Piano thanks

I have a "not yet posted" file  that has cards I haven't gotten around to posting, but when I started college two years ago, I did almost nothing on the blog.  I knew some of the "not yet posted" cards actually had been posted, but not until now have I been willing to go through my blog to see which ones still had not been posted.  

This is a design I made a set of for a friend of ours, Benjamin, who is an absolutely marvelous composer.  I stamped the piano first, masked it, then stamped the music score.

Nautical Birthday

This was a card done by request of a friend. The photo was one she sent that would have significance for the recipient of the card. I love photo cards; they are the perfect way to personalize a card and preserve memories at the same time ... much less complicated than scrapbooking!

The Wonderful Names of Jesus III

As I was creating cards for the design teams, I came across a damaged panel using Stubby Stamper's Names of Jesus stamp. As you can see, I did some kind of watercoloring on this Eureka rose, and evidently I used too much water, and the panel warped significantly. Still, I never got rid of it. Already posting two companies' NOJ stamps, I decided to see if I could use the panel after all. I attached it to some beautiful marbled green glossy cardstock, placed it under a large pile of books, and left it for a couple of days. Hurrah - the card flattened out smoothly! I wish the glossy cardstock showed up better, it's truly a beautiful pattern, giving added beauty to the card.

By the way, another name for Jesus is "Rose of Sharon," part of why I chose a rose to place in the center. :-)

Last foreign language cards made for sale

I have been selling cards at Houghton College for about two and half years, but with new management and, understandably, with their different ideas, it seems time to move on. I had almost stopped anyway, as I don't really have a lot of time for cardmaking, and when time is limited, making "have to" cards - making sure I have new designs for each category - leaves no time to make just what I want to make. Anyway, while I still have reasons to make the occasional Spanish card, I will no longer have any cause to make foreign language cards. Those that I have left over I will just re-make into English cards, unless I can find some place to sell them online. With the fairly simple designs I have, that may not be possible. So, these two cards, made this summer to sell at the college this winter, are the last in their language I will make.

Thursday already!

Wow, how did a week go by so quickly???

That's what happens when one is hyper-focused on something! Our town has it's annual "week-before-the-balloon-rally parade Saturday, and then the Balloon Rally itself next Saturday, and I'm busily putting together as many journals as possible. I am almost exclusively just making very basic wallpaper journals ... wallpaper is lovely because you can clean it, the mitered corners stay nicer much longer than cardstock, and best of all, the wallpaper is free!

I went through my previously made journals for some inspiration for the few decorated journals I want to have. This one is one of my favorites. It's a little too time consuming to recreate, but perhaps I can simplify it a little....hmmm....

Fantasy

This card did not turn out as I had hoped, but I had a lot of fun working on it!

Names of Jesus

I made this set of notecards (my notecard sets are all non-layered cards without embellishments) last fall.


As I do more frequently than I care to admit, I stamped a couple of the card fronts crookedly. But, that just meant I had panels for another cards, such as this.

Sailor Birthday

I realized Friday evening that if I wanted to make sure my sailor received his birthday package on time, we needed to mail it out Saturday morning. I'm in a flurry of cardmaking for the craftstore ... finally closing my website means I need to redo all the labels on the backs of my cards. So, I need to get the cards back that are there now, and replace them with "current label" cards. So ... I knew I needed some help! I did a search on Splitcoast stampers, and found this card there. While I have intended occasionally to case a card, usually I end up designing something altogether different. But this card was so perfect, I changed very little at all.

It is Well remake

I made an identical journal to this over two years ago for a stamp challenge. It just might be my favorite journal. A friend requested that I make one for her, and with a need for journals for the Houghton College craft fair in December, I made two. The only difference with this one here is that the background is wallpaper (I always use that now), and I had a sort of face silhouette on the "Christ hath regarded my helpless estate" oval. It was definitely a feminine face, and as I though this journal would be good for a male as well, I omitted the image on the one I made for the craft fair. My friend's journal was purple, but a shade that my camera decided was gray. :-)

I was inspired all over again by this hymn as I re-created the journal. The pictures are from the actual tragedies of the author's life: the Chicago fire in which he lost his businesses, and the ship collision that cost the lives of his daughters. If you don't know the story, google the name Horatio Spafford.

Music journal

Here is the journal that I made with the music panels. I love making music-themed cards and journals. Not only do I love music, but their are just so many related symbols for stamping!

The music notes were cuttled, and the white on black sheet music was done with white on white embossing.

With all my lined journals, I used 24 weight paper instead of the standard 20 wt. copy paper; it makes for much crisper lines. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a printer that will give me a two-sided, double page layout that will have back and front matching, so I have to have the paper done at a printshop. This makes the price more expensive than I'd like, but for now, it's the way I need to do it. I make mostly cardstock filled journals now.

I forgot to photograph the journal cover before assembling, so my apologies for the poor quality of the photo. In order to preserve the cover, I punch a no-flap bag from clearbags.com along wo\with the cover before assembling. It's easy enough to remove when the journal is full.

Yet another music circles card!

Here's the last card made at the same time as the previous cards. I was actually working on a journal cover design, and not knowing exactly what I was wanting to do, made a bunch of music panels.

This scripture is very special to me. God used it during a time about a year and a half ago, when I went through a sort of crisis of faith. I spent four days in a motel room sized cabin at a retreat center in Alabama. It was on a lovely piece of property with a pond, etc, so great for walks as well. I spent the days reading the Word and praying throughout the day (I was the only guest in the entire place), and then reading some great Christian fiction in the evening. It was a fabulous time, and I highly recommend it.

