Mothers Day Envelope Box Card

 Oh my goodness time is really flying!  One minute I'm working on Birthday cards and then it's Easter and now Mothers Day is right around the corner.  I did get all my Birthday cards done and in the mail except for my sisters. YIKES!  She is not a happy camper so I promised her a just because card.  Sounds kind of funny now that I say it out loud.  "Just Because."  "Just Because I Forgot!"   "Just Because I Don't Want You Mad."    "Just Because I Needed To Send Someone This Card When It Was Done."  Hmmmm Wonder which sentiment I should use?  Knowing my "Snarky" self probably the last one and I'll give it to her after we have had a few glasses of her favorite wine on the deck and then we'll laugh and laugh and laugh.  Yep we are "Those kind of Sisters"! LOL

Ok back to the card.  I follow Sam on Mixed Up Crafts and she has some pretty cute ideas.  One my group of ladies and I decided to do and it was the Envelope Box card.  Originally I was going to have it as a birthday card but..........well you know how that goes.  You start creating and all of a sudden your like "Nope" definitely going to use this as a Mothers Day Post.  But.........................My mother is not longer with us nor is my mother in law.  Both have been gone a very long time.  But many of you still have your mothers and she would love this Bouquet that will never wilt.  You can find the full tutorial on Sam's YouTube channel HERE  She makes it so easy to follow.  Sam did mention in her video about using paper flowers in a thinner envelope box while she was first trying to get measurements correct and I thought that was a great idea and I may have to try that as I have a bunch of leftover flowers that I made for the Shabby Chic Easter Cards I made but right now I'm sharing my card made with Sam's Tutorial.

As you can see I have not yet added the sentiment but I will.  These cards will need a special box made if you are going to mail it.  I plan to had deliver this to my sister so I'm guaranteed that it won't be smashed.  The card was made using the We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board.  Makes it so much easier than having to figure out measurements.  I do want to try it again with the paper flowers so there may be another post someday.  Hope you enjoyed seeing this beautiful Bouquet.

Til next time.............................................................

HAPPY CARDING!

Just Hello to a Friend

April has started out rough in over here.  I have had a ton of cards to make with very little time to do so due to the deaths of 2 distant friends, a sister requiring surgery and another friend has been diagnosed with dementia.  She is much too young.  We were High School friends, attended each others weddings, enjoyed Saturday night beer and pizza while our littles played.  Then life got complicated.  Phone calls got less and less and soon I found out she was moving to Arizona.  Facebook came around and we reconnected via messages but not the same as it use to be.  Slowly those became less and less.  Then last week it was her Birthday.  I wish her a Happy Birthday every year but for the past few years she has never replied.  This year her daughter did to tell me that she has been placed in a facility since being diagnosed 4 years ago and she has not been on Facebook since she no longer comprehends it.  I was heartbroken.  I am not sure if she will remember who I am but I am going to send her this card to let her know that she is very dear in my heart.  The papers I used are a combination of G45 and Authentique which I think work quite well together.  I made the butterflies and flowers from the scraps so everything matched. 

I might have made a mistake making a double pocket gate fold card for someone with dementia but what the heck.  I just wanted to keep using this paper so I just kept adding and came up with the pockets.  Kind of a cute idea.  I like the tag addition also.  Can't wait to make another one of these.  I think I might make a Get Well Soon card for my Sissy using this style.  Pretty sure she'd love it.

Well that's it for now..................Got a ton to do.  Goodness me Easter is in less than a week and I am not ready!

HAPPY CARDING!!!!!

Pocket insert for a journal

 Can you tell I'm on a little bit of a journal journey here?  I've been having so much fun making little pockets and Happy Mails that I started trying to figure out what else these little gems could be used for and with my last post being on inserting the Happy Mail pouch as a pocket page in a journal I thought ...why not make a few more pockets and make them a bit fancier than just normal pockets.  These little guys can be used in the corners of a page or even in the middle if you'd like and though I'm only making 1 Journaling card to slip inside the pocket I believe you could get 3 inside each pocket.  Talk about easy to make!  1 sheet of 12"x12" single sided card stock will get you 4 pockets and 8 journal cards to slip inside.  I used my Mini Envelope Punch Board to make these.

Cut a 12"x12" piece of cardstock into 4 pieces measuring 3"x12".  Then take each 3x12 and cut to 3x6.  4 of the 3x6's will make the pockets and the other 4 will make the journal cards which you will cut to measure 2 3/8" x 3".  You will get 8 of these.  If you want you can always use the entire 12 x 12 sheet for the pockets and use a separate sheet of cardstock for the journaling cards.  It's really up to you.

Now for the punch board.  Slide each pocket into the punch board to the little number 2 and punch...flip and punch the other side the same.  Do this at all 4 corners of the unfolded pocket.  See photo:

Next you're going to make the journal cards.  Line the top left corner with the point of the little arrow on your punch board.  Flip the card and to the same to the right side.  This time remove the little tiny tabs on the far left and the far right leaving the center tab intact.

After removing tabs from the pockets and the card inserts this is what you should have.

Now fold your pocket and glue the sides using a very thin line of wet glue.  I do not recommend red tape (score tape) or tape runners for this as they stay sticky and your journal cards might stick.

Now the above sample journal card is white but using a single sided printed card stock can work to.  In fact I though I was only going to like it white but since alot of the printed cardstocks have white on one side, you would still have a place to do some journaling.  I also made some of these out of vellum.  Instead of gluing I used washi tape on the sides.  The white journal cards looked great in those but the printed cardstock ones did too.  Here are just some of the ones I made before adding embellishments.

As you can see I made a little punching booboo with the bottom vellum one on the left but it still looks ok.  But since I'm a perfectionist I'll probably replace the card and turn that one into a tag for something else.  Below is another bunch of pockets.

