Special Delivery

Hello, ladies! (And my apologies if we have any gents. Hello to you, too! *waving*) And happy Tuesday to everyone. Having been out of the swing of things for so long, I'm feeling a little rusty but am SO loving be back in the craft room and back in good graces with my card-making mojo!

Today, I'm sharing the second card that I made last night. This card will complete our custom order for a 21-card variety pack for our customer's grandmother. So without further adieu, let's get to it.

To finish out the pack, I needed a baby card design. Whitney did a fantastic job of keeping all of the baby designs fairly gender-neutral. And my choice of color scheme (a la this week's CR84FN Color Challenge 29) kind-of teeters on the edge. I really liked this week's Mojo Monday Sketch 192, and so that is the inspiration behind the layout.

I had great fun sorting through our stash of patterned papers for this design. To me, the sketch really allowed for larger patterns. I was thrilled to find two very fun patterns in the stash. I mean, who doesn't love cheetah print? *grin* And the large polka dot worked perfectly to give the eye a rest from all of that wild cheetah print and it also made a perfect grounding for the sentiment.

You'll notice I adapted the sketch in several ways. Since our aim for this custom order was to keep all of the designs light enough to mail with a standard first-class postage stamp, I opted to eliminate the bottom layer (shown in black) of matting beneath the patterned paper. Instead, I cut the patterned paper just a wee bit smaller than the kraft background I was using and allowed that to peek from behind and serve as my mat. Secondly, in lieu of the ribbon in the center, I opted to use a larger sentiment stamp as the center element and matted it in a plum color just a shade darker than the plum I stamped the sentiment on to give it just enough dimension to be the all-important focal point. I loved the scallop circle element in the sketch and chose to keep it by punching my own scalloped circle from a sheet of cork. I was so excited to finally have the opportunity to use cork on a card! I added a threaded button in the center and popped it all up to give the allusion of a flower. You'll notice that I did not completely eliminate the tag element from the sketch. Instead, I left long tails on the threading, allowing the bottom tail to drape across the sentiment panel.

When all was said and done, I was elated with the finished result. I must admit that I doubted myself just a wee bit on my combination of patterns. But as I suspected when I got started, the sketch was the key to making them all work together in harmony! I hope you agree!

Thanks for visiting today - have a great day!

Happy Friday!

Hello All,
I hope you are having a wonderful day. I have spent a WEEK now buried in the craft room, and although I love it, it can get to be a little much! Although, when I look at the cards I have made over this week, I am truly proud of myself! I made a pack of 25 NEW DESIGNS for a customer, and then made 2 - 5 card duplicate packs for another customer! It has been a whirl-wind week, but WOW!! It is definitely harder when there isn't someone to bounce your ideas off...let's just say there was plenty of trial and error!

Well, without any more jibber jabber, today I bring you a super adorable get well card AND a CAS new baby card! TWO CARDS!! Oh my! This must be a good day!

First is the Get Well card. This card was inspired by Pattie's cute card here. I LOVE the bicycle, and I had a different one, but it still worked! I also knew I had to add in this super fun ribbon that goes with chevron chic challenge by Moxie Fab! I decided to bust out the water color pencils AND the brushes, and tried my hand at water coloring the flowers and little bits of the bike! I actually got pretty decent in one day, and I will post another of those fun creations later on this weekend!!

Now on to the baby card, which is also adorable and definitely CAS!! I got the sketch here from Waltzing Mouse blogspot! What a great layout, it really is perfect for so many things! I originally wanted to make it a Congratulations card with fireworks instead of flowers, but I don't have a fireworks stamp! lol. So I brainstormed a bit, and I came up with this! Added a couple gems to the sentiment and I think it is fabulous! I love monochromatic colors if you didn't notice already, and I think that the yellow is so perfects for that baby card you just need to have on hand and is not specifically for a boy or girl! It is just so sweet too!!!




Thanks for stopping by everyone!! Oh, and BOTH of these cards will be entered into CAS-ual Friday's challenge for this week, which is Bring On The Bling! I cannot tell you how many cards I added gems to TODAY! It was amazing and liberating all at the same time! Have a GREAT weekend, see you back here tomorrow!

Custom Invitations

Howdy, everybody and happy Wednesday!

Today we would like to share with you a recent custom order that we have been working on. Our client was looking for a sweet invitation to send for her daughter's christening. She wanted it to be light and airy and, of course, feminine and a little frilly. We worked through lots of samples trying to get it just right. Our client really loved this baby card and so we began tweaking the design to adapt it for the christening invitation. But something wasn't quite right. And then today when we saw the Your Next Stamp So Charming challenge, we knew exactly what was missing from our design - a sweet charm. And *voila* instant happy customer!

As you can see, we didn't change much on the original design b/c the customer was really in love with most of the card elements just as they were. We substituted a smaller sentiment and placed it so it was less prominent on the card front, at the client's request. And then we've added the twine, giving the appearance that the bouquet of flowers is tied together as a nosegay, and threaded this adorable little charm through to solidify the christening theme. The actual invitation is printed on the inside of the card (not shown).

When Whitney designed the original card, she kept saying that "it will be so versatile. I mean, we can use it for sweet birthday cards and all kinds of other things." And she was right (as usual).

Do you have an upcoming party or event? Do you have a special card in mind that you don't see offered? We are always happy to work on your custom orders! We've had nothing but happy customers thus far. Just pop over to our Facebook and see for yourself.