Music hello

This is, of course, another card made from the music panels used in yesterday's card. The little piece of ribbon or something is a mystery to me, it's definitely not part of the card - I don't know how I failed to notice it when taking the picture.

Salt Challenge: JOY

I have absolutely loved participating in the bi-weekly Salt Challenge, but this fall was so intensely busy, I spent almost no time on any blogs at all, and completely forgot about Salt. I "rediscovered" it last week. "Joy" is a wonderful challenge theme, and if there is any stamp I have multiples of, it's ones that express Joy. How perfect to find that to be the word selected on Salt. Problem: I have a brand new Joy stamp I wanted to use for this challenge, but I just could not make it "work" on a card. So instead, here's a card that I haven't posted yet that still "qualifies"!



I used a joy stamp on this ministry card because I think it's easy in ministry to be overwhelmed by the responsibility of it all, and forget that God desires us to be joyful.

We're studying Hebrews in a church class our pastor teaches, and I've been thinking about this joy-related scripture about Jesus:

"...therefore God, your God, has set you above your
companions by anointing you with the oil of joy."

This is speaking of Christ's superiority over angels ... and one of those ways is that He has been annointed with the oil of joy. Isn't that fascinating?

black and mint

It's interesting the different things that inspire people in creating. My daughter had a combination of black and mint green that had sent me into my craft room to make a card with those colors. I didn't have the exact shade of green that I wanted, but I liked this shade ... especially as I had bought a package of the cardstock years ago but only used it once. :-) I originally really liked just the black background, it seemed more sophisticated or something, I'm not sure what word I really want. Anyway, that's how I photographed it, though I hadn't yet glued it to a card. It sat on my counter until last night, when I finally decided to do that last step. Before I attached it, I looked at it one last time against a green background, and decided I prefered it that way after all. :-)

Bridal Shower

One of my daughter's best friends is getting married this summer, and we attended the family bridal shower. I had helped Sally design her own wedding invitations. Her colors are brown and burgundy, and she will be carrying lillies. She lives out of town, so I created a number of invitations for her (using repositional glue so that she could mix and match). I kept the "card parts" that ended up not being used, and they came in handy when I remembered rather last minute (as usual!) that I didn't have any pre-made shower cards. The bottom portion that reads "blessings is actually a mini-card; after writing a little note and signing it, I glued it down with the repositional glue, then punched out a "button" to lift the flap with.

Skaters

Someone on the stamping board Gingerwood was searching for a silhouette stamp with skaters, and I think she was even hoping for vintage. I knew just the stamp she needed! This comes from Stubby Stampers, a company I really enjoy doing business with. I bought this stamp last year, but I actually did not use it. But in linking the stamp for the poster, I was inspired to finally make a card with it.

I wanted a more "romantic" look than just black and white. I tried stamping in blue, but that just didn't do it. So, I decided to gry some blue sponged into the background. That seemed to work. I washed the stamp and then stamped just the trees on one side or the other with versamark, and then embossed with clear. It doesn't show up very well in the photo, but it worked well.

Pastor Appreciation card

For the past couple of years, I've wanted to give a set of handmade cards to my pastor and his wife for Pastor's Appreciation. Although I have plenty of cards at any time, as I would rotate the stock in the store in which I sold cards, I wanted to have cards that I made specifically for them. I decided that this year, if I hadn't made any cards by the end of October, I would just select from my stash. Well, despite the store having closed in the middle of September, life has been unbelievably busy, so it still hasn't quite happened. However, I did finish this card yesterday, which I did specifically with our pastor in mind. He has quoted this saying several times, so I know he likes it.

Horse card set

I know, "horse" doesn't say much, but then, I don't really know anything about horses. In fact, I was so sure that the coloring was wrong that I brought one of the cards to a friend of mine who owns horses, sure she would tell me it was off. Fortunately, she told me that it was just fine, that there are horses that light colored. Whew! I'd done a sample image first, but didn't realize how much darker that particular cardstock was than the one I ended up using for the card set, so was very surprised as I finished coloring to see this shade.

boyhood

My last week to play with my friend's Paperbag Studios' stamps! I hope it is a relatively uneventful week!

I think the printed paper is from provo craft, but I'm not certain. The '57 chevy and "remember" text are from Stubby Stamper. I purchased the chevy for Cuban-themed cards; those 50's vehicles (now with Russian diesel engines!) are pretty much the only ones that Cubans are able to own. I suppose the vehicle "ages" the car, but it seemed right!

Tag fun!

I was given a bunch of tags from an old stationery store that had been closed a couple of decades ago. The remaining inventory had just been stuck in an attic somewhere for years. Anyway, I'd seen some on Etsy, done just in browns, and the seller seems to sell quite a lot of them. So, I decided to see what my gift shop friend thought. I made a set of the small ones, all coffee themed, and she loved them, so this will be yet another project for me down the road! I was happy to stick with brown for the coffee tags, but I wanted to try out some color with other styles.

I used distress inks for all the tags, these are so much fun! I had purchased some last year on impulse, but until a couple of months ago, had only used the vintage postcard and tea dye. But I "discovered" the colored ones when I was making Mother's Day cards, and was hooked on them too!

I listed a few last items on ebay, you can view them here.