Birthday Card for Teammate

Clearly I enjoy making cards for my teammates.
This is no exception.
This is a birthday card that I made for my friend and teammate, Kathleen.

The pink dotted paper is from BoBunny.
The geographic print paper is from the Play Marbles collection by American Crafts.
The tan cardstock is from Recollections.
The birthday cake image is from the Unity ...so glad you were born stamp set. This was stamped in VersaFine Onyx black ink.
Inside the card, I stamped a sentiment from the CTMH Birthday Funnies set. The sentiment says, "Birthdays are nature's way of telling us to eat more cake."
 
 

One Sheet Wonder - 2 cards for Coworkers

For these cards, I used a One Sheet Wonder template I found on Pinterest.
I have other cards that I made as a part of the set, but I have not put any images or sentiments with them yet.

These are both for coworkers that were leaving our team. One was leaving permanently and the other was leaving temporarily.
The blue and gray cardstock are from Recollections. The white is Georgia Pacific cardstock.
The patterned paper is made by Basic Grey and was from my stash.
The images are from the CTMH Ornate Blossoms stamp set.
The sentiments are from the CTMH Just to Say... stamp set.
The images and sentiments were stamped with VersaFine Onyx Black ink.
 

Set of Birthday Cards

As you know, I switch teams occasionally at work. This is because of shift changes both at my level and at the supervisor level (people move to other departments, new people come in, some just switch to make their work schedule work with their outside-of-work schedule).
I recently switched teams (my goal is to have this one stay the way it is for a while). One person from my old team took over handling the team celebrations and asked me to make a set of random birthday cards for her to use. I was delighted to be asked to make them!

Here they are:

For this one, I used yellow paper and green bling from my stash.
The sentiment is from the CTMH Art Philosophy Celebration stamp set stamped in CTMH Sweet Leaf ink.
The orange patterned paper is from DCWV.

Inspiration for the above "Celebrate" card

The grey card base for the card above is from Recollections.
The 'b' and the 'star' are from the DCWV Alphabet stack.
The candle and the "hip hip hooray" banner images are from the CTMH Artiste Collection Birthday stamp set.
The banner was stamped onto a white chipboard banner piece that came in the Cricut Artiste set.

All of the patterned papers on the above card are from the Celebration stack.
The card base is white cardstock from WalMart.
The black and kraft papers are from my scrap stash.
The twine is from a large spool from Michaels.
The buttons are from my embellishment stash.

The kraft paper is from Recollections.
I used Darice Nesting Wavy Squares dies to cut the kraft paper. For the white layer, I traced the inner side of the wavy square die and cut the shape by hand.
The sentiment and the image is from the CTMH February Stamp of the Month, Balloon Animals. The image was stamped in CTMH Outdoor Denim ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder.
 

The candle image (stamped twice) and cupcake image is from the CTMH Artiste Collection Birthday stamp set, stamped in CTMH Chocolate ink.
The sentiment stamp is from the CTMH Art Philosophy It's a Party stamp set. It was stamped in CTMH Chocolate ink and then heat embossed with clear embossing powder.
The kraft paper is the negative space from the previous animal ballon card.
The green patterned paper is from a DCWV stack (I can't remember which one).

National Scrapbook Day Observance 2016

National Scrapbook Day is the first Saturday in May. This year that falls on the day before Mother's Day. In celebration of National Scrapbook Day, I joined my friend Maggie at an all day scrapbooking/crafting event on April 30.

Here we are having a blast at attempting a selfie (No, I don't take them often and am just now learning to look at the right spot while taking them):

I was not as productive as I would have liked, but I made a few cards, experimented with new embossing powder, troubleshot a Cricut issue I was having, became more comfortable with using my new Cricut Explore Air, and, of course, made new friends.

Toward the end of the day, I made a Cricut free card design for mother's day. I whipped up that card on Mother's Day and gave it to my boyfriend's mom. It was rather pretty, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

I also decided on using some patterned paper from my stash.
My daddy's birthday is coming up and I chose to make him a birthday card. This will be posted at a later time so that he doesn't come across it before I give it to him.

The second card I made is for my man. I make cards for him randomly.
I didn't even use a sketch for this one. I found the stamps I wanted to use and put the pieces together. I have determined that this layout could easily be turned so that the shape surrounding the camera resembles a Polaroid picture.
The cross-stitched lines is an image from the CTMH Typeset stamp set.
The camera image and sentiment stamps are from the Captured my Heart set by Unity.
The blue papers are from Recollections.
On the camera image, there is a tiny heart. I colored that with a borrowed red pen, just for a little pop of a different color.

