Birthday, Mother's Day, Anniversary

Here are some cards that I've made over the last year that I just never got around to posting.  Enjoy!

Birthday Season

June, July, and August in my family are pretty much considered to be "Birthday Season." On each side of my family we get together for a big birthday event (usually not too far off from the 4th of July) and celebrate. With our roadtrip this summer and lots o' research time, I completely forgot to post the cards I made.

For the ladies

For the men

And this one for the guy cousins who turned 24

Happy Mother's Day!

For one of my best friends who is having a baby in December. :)

For my mom and Erik's mom. :) Hugs to you both!

New Stamp

A friend of ours graduated today with a Ph.D. in Soil Science.

Congrats to Dr. Robins!

Now that the majority of my work is done (just need to do some grading), I had the free time to make a card for him. I used a new stamp that I ordered from 'Paper Pretties.'

Holy Mackerel! Congratulations!

3 for Valentine's, 3 for Birthdays

I've made a few cards recently, but waited to post them so that the post office could do it's thing and get these off to the recipients before I went and ruined the surprise on here. I've been following the blog Mojo Monday which posts sketches or templates of cards. I love them!!! I really like making cards, but I've always struggled a wee bit with coming up with things to do with the papers and layers and such. These are also some of the first cards where I've tried using ribbon successfully. :)

"Manly" version of a Valentine's Day card, for my sweetie

Valentine's Card (red edition)

Valentine's Card (pink edition)

For my uncle's 55th birthday

For my grandma's 80th birthday

For Kelsey's birthday

Yay for (so far) keeping with my goal of not purchasing greeting cards, but making them!

Handmade Cards for the Holidays

This Christmas I told myself that I was not allowed to buy those super cute little boxes of cards at the store, but rather that I had to make all of my cards myself, or use leftover cards (from those cute little boxes) from years past. Well, partially because I had the urge to be crafty, and partially because I felt it was "too soon" to send out leftover cards from 1-3 years ago, I spent a few days making these. The ones above were my standard Christmas cards this season.


These two were crafted when I realized that my list of people was larger than the amount of cards I had made. So, I tried something new.


This one was for my mom's birthday, which is about a week before Christmas. She even recognized the green flower paper as wrapping paper that we used to have at the house. (There was only a little bit let, not nearly enough to wrap anything with, so I added it to my folder of pretty paper to be made into cards)


And then lastly, I made this one for a friend of the family who is getting married this week. I wanted to go with their color scheme, but had no idea what that was. I figured that blue is pretty standard, and it looks nice, so I went with it. (I have since learned that red/burgundy is the color in the wedding. I still think the blue is pretty though)

Some of the Products of My "Extended Weekend"

A card for my best friend and her husband who got married this summer. (Congrats to the newlyweds, Mr. & Mrs. Baker!) This one was made in July, but the other three cards are from a few weekends ago.

For my cousin who just bought her first house.

This one was for my aunt's birthday.

And this one was for my parent's wedding anniversary (the photo is from an old desk calendar I keep around for craft purposes).

Calla Lilies

I made this card for my friend's bridal shower a few months ago. I wanted to keep it simple (I've never really made anything that complex, so I like simple). I embossed the stamp with black powder, then colored the image with chalk.

Hopefully I'll post some new cards relatively soonish. We'll see how distracted I get, but I need to make some cards for a few occasions.

In an attempt to save money, I'm making it my goal to not buy cards for stuff. I've got enough supplies and old, old cards to salvage that I should be able to just make them. And then they'll be more personal. If only I knew clever things to say inside of cards... We'll have to work on that part.

Summer hurry up!

I keep stumbling upon blogs that belong to rubber stampers that post their wonderful cards, and they have so many cool ideas! It's making me want to stamp big time!! I haven't really sat down to stamp some cards in a long time, because I don't have my stamping stuff at school and I haven't really had a summer that wasn't full of traveling or geology in a few years. So, needless to say, I have not had the time or the ability, really, to do any stamping. I can't wait until the summer!!! I am going to bust out my stamping supplies and make some sweet cards.

It's also my goal this summer to tie up all the loose ends on any scrapbooks that I've started. I'm not allowed to start new scrapbooks. Well, I'm not allowed to make any scrapbooks with any digital pictures that I have. If I want to scrapbook those, I am going to do it digitally, unless I really come upon a great idea for a scrapbook. But, I've got a bunch of pictures in boxes and folders lying around my house that need to get put into already existing scrapbooks. Like my trip to Germany junior year of high school. Yep, still haven't finished that one. Thank goodness I actually kept up with my travel journal on that trip, or I would have forgotten everything from the pictures.

I can't wait!