Mom's Birthday, Take 2

Okay, I really wasn't thrilled with the card I made for my mom's birthday, so I decided to make a new one. Once again I went back to the well that never seems to run dry -- flowers. I printed a picture of a vase of sunflowers that I found online and mounted it on black cardstock. Then I put a page from a French textbook as a background and glued punched sunflowers on the top. Finally, I wrapped some DMC linen floss around the picture and mounted that on top of the French text.



I also made a card for my sister-in-law's birthday, again with a sunflower kind of theme. (Blame it on the time of year.) I found some rub-ons and stickers that were on clearance at AC Moore so I used them as my starting point. The "happy" is individual rub-on letters, as are the flowers. The "DAY" is cardstock stickers. I cut a strip of grey paper with pinking shears and smudged brown ink on the edge of the light yellow and brown pieces. I mounted them all on sunflower yellow cardstock and drew stitches around everything. Finally, I punched two flowers out of cream cardstock and glued a button with DMC linen floss tied through the middle, then mounted it on the card.



I don't usually show the inside but I like the way this turned out. I stamped "Happy Birthday" in black ink and a circle of dots in brown ink. Then I punched a small flower out of cream cardstock and a small circle out of sunflower yellow cardstock and mounted them inside the circle. I threw in a pink heart because I thought it was cute.

Mom's Birthday... maybe?

I'll admit it -- it's been a long time since I've updated. We're in the time of year where I haven't been making any cards. I'd rather go places with my family or just sit out in the yard with a book and enjoy the sunshine. I hate to squander the great summer weather by sitting inside at my desk, even if it does look out over the yard (that may be the problem right there).

But.... July 30 is my mom's birthday. Every year I want to wow her with a special card, because she's my mom and because I know she's saved every card I made and I know she'll treasure it. And every year in the middle of July, I'm bereft of any good card ideas for her, mostly because my mind is elsewhere: out in the sunshine or swimming in a lake, and not thinking about cards at all.

Such was the case this year. I am completely unhappy with the card I made for her because it's so damn boring and run of the mill. I may make another card for her, but for now, this is it:



I also made a bookmark for myself -- yes, another heron. If there were any doubts that my creative juices are being funneled towards other things (like our One Local Summer meals), this should put those doubts to rest. I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (because I am nothing if not a trend-follower) and I wanted a natural kind of bookmark to go with it. Hey, fall back on what works, right?

Just a couple of quick cards...

I had a busy weekend so I wasn't able to do much in the way of card-making. Here are two that I just made.

The first is with a frog from Uptown Rubber Stamps. They came out with a new line of really cute animal images (but nothing online) and I thought this froggie was really cute. He's holding a flower on the stamp but I punched a small flower and put that over top of the stamped flower. The circle of dots is a stamp from Hero Arts and the "thank you" at the bottom is from Classic Appeals (or whatever it's called). I had to use a green background to scan the card, otherwise I wouldn't know where the edges are. So the green around the edge is not part of the card.



The next card is a birthday card I made. I wanted to use our new Dymo labelmaker so I came up with this card. I guess I didn't press hard enough for the last two letters in "HAPPY", so it just looks like "HAP" birthday. Oh well, live and learn. It's a single-sided card (like a post card) and the envelope is one of those long tie envelopes I've been using lately.

Front:


Back:


Envelope:

Hurray for Presents!

A few months ago, I asked Lita to crochet a pair of mittens for me. I'd been wanting a simple pair of black mittens, but apparently mittens are hopelessly out of fashion. I couldn't find any that weren't those waterproof insulated kind. I told Lita what I was looking for and she jumped right on it. I guess she had a black sweater she unraveled or something, because she had the black yarn on hand already. And here they are!