Maggie had some new embossing powder so I had to open it and give it a try. I had this wonderful new stamp from Unity that I was dying to try and I thought it would be beautiful heat embossed. I was right. :)
I used kraft paper from Recollections.
I stamped the Dream Tree image by Unity in Versa Mark ink, sprinkled the embossing powder over the image, and then hit it with my heat gun.

This is what came out:

I added that to a cream card base. This card was give to a previous teammate for her supervisor who had the same surgery I did. The team was going to each individually sign the card so I left the inside blank.

I have several of the embossed trees to use on other cards. I think they would be great for many occasions! 

Dashwood Wedding Invitations

My boyfriend and I have a couple of friends that are getting married this summer. We both are part of the wedding and my main gift to them is to make their wedding invitations. I always make a few extra since it's easy to make them while mass-producing than to make them individually if needed later. I made a total of 75 invitations.

I do not have pictures of the inside, but the invitation wording was printed directly onto the cardstock in the inside.
Here is the final product:

The card base is cream cardstock from Recollections by Michaels.
The background piece is kraft cardstock, the dark brown pieces are from an Earth tones collection, both from Recollections. All three pieces were dry embossed through my Cuttlebug using the Darice Wood Grain embossing folder.
The tag was cut from the same cream cardstock as the base using the Darice Bookplate Dies. The tree image is from the Always Grateful stamp set by Close to my Heart. It was stamped in Sweet Leaf ink also from Close to my Heart.
The extras are twine and eyelets.

I presented a ton of card ideas to them and they chose three that they liked the best. I then made three prototypes based on those ideas.
The final product was inspired by this card created by Linda Aarhus:

Here are the other three prototypes and their inspiration:

Inspiration

Embossed and inked clouds, birds on wire embossing on vellum overlay

Inspiration, found on Pinterest

Dark brown base, white top layer, jute/nylon ribbon, tree image cut from the Sweethearts Cricut cartridge

Positive Chemistry cards

I was very excited to order this set of stamps!

Positive Chemistry set from Close to my Heart

The Basic Grey paper I used was in the back of my mind when I ordered the stamp set.
The paper is Authentic from the Origins collection of Basic Grey.
The red paper was from my friend's paper stash.
I stamped the atom image with Close to my Heart White Daisy ink. It wasn't quite as crisp as I wanted it to be so I went over each one carefully with a white gel pen.
I used a sketch I found on Facebook:

This sentiment is perfect for so many occasions:

This one I made a duplicate of, but the original intent was to make it for my boyfriend. He loved it! I used the little heart stamp in red and then decided to add the red mat for that extra pop of color.

Another coworker's birthday

In case you haven't figured it out, I make cards for my teammates at work for different occasions (anniversaries, birthdays, promotions, etc.).
This was a quick birthday card that I put together during one of my many crafting days with my crafty friend Maggie.

Front

Inside

For the front:
The patterned paper is from Basic Grey.
The birthday cupcakes stamped image is from Close to my Heart.
The candles stamp is from Unity Stamp Co and is from the Frankly Said set. The actual stamp is only a few candles, but I just stamped it multiple times in a line.

Inside:
The sentiment stamp is also from the Frankly Said stamp set from Unity Stamp Co.
The lines are hand-doodled.

This card was for a spunky coworker and she absolutely loved it!

Welcome cards for new teammates

We have a fairly high turnaround in our department at work. It is mostly internal (people get promoted or move to other departments). Because of this turnaround, we have many new training classes that join us throughout the year. I happened to be on a team that was receiving five new team members from a new training class. The management and supervisors hand write messages in corporate note cards for the new employees. I wanted to create something from the team as a whole to show the new employees that we were excited to have them join us.
As a new employee in training, it can be hard to feel welcomed because there isn't much interaction with current employees.

I found a card I liked on Pinterest and then adapted it.
Here is the blog that the Pinterest entry links to. Jackie provides a great tip for lining up the squares easily. I did not read her blog post so I didn't follow her tip. I just laid the squares on the paper until they looked aligned to me. I think it turned out pretty darn good for not measuring.

This is the original inspiration card:

I love the little banner at the bottom, but I was working on these later in the evening and decided to keep it simpler by just stamping on the card itself.

Here is my card:

I used a white card base (I buy it by the ream at Walmart in the printer/office supply section).
The kraft piece is from Recollections. I bought a package of the smaller pieces on clearance some time ago at Michaels.
The patterned papers are from the DCWV White Ginger stack.
The sentiment stamp is from the Close to My Heart Hello There stamp set. This came with the Twitterpated Workshop on the Go (back when they used to include the stamp set with the kit).
I stamped it with VersaFine Onyx Black ink.

