

Hi Gal Pals,

I'm finally getting some time back to do a little card crafting. Things with Mom & Dad are smoothing out some and we are beginning to settle into a nice rhythm. 

I just had to make a card last week and here's the reason why. . . .(the insert inside the weekly family newsletter). . . .

It was sad and scary to hear the news about the terrorism in Paris. When things like that happen, the only way I can make sense out of them is to remember my belief that the only way to heal from an act of hatred is to return it with an equal or greater act of love.  Apparently I’m not the only one that believes that.  There is a famous graphic designer/cardmaker I follow (Cathy Zielske) and she created the image on the front of the card and posted it for free as a way of putting thoughts of peace and love out into the world.  She wants to spread that intention as far as possible.  So I used the image for this week’s card and left the inside blank hoping that the family might find a way of sending the card to someone else with a thought or prayer for peace and love. Much love and peace to you all!

I just loved the color combination Cathy used - something I would have never thought of.  I started off with a bigger image and larger matting but ended up shrinking the image and matting so there was more white space.  It seemed more peaceful that way.

Here's my original version:

Any thoughts or comments about which you like better?

Hope all is well and that this Thanksgiving you include some prayers for peace and gratitude for loving family.

Sketches

I found a fantastic sketch site that I wanted to share today - Freshly Made Sketches.  This site has really quick and easy cards great for weekend inspiration.  I'm still stash busting and am now focusing on all the wonderful 6x6 paper pads I've accumulated over the years.  These sketches are making it really easy to do that.  

The Christmas card above is made with a BoBunny paper pad from last year I think.  

And this card was made with a paper pad from Stampin' Up.  I did a variety of sentiments from Happy Birthday to Thinking of You and a couple of sympathy cards.

I've been making 8 cards at a time which seems to be a perfect amount to take advantage of mass production without getting too board.

Hope you had a great weekend and have a great week ahead!

Embossed Border

Hi Gal Pals!

I was catching up on my Gina K Designs videos and saw this one and wanted to share.  As part of my stash busting this year I've been looking for ways to use all my embossing folders.  I thought this technique was really cool.  And I absolutely love the simplicity of this card.

Hope you had a good weekend and today is a good start to a good week.  

MDS Sea Shells

You can't really tell it from this picture but this was a one-layer card where I just "print screened" the image from My Digital Studio ("By the Sea Shore" stamp set) and printed it on the front of a card.  The print screen software I use - Gadwin - has a setting where you can create a shadow around the image.  It really really made this card look like the image panel was popped up on the card base. Talk about quick and easy!

Scrap Thank You

This is a quick and easy "stash busting" card made with my inchie punch and some of my scraps.  Love how it turned out.  May do one in every color group and even some with my seasonal scraps.  The sentiment stamp is from the Stampin Up "Perfectly Penned" stamp set.

Hello Cricut

I haven't been doing the weekly family newsletters in quite awhile but wanted to have a few "Hello" cards just in case I felt the urge.  So I was playing around one day I dusted off the Cricut machine and logged in to the Cricut Craft Room.  I searched for the word "Hello" and found this really cute image.  I wanted to keep the card clean and simple and flat so I added some Stickles to the butterfly for a little interest and then hold-punched some "dots" and Stickled those as a substitute for brads.  The paper was part of a Stampin Up paper pack.  The word background seemed to fit with the concept of a "Hello" card.  Not sure I totally love it but I think the family will - especially if it has a nice long letter included inside :-)

Happy Accident

When I was cleaning out all my ribbon bins I found this obnoxiously wide ribbon that I wasn't sure I wanted to keep.  Val you may remember the ribbon from the "pine cone" project you and I did one Saturday a long, long time ago.  But I got to playing around with a little trying to figure out what I could do with it and discovered it was wide enough to fit the face of an A2 card.  So I mounted it on a 4 x 5.25 card mat and then mounted that mat on a standard sized card and added a punched "Thank You" label.  I kind of like how it turned out and may just make a few more to serve as my holiday Thank You cards.

Back At It

Hi Gal Pals,

Back at it again with weekly family newsletters.  Things in life are pretty easy, breezy right now with work and home so I'm taking advantage of the time and trying to stock up on cards.  It feels great!  