You will note that the picture is entitled "Black Mambas". That's because Lita worked on these while she was substituting high school something or other, and the teenage boys thought the mittens were super awesome. In fact, teenage boys had a lot to do with the making of these mittens. One boy borrowed a mitten to smack another boy in the head (something of which I mightily approve, because smacking teenage boys in the head with mittens is always good). Another boy wanted to know if Lita was going to put an idiot string on them, just like his little sister has. He even demonstrated how he pulled on one mitten so his sister could smack herself in the head with the other mitten. I thought the string was an awesome idea -- the possibility of someone making me smack myself in the head notwithstanding -- because I would be so upset if I lost one of Lita's mittens on the subway or something. So I asked Lita for the string, and with some adjustments it works out perfectly. And finally, at least one teenage boy thought the best name in the world for these mittens would be the Black Mambas, and I liked that so much that I've continued to call them that: "Hon, have you seen the Black Mambas?" So I guess the lesson we can learn from all of this is that teenage boys are completely captivated by crocheted mittens, and if you have the means to make a ton of them you could potentially rule the world.

Then PM, knowing how much I love to make snotty remarks about fundamentalist Christian tracts on my other blog, thought that a Lenten present would be just the thing for me. And I think so, too! I especially like the keyfob, which I have hung up on a nail by my door. Almost a mezzuzah; it's at least in that spirit.



Also completely awesome was the comic he sent to me with his note. He drew a picture of Onil swiping my present and me chasing him. Look how big my boobs are! OH YEAH!



So to thank Lita and PM, I made them a few things. I sent Lita a copy of the heron bookmark she liked so much and this set of thank you and birthday cards in four different colors:





PM received three bookmarks, which I finally got around to sending last week. Sheesh, I'm late. (CD are PM's initials.)

A Blast from the Past, Part 3: More Asian Cards

Okay, here's another batch of Asian cards that I made a couple of years ago. Fun!

This first card is one of my all-time favorite cards. I love the cherry blossoms behind the lantern. I stamped the lantern on light green mulberry paper, spray mounted it to cardstock and added a wire at the top. I then strung it so it looked like it was hanging in the window. If I were to do it today I probably would not use the sticks and the wire on the side, but otherwise I really love this card.



If I were to send this next card to someone who reads Chinese or Japanese, they would be all WTF? Since I can't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese characters, it may all be one giant mix of Asian languages. (At least none of the characters are Korean or Thai. I at least can recognize those characters as not being Chinese or Japanese.) Even if they're all the same language, it's still a crazy mix. The background is from a Chinese newspaper that talks about who knows what -- could be the stock market, could be "Giant Seal Tries to Hump Car". The characters on the right stand for sun, moon, stars and sky. And then there's a lucky cat, generally used to invoke monetary blessings, wishing you a happy birthday! So needless to say, this card is meant strictly for my non-Chinese/Japanese-speaking friends, none of whom will say, "So just what are you trying to tell me with this card?!"



This card was made with the same set of stamps I used for this card.



Nothing exciting about this card. The fans were embossed with gold and colored in. The character means... I don't know what, really. I think happiness? Part of the reason I slacked off making Asian cards is because I didn't understand the writing and was always afraid that if someone who did understand the writing got hold of one of my cards they would be mortally offended. I mean, I did one card that had as its center a kind of paper they would burn to commemorate or say prayers for dead relatives, with a lucky cat on top! Which, I didn't know at the time, but when I found out later what that paper was for I felt it was potentially really offensive (which is also why I didn't include it in my collection of cards here). Plus, so much of my Asian card-making was done with rubber stamps, and I had started to move away from that particular medium anyway.



This was one of my first Asian cards ever. It was made in response to an article I read in Rubber Stamper magazine about using up your little scraps of paper.



This card is actually relatively new. I think I made it last year or something.

A Blast from the Past, Part 2: Asian Cards

I found some other older cards this weekend and I thought I'd share them with you. I made some of my favorite cards in 2000 and 2001. In particular, I was fascinated with Asian cards. I wanted to move beyond the standard red, black, white and gold of the typical Asian cards I saw and incorporate some color. A lot of my cards did wind up being red, black, white and gold, but I managed to get some other colors in there as well. Also, all of these cards use rubber stamps, since that was my medium of choice in 2000 and 2001.

Anna's Birthday 2007

Anna turned 13 last week and we had her birthday party the weekend before. I still can't believe how old and grown-up my kids are getting. Every year it's a shock to me. I still remember them when they were little kids and babies. Oh well... part of motherhood, I guess.