I have leftover squares and will be making another set of these note cards for my current supervisor. This was a little time consuming to get everything lined up and I cut the 1-inch squares with my paper trimmer (note to self...must purchase a punch for this next time), but I think they turned out to be pretty darn cute!

Artiste Cupcake quick birthday card

I needed a quick birthday card for a coworker. I knew it was his birthday, but I kept putting it off thinking I had more time to make a card (story of my life...).
I used kraft paper by Recollections that I purchased at Michaels.
The blue/teal paper is from Stampin' Up. I don't know the name of the color. I bought some loose sheets of paper from a friend who was getting rid of her crafting supplies.

The stamped images are from the Close to my Heart Artiste Cricut collection.
I love these collections because they come with stamps, paper, sometimes die-cuts, and a Cricut cartridge that all coordinate together.
To line the sentiment stamp up, I used a sticky note on the blue paper and then stamped the image. Then I adhered the kraft cupcake piece on top.

Super simple and quick to make and perfect for my coworker since he loves cupcakes!

People like my creations!

I am excited to share this. I made a Christmas card for my supervisor this year. The unfortunate thing is that I forgot to take a picture of it. She liked it so much that she has been asking me randomly to make cards for her for certain occasions in her life. This is a different supervisor than the one I made the set of 10 blank cards for. I change supervisors at work frequently as schedules change and we add more people to our department. I will actually be changing supervisors again in April when I start a new Monday through Friday shift).
Anyways...she asked me yesterday to make an anniversary card for her to give to someone else. I made the card below and was very excited for it. When I got to work today, I just happened to notice all of the anniversary balloons floating at people's desks (we get balloons and a candy bar from our management team in the month of our anniversaries). It dawned on me that I should have clarified with my supervisor, Sarah, whether it was for a work anniversary or a wedding anniversary (which is where my thinking was when I made this card). I mentioned that to her when I presented the card but she loved it and said it was perfect for either. She then came back to me and told me it was for one of our male supervisors and wondered if we could take the bow off. Because of the way I put it on, I was able to untie it and remove the glue dot and it was sans bow.

• The card base and black layers is Recollections card stock from Michael's.
• The white card stock I bought from Walmart. It comes in a ream in the printer section. 
• The ink used is VersaFine Onyx Black. 
• The ribbon is from my stash (I'm pretty sure it was given to me at some point along with the rest of my ribbon pieces in a jar). I don't use ribbon very often so I don't have much of it. It is two pieces. The first piece was adhered to the back of the middle panel, wrapped around and then adhered to the back again. For the bow, I slipped a smaller piece of ribbon under the wrapped piece, tied the bow and then stuck half of a glue dot underneath to hold it in place. This is why it was so easy to remove.
• The stamp on the front of the card is from Fiskars. It is called Elegant Vine. I purchased it on clearance a few years ago and didn't realize until now (since it hadn't been opened yet) that it is for their Continuous Stamping Wheel (that I didn't know existed until now). I don't have that tool, but I just pulled it off from the plastic backing (this was tougher than I thought it should have been) and used it like a normal acrylic stamp. I stamped this a few different times randomly over the three panels using this technique. I watched videos of this technique and many crafters use non-permanent adhesive to layer their papers before stamping. I did as the person in the linked technique tutorial and just layered them on the table (I put a piece of paper underneath them so that I could stamp off the edges) and stamped.
• I realized after making the front of the card that I don't have any Anniversary stamps so I improvised. The inner stamp is from the Close to My Heart Art Philosophy Cricut Collection. I used a black pen to write the sentiment.

I am very pleased with how this turned out and I will definitely be using the triple stamping technique again in the future.
I have also now been asked to make another anniversary card and a birthday card for my supervisor as well. I am in charge of my team's recognition for this month and next so I will continue to make birthday cards and anniversary cards for them as well. This gives me goals to meet so that I can book time into my schedule to work on them. If it weren't for those goals, I would put crafting on the back burner and forget to schedule it as part of me-time.

Set of 10 different blank notecards

I make cards for special occasions for people on my team at work. My previous supervisor (we switch occasionally as people get different shifts) loved the cards I was making so much that she asked me to make her a set of 10 note cards. I, of course, agreed to make them. This was actually a bit of a challenge for me as she wanted them all to be different and blank inside. No sentiments. No mass production. It was tricky but also very fun.


