Birthday and Thank Yous

My youngest celebrates his 2nd birthday tomorrow.  How quickly time flies.  Got this cute card from Cheryl.  It has all these interesting folds and I haven't really seen this anywhere so I'm not sure if it has a name or anything.  Maybe she'll blog about it later???

This is how the card opens up.

This is the back side of the card.

The back side also opens up but horizontally.  Isn't that neat?

I really liked how the card opened up so I thought I would make a couple but just a simpler version.

My version just opens in the front.  I love Fleur Anya from TGF.  She is so cute.  I cut the scallop square from felt that I bought at Walmart using my new Big Shot.  I really want to try the wool felt from PTI though so that's on my next order there.  And I do love my Big Shot.  It's so easy to use and my youngest likes to turn the handle with me.  I'm sending this as a Thank You card for Cheryl.  (Sorry, spoiling the surprise).  She was so thoughtful to not only remember my son's birthday but also to give all my kids Disney gift cards while we were at Disneyland!  Really generous.

Opened view.  Yeah, my copics leaked through the paper.

Another angle.

This is the second card I made with Fleur Anya.  I've been meaning to send Jen over at Pieces of Me a Thank You card for all the wonderful blog candy but got sidetracked by our trip.  I don't want her to think I forgot.

That's it for now.  Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Thank You Card

Well, I'm watching Glee so I figure I can multitask and post at the same time...

I made this card maybe about a year ago. I was playing around with the "Beyond Basic Borders" set from PTI. Took a while to get the entire border strip inked up nicely, it helped to cover most of it with the Ketto from Stamping Bella. The hearts are also from the Ketto line. I had to get the sentiment stamp exchanged, the original one had a little dot on the "thank" portion, but PTI was good about sending a replacement right away once I emailed customer service. I think this was also around the time I started trying colored pencils and baby oil. Still can't really color too nicely...or realistically, I basically just outline the edges or color everything in, then blend. All that I've been reading about imagining the light source is starting to confuse me, maybe I have to take an art class...someday. But at least the Kettos don't have too many parts to color (still so hard to do Anya's hair!)

First Birthday Party Favors & Thank You Card

This is a thank you card I made for my daughter's first birthday party. I got the idea from a sample at Taj Clubhouse (the owner was also very helpful). The bunny and hands were stenciled then cut out. The face was then lined with markers...not sure what else would work better to color the face.

These are the favors. I tried to match the background patterned papers to the thank you cards (there was a 2nd version of the thank you card in a slightly different color but I must have mailed all of those out before taking a picture). The animals were embossed from a taj stencil using the bunny's body and different heads. The round tag was stamped with the event and date, then die cut (thanks, Eva, for making all those).

Teacher thank you cards

Hello again!  My daily crafting has led me to be a more consistent blogger!  I finished up the thank you cards for my kids' teachers.  So many teachers this year!  I made 10 so I hope that is enough.

This card is probably familiar looking.  I did make similar ones, maybe last year?  The difference being the gold thanks sentiment I made using Lawn Fawn's die.  I've actually been using this die a lot.  The apple is die cut with My Favorite Things apple die using washi paper.  I also just rounded the bottom corners of this card just a bit.

This is all 10 of them.

My youngest one just reminded me that I should start making their traditional birthday card/bookmarks too.  Another project to add to my list!

I've been working on something different the past couple days that I'll share with you in my next post.  I'm very excited about it!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Saturday Sketch Thank You Card

Happy New Year! Although I feel like I'm still recovering from Christmas. I find these sketches at Club Anya pretty helpful, now that I need to start on some thank you cards for my son's birthday. Unfortunately I never got around to making his birthday card :( We also didn't do a big birthday party this year. I think 2 years of Pump It Up, this bounce house type place, has been more than enough. I'm so bad with party planning too. But it's difficult with his birthday falling during Christmas break, like I don't want to do it too early in December, but then if we wait until January, it will overlap with my daughter's birthday. Pretty soon his birthday and Christmas present will be combined...Well, on to the card. It's a rather brown card. Maybe I should have used brown cardstock instead of kraft now that I see a photo of it...seems like I always say that too.

Anyhow, I finally used Happy Day Oliver, colored with Prismacolor pencils. I cut off the other 2 dinosaurs that were standing next to Oliver. It was a bit painful to cut around him, not sure I want to do that again. An X-acto knife was kind of handy in some spots though. I picked this Oliver to match the digital dinosaur paper from Mindy Terasawa's Stomp Kit that I just printed onto white WalMart cardstock. The Thank You is from PTI. I inked the edges of everything with distress ink. I actually got the foam applicator and everything, but I have to practice more. I thought the laser printer ink might not hold the ink well, but it did OK. Then I cut the sentiment out with an oval nestability and tied it on with brown baker's twine.

I did my watermarked photo this time with my new Lightroom, oops, I meant my son's Lightroom. Did you know there are student editions of Adobe software and as long as your kid is registered as a full time student, starting from kindergarten, you can qualify? Does that seem totally unbelievable that my kindergartener needs Lightroom? But hey, it's expensive raising kids, if he can get a discount for the next 15 or so years, why not? I had to buy a Lightroom book/manual though and it took a while to get through it. And after reading the book, I'm thinking gee, do I even need Lightroom since I'm not even a professional photographer. But I think it does look a little better on my screen after tweaking it with Lightroom. Hopefully it's not going to be too painful to try to edit and print photos out more often.