Card for a gamer

For a friend’s birthday, I decided I needed card inspiration. I haven’t done any non-holiday cards yet in my recent plunge into paper arts, and I knew I wanted them to be more sophisticated than the ones I made when I dabbled in birthday cardmaking ten years ago.

I turned to the latest sketch from Mojo Monday – Round or Square. But then my immediate thought was ‘oh, I’m in a hurry, I don’t want to mess with a custom envelope too!’ My next thought was ‘ack! But putting in the extra effort is what cardmaking is all about. If I didn’t want to make it special with effort, I could just go to the drugstore’,

So that was my mental self-correction dialogue. After that I set to work to make a cool, masculine card using the square sketch.

Ingredients: The base was Tim Holtz Lost & Found paper stash, the tiny cards and blue pattern were something I manipulated based on stock imagery and had leftover from a previous project, the torn card – again left from a previous project – was made with the Card Faces Texture Trades embossing folder, Alterations ATC die and Distress ink, the stamps are Flourishes and Martha Stewart, the diamond pattern paper is from a DCWV mat stack.

Learning: I need more ribbon options. Last night I was telling myself that less dimensional seemed more masculine, but in the light of day I see that I was just kidding myself to deal with the fact that I didn’t like my ribbon options.

Loving: I’m really excited about how all the bits came together from different previous projects. I feel like this really validates my keeping of random bits from previous projects – so many fun ways to reuse! It’s like I’m creating my own eclectic ephemera.

Holiday wrap up

I haven’t done any challenges in the last week or so because I’ve been frantically getting cards finished and out of the door, and then pikes of holiday cookies to make, etc. If I had more forethought, and less need for haste, I would have liked to have done the dramatic project-end photo with all the piles of cards I made this season.  But alas, there was need for haste.  Next year I will start sooner, and do better.  I have a plan to do a couple of holiday cards each month until fall, then do a couple a week.  I feel like that will work better.

I think I’ll call that my crafting New Year’s resolution: I will spread out my holiday card making so that I am done and ready to send all of my mailable cards by December 5th.

Still, I feel proud that I finished over 30 handmade cards since I started at the beginning of November. Not bad work either, considering that I also had to collect addresses from some friends and relatives, because I haven’t sent holiday cards in at least a decade.

Before I call this the end of holiday card blogging, I want to share one last project that was a gift-card holder for a subway gift card.  I’m particularly proud of this one, so I was glad to see that that Inkspirational Challenges is having an “Anything Goes” share.

This was all hand-drawn and hand cut.

Ingredients:  I used Distress inks, a blending tool and Distress markers.  I used Sissix Movers & Shapers photo corners to cut the decorative card-holding brackets.  The stamp is from Inkadinkado.

Learning:  This is another project that encourages me to find inspiration, and reach for ambitious projects.  I saw a card somewhere on Pinterest that depicted an ordinary square sandwich as a picnic invitation.  It made me think, why can’t I make a subway sandwich that holds a Subway gift card?

Loving:  It was a big hit with the recipient, and my fellow gift givers. I was really happy with the the way the ink blending went, especially where I made the toasty bun.

Inkspirational challenge

When I saw the White on White challenge at Inkspirational Challenges, I was initially very excited, envisioning snowy landscapes expressed in paper. Then I realized that I don’t really have much to make a landscape with. So instead, I went with something more abstracted.

Ingredients: pearlescent card, Sizzix snowflake die, Stickles glitter glue, Distress glitter