Thanks for stopping in today!

Over the Moon

Hello All,

This is an early morning post in honor of the amazing sleep i'm sure you all got! Well, as some of you know, you loose some of that sleep when sweet little babies come along, and I thought that I could make a card that was sweet and babyish and included this ADORABLE Hero Arts sheep stamp so we could enter the Hero Arts 50th Celebration challenge. To be honest, I picked up a couple new stamp sets from Hero Arts just DAYS ago, and when I saw the challenge, I could not decide which adorable stamp to pick! But this one won! Also, the sheep and the whole idea seemed to come together when I saw the 365 Cards Blog White Space Challenge. I looked at it and thought AH-HA! It just came to me. I liked the navy blue to resemble night, and I thought of the sheep as if it was 1 of many that someone might be counting (Another childhood past-time to go with the theme)! So, we decided it would round out our pack of Baby Cards and might be a nice note of congrats and encouragement to some new parents one day (some who are soon to be needing some extra ZZZzzzs. lol.)

Thanks for stopping by this morning! I hope this added to a great start to your day!

Ducks In A Row

Hello Lovely Ladies,

Happy President's Day to you all. Susan and I are enjoying our day off by working feverishly on cards here in the craft room. We had a slumber party last night and got TONS done. We have some really cute projects we will be posting sometime in the future. Speaking of cute, after a run to the nearby craft store yesterday, we came up with this sweet baby card using some supplies we found in the bargain bins! When we saw these cute little baby theme cut outs, we had to get them! The ducks are especially cute! Once we had the paper picked out, we headed to the blogosphere to find a great sketch, and boy were we lucky! We found this one over at Verve under Week 3 Sketch!! It adapted perfectly for our "ducks in a row" card.

Well ladies, thank so much for stopping by! See you tomorrow with some more cute stuff!!

The King of Cool

Hi All!

I hope everyone is having as beautiful a weekend as we are here in North Texas!!! It is great outside, but, due to the wintery weather last week, Susan and I did not get as much accomplished as we would have liked to, so while others are outside grilling and enjoying their Sunday afternoon, we are cooped up here in the craft room working tediously to get some new cards made. An idea we had over the weekend was successfully put into action when we whipped out these little babies (no pun intended..heehee).

We have recently noticed the number of people in our circles of friends who are in need of baby cards, be it for new grand-babies, nieces and nephews, and so on. So, inspired to make a pack of baby cards, we decided we could make some cute cards that were not too elaborate, but are pretty and sweet and get across the congratulations that they are meant to convey.

We began with The King of Cool card, inspired by the "oh so trendy" color scheme of blue (or pink) and brown. The challenge over at TCP Tuesday 145 was the color inspiration and when I realized how much I saw this color combo at baby showers and on strollers and baby carriers that came into where I work, I realized PINK and brown would make a great counterpart to our first card, and The Queen of Cute was born (no pun intended...again. lol.).

So, with the colors picked out, we went for a sketch, and this one over at 365 Cards was a nice clean layout that would work for both cards. We decided to keep them similar in all ways aside from the accent color and sentiment so they could work as a pair if necessary.

What's great is that the inside sentiment is a baby quote, but it could easily be for a birthday, and we can just choose a different sentiment, or leave it blank. In the card making business, versatility is a great thing to have.

Well, TTFN ladies, you shall see me back here in a bit!

Lil' Princess

Howdy! I'm sure you're thinking, "Wow, TWO posts in ONE day?!" I know ... it must be some kind of record!

Clearly Whitney and I are on a roll today with baby cards. Once you get in the groove, it's hard to make it stop. (And now you know how couples end up with two kiddos close together. *snicker*) LOL! In all seriousness, we're working on the latest line due up for release called Special Delivery. This is the second card in that line - Lil' Princess.

This design came together pretty quickly, particularly when we used a sketch and color challenge as sources of inspiration. (Have you noticed that's been a pattern as of late? We've figured out why all of the big-name designers use challenges so often. Takes SOME of the brain work out of coming up with cute, new stuff!) Once again, we turned to Moxie Fab for our color palette, using the Metallic Color Challenge for Color Inspiration for Card Makers Week, and the sketch is based on TCP Tuesday Sketch 19.

To draw in the metallic elements, we used a combination of shimmery paper (white background), iridescent gold Glimmer Mist (lightly misted over the pinkini strip), jewels, and ribbon. In person, this card is SUPER shimmery.

What we like most about this card is its versatility. While we originally designed it with our Special Delivery set in mind, it can easily be adapted for many other occasions with a simple change of the inside sentiment.

I hope you've enjoyed our second post for today. We're enjoying a super productive day in the craft room!

Special Delivery

Hello Ladies! Happy Sunday to you all.

Today I wanted to share an ADORABLE baby card we came up with while working in the craft room today. We used our cute Hello Kitty Sizzix diecut and some fun bright yellow felt to make this cute birdie!! We thought it would work wonders as a Welcome Baby card, and that's what it became! :) Once we had the bird, we realized that the Jewel Tones Color Challenge for Color Inspiration for Card Makers Week in the Moxie Fab World would be perfect to accompany our cute lil' birdie! Also, in trying to choose a layout for this card, we realized a slightly varied version of Wee Memories Challenge #41 would also be a great fit. So, this is our adorable creation!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!