They are not all decorated yet but I will get to that soon.  These things are so addicting.  Now what am I going to do with all these???  Well Happy Mail comes to mind.  I will probably send 1 embellished and then some blank ones so the person can add their own embellies to suit their taste.

Well I'm off to clean up my scraps and probably make some embellishments out of the tiny pieces before I toss the scraps that can't be used.

So til next time...............................................

HAPPY CARDING

Birthday Card for my Nephew

Super quick post today as I have a lot of things on my plate and never seem to find time to do them.  Upon checking my April Birthday list, I found that I need to make at least 5 Birthday cards as well as get out my Easter cards to my nieces and nephews.  Oh boy do I have some creating to do.  So I decided they will all be kept in the simple style.  First up is my nephew which is this weekend followed quickly by my grand-niece the very next day.  I just so happened to have bought a friend a Slimline die for her birthday recently.  As luck would have it we had a gathering last Saturday of some friends for card making and she had cut some bases from that new die for us to make a card.  While everyone else went down the pretty road I took the road less traveled and made a "GUY" card.  Since we were not at my house I had to just sit and watch them create and wait until  got home to get into my masculine stash.  But I think I made it perfectly.  He is an avid bike rider so this will suit him just fine.

The card measures 4"x8.5" so I will need to make an envelope but that's ok because I have my trusty envelope punch board lol.

Well like I said...A quick post so til next time.............................

HAPPY CARDING!

Loving the Shabby Flowers

 Hello...................Is it spring yet?  Well definitely not here in the upper mid-west.  We are in the 30's with flurries.  Yet last week we were sunny and 60 and the daffodils started popping up.  Poor things are so confused.

Talking about flowers, Shabby is my favorite. It reminds me of Victorian days and romance, and they are the easiest to make because they do not require perfection.  I prefer to make small one so I can place them on tags.  Which is also a favorite of mine.  Flat flowers are very cute and have their place (usually on cards for easy mailing) but shabby ones make you want to Oooo and Ahhh and touch.  Personally I do not like putting these on cards because they would probably get smashed in the mail.  Yes you could make a box envelope but that could get smashed to so I leave the flat ones for cards and my shabby ones for gift tags.

So what do you need for basic shabby flowers?  Well before I go on you might want a cup of coffee or tea as this is quite a lengthy post full of pictures.  As you saw in the previous flower post HERE all you really need is a couple circle punches in different sizes.  Then to go a step further from the past post, we do some stacking & glittering.  Then add into the game a couple different flower punches.  Pick your favorite light weight cardstock DSP.  Here's my start.

The 2 photos on the left show paper in the spitball form and how they look opened up.

Now glittering.  OMG!!!  My favorite activity!  Decided first I would use Mod Podge and this real chunky glitter.  I literally glopped alot of glue on these and alot of glitter.  Then left it all to dry before using a soft paint brush to swipe off excess glitter.  This chunky stuff is amazing!  It's really not glitter like you think.  It was in the Christmas section by the batting and fluff to put around Christmas Villages that people put up and I think it was called SNOW.  I bought a bag.  Super cheap and there is a ton of it.  I gave it to every one I knew that could use it and kept 3 mason jelly jars of the stuff for me. 

This type of Shabby Chic flowers are the absolute easiest ones to make with the least amount of supplies.  Even if you don't have a circle punch you can still make these by just cutting your own circles freehand.

Now if you want a little fancier you can use flower die's or flower punch's.  Not all of us have the dies but you can make similar looks with punch's so I thought I'd show you those too.

Above is exactly what I'll be using.  The first punch is a pinwheel punch.  I decided to add that one in at the last minute just because I thought it would make a cute flower but my main focus is really on the other 4.

First we have the leaf punch.  I punched out 8 leaves so that I could make a similar flower to the die that is to the right of the leaves.  Next is the 4&5 petal flower punch's which will be used to re-create a similar flower to the die set to the right of those punch's.

So it's all in the layering and shaping.  I first use a piece of fun foam and a ball style and gently rub the back side of each petal to give it a cup shape.  Then turn it over and on the right side I use the ball part of the style to press down the center giving shape to the flowers.  Each one is then staggered on top of another, creating a flower.  This is done with both the die cut ones and the punched ones and you will see they look quite similar. The leaf one is done a bit different.  The style is still used to cup the leaf but 4 leaves are lightly glue by the stems to form a X this is done twice.  Then the 2 X's are staggered together and glued.  Hope this makes sense.

Then you add pearls or beads to the centers and glitter them up and you have fancier flowers.

Aren't they pretty?  Now except for the top Blue flower which is the pinwheel punch, the flowers on the left are made with the punch's and the ones on the right are the die cut ones.  I think they turned out pretty similar so you see you don't need dies to make the fancier flowers.  Punch's work quite nicely.

Another easy and fancy flower are just made from circles.  Each flower requires one 1" circle and four 1 1/2" circles.  Fold as explained in the photo and when finished, glittered and pearl or other gem added they also make a pretty easy no die required flower.  These can also be made without a punch just by cutting 4 circles the same size and a much smaller one to glue the pieces to.

A real quick way to make some flowers for cards that you would like to have flat is to purchase a multi flower punch like the one in the next photo. Unless you already own some smaller flower punches.   This one is by Paper Studio's from Hobby Lobby.

Here I just punched some pink and blue flowers and did a couple layers using them.  Below I added some leaves and Stickles and you have some pretty, yet flat flowers that will with stand the mail.  I added a few other colors in the finished photo for ideas.

I suppose I should do another post of flower later as this post seems to be getting longer and longer lol.

So Til Next Time.................................................

HAPPY CARDING!