Gatefold Anniversary Card

It's Fun Fold Friday here on my blog and today I'm sharing a Gatefold Card. Our son and his girlfriend are celebrating 20 years together and had a fun party last week with friends and family. A lot of their friends have been part of their lives since high school and were there at the beginning of the relationship. 

Anyhow, we had a great photo of them made into a canvas for them and this was the card ...

The card base is one I've had in my stash for years - there are still a few more in the package that I will have to remember to use. Since they are square they would also cost more to mail so they are best for cards we will be hand delivering - like this one!

I cut the open heart (Scrapbook .com) twice, sandwiching a transparency between them. I love the shine it gives, as well as the floating look.

I pulled out a couple of older Alpha dies (iCrafter & Lawn Fawn) to personalize the card, then stamped the sentiment (Taylored Expressions). I thought it was too light though so went over the words with a black fine-line pen and was much happier with it.

This is another card where the patterned paper does most of the work! This pad is several years old and by 49 & Market.

Donkey Birthday Cards

These donkey stamps (Whimsy) just crack me up and it was time to bring them out again to put on some birthday cards for the nursing home. They were lightly water coloured with dye ink and a water brush then popped up with foam tape. I added a few glitter dots for some birthday shine and a stamped sentiment. Oh, and I coloured one of the teeth with a gold gel pen. Ha!

Here is a peek at the inside, the nice big sentiment stamp is from Divinity Designs. (I don't remember off hand who makes the sentiment on the front).

Anniversary Trifold Card

Today I'm sharing another Anniversary card - this time it's a trifold card. These images (Stampin' Up) just make me smile and I thought they would be fun to use for this card. I lightly coloured them with a water brush and dye inks

I cut a 12 x 12" piece of white card stock to 12 x 5.5", then scored that piece at 4" and 8" on the long side. The patterned paper has silver foiling on it and I cut those panels a little smaller and added them to the card base (3.75 x 5.25"). 

I added some rainbow holographic card stock for additional shine and some stamping inside.

 Note the man and woman characters are two separate images, so I after stamping the man I cut a mask to cover him then stamped the woman beside him. When I removed the mask it gave me the look of them being a single image.

November Sheetload Inspired Cards

As soon as I saw the November Sheetload of Cards I was inspired to pull out some washi tape and use that instead of patterned paper. I was having SO much fun and very quickly had over a dozen panels decorated with Washi tape and waiting for the focal element. Since I rarely post my cards in the same order I make them though, these are actually the last group of cards I made.

While I may eventually use the Nov Sheetload with patterned paper as intended, I was pretty happy with how these cards worked out as well as the others that I've made and will share another day. I am going to go through some of my border stickers as well to see how they work with this layout.

Since I had been working on birthday cards for my Mom's old nursing home I had a package of embellishments out anyhow. Several of them worked for these cards and I had fun hunting through my stash for other decorative elements I could use. The glittery daffodil was made years ago, using a Peel Off sticker, silk microfine glitter and alcohol markers. 

The cards all got the same sentiment - in coordinating colours - and a little bit of washi tape to add some colour to the inside panel. I'll be popping these into the next donation bag for the nursing home.

Scenic Autumn Cards

It's no secret that I love patterned paper, and scenic patterned paper has been my favourite for a year or two now. These three cards (two A2 and one mini-slimline) let the beautiful paper do all the work. I brought in some stickers and glitter dots as well.

This first A2 card started with a forest green glossy card base from my stash. The glossy green was also used to mat the stamped sentiment and I added some orange glitter dots and a glittery leaf sticker in addition to the other leaf stickers.

I couldn't decide whether to do dark or light for the card bases, so I did one of each! The second A2 card has a buff card base and I arranged the stickers under the popped up sentiment. This sentiment was matted with gold foil card stock for some shine.

Finally, the Mini Slimline ... I got to use one of the leftover pieces of the patterned paper and the patterned paper panel and sentiment oval were matted with glossy green card stock.

Inside I used the same sentiment as the cards above, with some additional stickers.

