How I Arrived at the Card Swap

Okay - signed up for a card swap on Simply Scrapping, and needed to get those 10 cards done before the end of April. Mind you, I had a couple of weeks to get them done, but what would my life be without a little procrastination. I am not a card maker by any stretch of the imagination - have only ever made 3 or 4 individual cards EVER - so dug through books and magazines looking for some inspiration.

My friend Janice called me on Saturday to vent about some personal things in her life, and I decided that Janice definitely needed a little card to help lift her spirits. SO, that was my inspiration - I started playing around with a couple of ideas, and came up with this card to send to her.



Then I decided that was a decent start on a design I could use for the card swap, but wanted to use different colors, so hopped on my broom and flew on over to my local scrapbook store, Picture to Page, and found the new Wisteria line from Basic Grey. Picked up some of those yummy papers, along with some fabulous new embossed cardstock and some lavender linen cardstock (and of course some stamps and other goodies), and headed back to the batcave and got to work. This is my design for the card swap:



And a closeup of that embossed cardstock I used - punched out a scalloped square and added some Crystal Stickles to it.



I got all the cards put together (the assembly line technique works really well), got them in envelopes and stamped, and dropped them into the mailbox this morning, so they will be headed to my friend Janice and all my Simply Scrapping swap friends via our friendly neighborhood postal carriers!

Thanks for taking a peek at my weekend's craftiness!

Latest Project - Book to Hold My Greeting Cards and Letters

Have a stack of cards and letters hanging around in a box or the top drawer of your nightstand (that's where mine have been for the last 5+ years)? I decided to make a "book" to hold all of the special cards and letters given to me for various holidays and events by my most special friend. I had been noodling over this idea for a while now, but was motivated to take the leap by Judy over at Simply Scrapping - she issued a challenge to make a layout or other project using envelopes - ding!ding!ding! - so off I went to take the challenge.

This photo shows the cover of the book (which is about as far as I've gotten at this point) - just wanted to share. Maybe someone can get inspired to make their own, or even better, give me some good ideas to keep me going (you know how us procrastinators are).

I used Prima Artful Cardboard for the base, which I distressed with a craft knife, a brown ink pad, and some Stickles. I then added some small decorative cards that I received in a scrapbook kit recently (A Kiss On the Chic), some Prima flowers and bling, an actual card and envelope from my most special friend, a couple of little Tim Holtz Adage Tickets, rubons from Fancy Pants, the crown from Creative Impressions.

I got the idea for the base from Laura McCullough at A Kiss On the Chic, so thanks Laura!