So I took a look through the Pinterest board I have for inspiration for the weekly cards.  Lots of CAS and one layer card ideas.  This week's card was inspired by a pretty card I found on SplitCoast.  I've got SO many border stamps and this idea is a great way to use some of those.  

I found this cool masking tape that helps with partitioning off the space while sponging on the ink.  I've gotten hooked on Jennifer McGuire's blog.  She has SO, so many organization and technique tips.  And this Post-It note tape was a great tip.  So easy to use!

See ya' back here soon.

Just a Little Note

Finally got around to finishing up all these cards in the kit from a few weeks ago.  Thanks again Gal Pals for playing along.  

I'm bringing some inspiration photos with me tonight so we can pull out one of our toys that's in the drawer at Memory Lane and have a little fun.  See ya' soon!

He's Home!

Cricut Man's back home from North Carolina safe and sound. And we're snuggled back in to home life just like 2 little bluebirds of happiness.

This was the family card for the week.  A one-layer card done in a rush at 9:30 last night.  Just never enough hours in the days or days in the weekend.  Cricut Man actually helped with the coloring on this one which we did out on the deck as we were trying to stay cool.  We came close to running out of daylight so hopefully the family will be forgiving if we missed a spot or two. 

One Layer Card

This week's family card.  Don't let it fool you - it wasn't as quick and easy as I thought it was going to be - at least not the first one.

I saw the idea on this fun blog and loved it.  Here's the Pin of the original.  But I didn't have a graphic "Hello" stamp so I printed it on the computer to start the card.  Had to get the measurements just right so I had enough room to stamp and things were evenly placed / balanced on the card.

Then I picked a border stamp - another from one of Val's hand-me-down sets - Thanks! again Val!!  But the border was too long for how I wanted it placed on the card and I didn't want to cut it.  So I tried at first inking it with markers.  Not a good idea when you have 4 different colors and 6 cards to make.  Plus I didn't have the colors I really wanted - really bright, summery and tropical - somehow I forgot to buy the 2011-2012 In Color markers and now their retired, dang it!  But I did have the ink pads and I finally got the placement just right without having to mask the stamp and from there on out it went really fast.

I'm thinking it might be really fun with a snowflake border in pale blues and purples for a wintertime "Hello" card.  

Cricut Man Saves the Day!

I was scrambling yesterday after a weekend's worth of yard work to get the family newsletter written and a card made.  As I finished the letter, in which I told the family about the long "Honey Do List" I had going for Allan, he said. . ."Let's use this list for a card".  Presto! Whammo!  Done! It's kind of cute, huh?!  It will be even cuter to me when all the tasks are done :-)

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  Thanks for understanding about my week off of blogging and crafting last week.  Feeling much more energetic and creative heading into this week.  Had a great weekend in the yard.  Things are looking really wonderful.  This is one of those times I'm looking forward to going to work and really thankful for my desk job as my legs and feet and back sure are needing a rest.

Have a great Monday.

Thank You By The Seashore

Another inspiration from Pinterest.  Here's the card I cased.  Another in my new favorite color combination.

I used the SU digital stamp set By The Seashore to create the shell images.  Then printed them out and cropped them.  Sponged Crumb Cake, Pool Party and Island Indigo to create kind of a beach view on the top panel.

I made 5 - one for each of my wonderful neighbors to thank them for all they did while we were gone and all their love and support these last few months.  Truly wonderful people!

Then because I had the shell images in a file, I used a modified version of them to create this quick and easy one layer card for this week's family newsletter.

Kind of cool to think of all the possible variations.  Sure wish I had more play time with My Digital Studio.  I think I could get lost in there for a very long time! :-)

Great Quote - Not So Great Card

"Do your little bit of good where you are.  

It's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."

~ Desmond Tutu

I love that quote.  I used it on a card to the family one week last summer as I was telling them about the man who took it upon himself (at his own expense) to landscape a flower garden on one of the downtown corners.  Do you remember the story?  What a wonderful gift of a "little bit of good".

I can't remember where I CASE'd the card design from but this was one of those times when I was frustrated by my Essential Tremors.  I loved the stamp (it's from SU-Mixed Bunch), the colors and the use of the border.  But I didn't have a stem/leave stamp that was proportional so I attempted to draw it freehand.  Eeesh!  It looks like a 2nd grader did it.  Sure glad the family loves me and forgives my shortcomings when it comes to cardmaking.