I always like to work ahead, so these cards have been put away for me to send next year. 

50th Anniversary Card

It's Fun Fold Friday here on my blog, and today I'm sharing the card I made for friends LAST year. I took a longer-than-expected break from posting my cards on social media so this one didn't get shared. 

All the papers & stickers came from the same paper pad and inside I used the Paper Frames Pop Up (Karen Burniston). I hand wrote the sentiments on the inner labels.

When people receive a Paper Frames Pop Up card, they will often turn it over to view it from the bottom as well ... so I took one of those shots too. So much dimension with this die set!

Since the card was made so long ago, I actually had made note of the supplies!

Supplies used:

Patterned paper, stickers & cut apart- Date Night, Chickaniddy Crafts (old from my stash)

5 x 6.5" card base and envelope - Michaels

Pops of Color - Snowflake, Scrapbook .com

Paper Frames Pop Up - Karen Burniston

Birds & Birthday Card Duo

Last month I shared four 5x7 birthday cards that were done with the same papers. (You can see those ones HERE). There were some leftover pieces, so I cut them to work with A2 cards and thats what I used here. I really liked the way the (very old) bird stickers worked with these colours and I hope they made the nursing home residents smile.

Below is a peek at the inside ... 

Since everything I used is from my stash and more than several years old - I didn't keep a supply list to share.

Sparkly Birthday Cards

Earlier in the year when I was re-organizing my craft room, I found a very old package of white cards & envelopes. When I measured them they were not quite an A2 size - instead they were 4 x 5.5" with an A2 envelope. I decided to use them up for nursing home birthday cards and since I was also trying other use up an older sparkly 8x8" pad ... this is the group of cards I came up with.

All the papers have glittery or sparkly bits and they really are much nicer in real life. 

It always makes me happy when I can use things up and I even made use of a lot of the leftover strips and leftover pieces that were in the paper pad package from previous projects.

I pulled out butterfly punches for a few of the cards and stamped the inside with the same sentiment in coordinating colours of ink.

Birthday Scene Card

It's Masculine Card Monday here on my blog and today I'm sharing a scenic birthday card. In my last post I mentioned how much I am loving scenic patterned paper - and that is what I used for this card. It's not exactly patterned paper - they are printed A2 card panels, two to a sheet, by Divinity Designs. I ordered them about 9 months ago when we were visiting Arizona and am making myself USE them and not just hoard them. They are SO pretty!

The panels are beautifully vibrant, but for this one I wanted it to be more subdued. The stamped & fussy cut bear (Stampin' Up) looked 'off' on the full colour version, so after cutting the panel to size I wrapped it with vellum before matting it with white card stock then to a brown folded card. 

The bear was popped up with thin foam tape, as was the stamped sentiment.  Inside I stamped the owl (same set as the bear) and the greeting and this card was done and ready for the mail.

I used the other panel from the sheet to make a birthday card to go into a set of them I made for a friend's summer birthday. I used a bright copper metallic card base and the scenic panel looked stunning on it. Looking through my pictures though, I didn't snap one of that card.

Autumn Card Duo

For the past year or so, I've been drawn to scenic patterned paper. Probably longer than that, but those are the ones I'm reading for again and again when I'm not making birthday cards for the nursing home. I wanted to make a Thanksgiving card using this paper (Amazon .ca) and the Grassy Grove die (Stampin' Up) and decided to make just ONE more Halloween card as well. 

The 3-d pumpkin sticker is from my stash and the sweet ghost is by Hello Blluebird. 

I used the same stamp set for both cards, another old one from Stampin' Up. Washi tape along the bottom of the inside panel to bring the colour inside and I lightly added colour with ink and a blending brush. It's not as blotchy as it appears in the photo though.

Below is the Thanksgiving card with another sticker from my stash. I didn't add greetings to the fronts of these ones as they seemed to detract from the scene and black silhouette trees.

Here is the inside ... the same washti tape and I added a little felt acorn sticker (also from my stash).