Above is the entire set of 10 cards. I'm pretty pleased with them.
Here they are in detail:

For this card I followed a random sketch I had posted in one of my many Facebook albums. The blue cardstock (I believe from Stampin' Up) and the orange paper is from my scrap stash. The patterned paper is from the DCWV Glam Rock stack.

For this one, the card base and the lighter blue cardstock are from this stack from Michaels. I love these stacks and they go on sale fairly frequently. I used my Scor-Pal to score the three lines at the bottom. The button is a sticker that I purchased years ago on clearance. I made the pinwheel using this tutorial. There are many tutorials out there to make this faux pinwheel. I just happened to use the first one I came across. The patterned papers I used were from my scrap stash.

All of the papers on this card, including the card base, were from my scrap stash. The birds are stickers from a set I purchased on clearance at Michaels a while ago.

This card is on a white card base. The yellow patterned paper is from a stack, but I can't remember which one and don't have any more of it that I could find. The triangles and banners are from a sticker sheet. I am bummed that I didn't write down which company it was from. I just peeled the stickers off the sheet, inked the edges, and adhered them to the card.

The patterned papers on this card are from the DCWV Guy Stack. The three embellishments are from my stash that does not have packaging.

The papers used on this card are from the DCWV My Sunshine Stack. I stamped the image using Close to my Heart Chocolate ink. The stamp is from Unity Stamps. I love their images and they have some incredible sales as well.

For this one, I found a fun starburst card and looked for a tutorial. There are many out there. I came across this one and tried it. I didn't have any embellishments that really went with this card so I left it without any. This is a very versatile technique that I will be using in the future. The patterned papers are from the DCWV Lemon Flower Stack.

At first I thought this card was a little busy, but I have come to love it! The papers are from the DCWV White Ginger Stack. Okay, so I might have a slight obsession with DCWV papers. They are so beautifully designed and sturdy!
The sketch I pulled from my huge arsenal of sketches.

This one is a mess of my ideas. I started by cutting rectangles and ended up with this. The patterned papers are from the DCWV Mod-Retro Stack. The twine is from Close to my Heart. The embellishments are Karen Foster Mediterranean Sparkle Burst Brads.

Although I clearly have an obsession with DCWV, I do not solely use DCWV papers. The papers used on this card are from the We R Memory Keepers Storytime 6x6 paper stack. I purchased this stack at Walmart. The little jewels are from my unidentified stash. The twine is from Close to my Heart. The button is from BoBunny.

Mariposa Bliss

This card was made using chipboard stickers and patterned paper from the DCWV Mariposa set. The paper edges were inked with Chocolate ink from Close to my Heart.

This card was given to a coworker to congratulate her on her wedding and wish her many years of marital bliss.

DCWV Autumn Stack turned Birthday

I had this card laying around in my stash. I wasn't sure I liked it the way it was and wasn't sure what else to do with it so I left it alone.
I needed a quick birthday card for a co-worker so I pulled this one out and wrote "Happy Birthday" above the strip at the bottom. It actually worked out nicely and gave it just the little extra that the card needed.

• The card base is from a set of cream colored card bases I bought on clearance a long time ago.
• The patterned papers are from the DCWV The Autumn Melody Stack.
• The circles were cut using my Cuttlebug and Spellbinders Nestabilities.
• The darker circle is actually a stamped image onto scrap paper. The image is from the Close to My Heart "Potential" stamp set. It was stamped with Close to my Heart Chocolate ink.

Spring Window Display for Posey's Place

This is the Spring window display for Posey's Place. If you're ever in the area, check it out!
The banner is hung with paracord and clothespins.
The pennants were cut from the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge. The paper is from a DCWV stack (I can't remember which one). The letters were cut from various cartridges.
The rest of the display is comprised of various items. This display was inspired by this post on Pinterest. (How much fun is Pinterest?!)
My mom and I had so much fun putting this together.

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Something New

I made this card for a coworker who lost her baby during pregnancy. I found inspiration for this card on Pinterest (here is the site the picture was taken from).

The patterned papers are from a Colorbok stack I got recently from Walmart (I think it was a camping stack). The green paper was from my stash.
The stamp is from the Close to my Heart Card Chatter - Sympathy set.
The candy dots were from my stash.
The hemp is from Close to my Heart.

I am entering this card in the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge. The challenge this week is to use something new. All of the patterned papers I used on this card I bought last week and this was the first time I had used them. I may have to go back and get some more. :)

Enjoy!

Kelly