Here's wishing you a Happy Friday with hopes of spring flowers right around the corner.

Lonely Leaf

I love this card - or more precisely, I love this picture.  It's one Allan took a couple of years ago during a Fall  walk along Old Grant Creek Road.  We stopped to watch the creek and he snapped a shot of a lone aspen leaf floating by.  After the weekend we just had, that time and space feels very far away.  

We got home Monday shortly before noon from our North Carolina trip.  We had a wonderful time with Allan's family.  I have lots of stories to share when I see you next week.  Maybe I'll bring a little sunshine with me!

Hope you're staying warm.

Lots of Family

Made it to the end of another week.  Maybe not as gracefully as I would of liked but oh well, I keep trying.

We're off to see lots of family this weekend.  Heading north up the Carolina coasts to see Allan's daughter and her family, his parents and his sisters and their families.  It should be a great time.  And I think a change of scenery will be just what the doctor ordered.

This is a card I made last fall.  I used a sketch from one of the clean and simple challenge blogs I follow but it's been so long I can't remember which one.  I loved the chipboard embellishment.  It was part of a Bo Bunny pack I picked up at Memory Lane along with the cute acorn ribbon.

Hope you all have a great weekend.  See you back here on Monday.

One More "Happy Hello"

One more post for today.  It's a rainy day here and I decided to take an "extended lunch hour" :-) and play around with My Digital Studio and get the weekly card made a little early.

I used this sketch from the Clean and Simple blog with a little color inspiration from the University of Florida.  Actually the color suggestion was from Cricut Man who saw his UFPTI (University of Florida Proton Therapy Institute) wristband laying on the table where we've been playing on our computers most of the day.    He even took the time to look up the RGB color codes on the university's web site so that really is Gator Blue and Orange!

I think it turned out nice and bright and cheery.  Just what's needed for a rainy day.

Plus I learned a heck of a lot about how to get it to print properly - and let me tell you between the "bleed area" in the software and the minimum margin settings for the printer that was no easy task to get it to print nicely on standard size paper folded into a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 card.  Whew!  I may actually order this one from the Stampin' Up print shop just to see how that process works, what kind of turnaround they have and what kind of quality it is.  I'll keep you posted on the results.

The digital stamps I used were "Together Forever" (the flowers) and "Define Your Life" (the borders), both of which I think are part of the baseline application.  The font was a freebie (CK Message) from the "Free Font Friday" web site.

I swear! - Today has been more FUN than a Gal Pal may deserve! :-)

Happy Weekend!!

More Family Cards

Here's another card I made last month for the weekly family newsletter.  I loved the color combination.  Can't take the credit for it though as it was a combo I found where else. . . .Pinterest!  Here's the inspiration card..

It was too late in the year to do a snowflake like the inspiration card so I used a medallion stamp from another Stampin' Up set, which for the life of me I can't remember the name of.  I thought it was Mixed Bunch but I just checked Splitcoast and that wasn't it.  Since I'm posting from Florida I'll have to let you know later.

I used the same design pattern in a different color combination for Sandy's birthday card.  Her favorite color is yellow so I paired Daffodil Delight with Night of Navy.  I really liked that one too!

What a nice clean and simple go to design to have handy when the creative juices are running low.

Flight back to Florida was good but very, very long.  I treated myself again and bought wifi access on the plane so I surfed card sites most of the way.  What fun!

Have a good one today.  See ya' back here tomorrow.

Sunshine State

I off to the Sunshine State again.  Had a good time catching up with you, Staci and Betty at the shop last night.  Sorry to hear you both are feeling a little on the puny side.  I hope it all passes soon.  I'll be sure to keeping sending you sunshine vibes while I'm gone.

This is a card I made for the family right before we left last month.  I was in a hurry with no time for stamping or playing with paper so I turned to my stash of Doodlebat fonts and found this really cute one.  It's called CK Summer Day.  Check out the other fun images. . . .

  

If you don't already, check out the Free Font Friday link on the Creating Keepsake web site.  That's where I got this one and many others.  They really come in handy!  

Have a sunshiny day today :-)

A Full Heart

Had a good weekend at home.  My heart is very full. 

This is the clean and simple Valentines card I made the family this year.  Used the I {Heart} Hearts stamp set from Stampin' Up.  Love that set!