For Anna's birthday, I made a card with the Beatles in it (she's a big fan). I found a picture of them with a cake online and printed it out. I wanted to do something a little more special with this card -- I'm still not entirely thrilled with it. Here it is, anyway:



Here it is, opened:



I also have a couple of pictures from Anna's birthday. The first is of her blowing out the candles on her chocolate cheesecake, and the second is of her with her Yan Yans.

A Mixed Bag

Today I'm posting a little of this and a little of that. First is Onil's valentine, which I mailed to him last week and scanned in this morning. I'd like to scan in the card he got for me, but he didn't get me anything. Nothing whatsoever. Not even an email. He's an asshole.

Anyway, here's his card. I printed out the picture and the words, and drew the lines on the edges with a ruler and a black pen.



This is something I made for my mom this past Christmas. I gave her a gift card and I like to make pocket tags for them. I made this pocket tag and tied it on a gift bag with a candle inside. The "m" is chipboard, the lettering underneath is rub-on letters, and the round things above the m are brads.



Here are two cards I made a couple of weekends ago. The first one is a printed picture with Lita's favorite S-clip thingy and a butterfly sticker over top, and the next one is a birthday card.

Have a Ball! And Some Stew.

So, enjoying this cold weather? I sure am. One of the things I love about living in Pennsylvania (and I guess the northeast in general) is that the seasons are very distinct. I love all of the seasons and the weather they bring, and a warm winter just doesn't feel right to me. Bring on the snow and the bright, bracing cold! It feels so invigorating to be out on a cold day and come home to a warm house and a spicy stew in the crockpot.

Anyway, now that I've gotten that out of my system, this is a birthday card I did for my nine-year old nephew, who is a big football fan. Frankly, I can't stand sports of any kind, especially football, so this one was kind of a challenge for me. I drew a football on chipboard and covered it with textured paper. I also punched holes in it and threaded it to look like it was sewn. The "Have a" letters are rub-ons, and the "BALL" and the stars are stickers from a Harley-Davidson collection.

Onil's Birthday 2007

My husband turned 30 yesterday so I made him this card. It's nothing more than computer-generated -- no stickers, no brads, no ribbons. Just a picture with some words over it. I had to do this all at work so he didn't see me making it, and I don't have all my usual stuff here.

I did a GIS for Darth Vader and found a sweet desktop picture. I added some black bars to the side and top to fill in the background without stretching out Darth Vader's face and added the fonts. The top font is Arial Narrow word art, but the bottom font is one I downloaded from 1001 Free Fonts called Star Jedi. This particular font is annoying because the font creator's logo shows up as a character when you hit the return key. I got around it by hitting the shift+enter so the return character didn't show up.

On the inside of the card, I found a picture of a Star Wars cake (after doing a GIS for "Star Wars birthday"), printed that, cut it out and pasted it on the inside. When I get home tonight the kids and I will sign his card and do the present and the birthday pie (this year, key lime!).

Back From Vacation!

I was out for a couple of weeks over the holidays and just got back into work today. Because our scanners and computers are so much better here, I wait to update until I get into work. Anyway, while I was out I had the time to make some cards. This first card was made by printing a picture from the internet onto white linen cardstock. The snowflakes are stickers. I'm a little unhappy with the bottom bar on the side -- it's kind of crooked. I'd like to change it but I used permanent tape and by the time I noticed it the tape had set. If I take it off now I'll tear the card. Also, I'm not quite sure about the rick rack; I think a white organza ribbon would have been better.



A few years ago I realized that you could use CD envelopes to mail cards, and the cool thing about them is that the card will show through the envelope (the address and stamp go on the sealed side). The next two images are a card and the same card in a CD envelope.





I was inspired by the CD envelope and made six cards total in that shape (two are Valentine cards which I'll feature in another post later). Here are the rest of the cards; the next card also shows what it looks like when it's opened.

Amy's Birthday 2006

Well, we celebrated Amy's 14th birthday in grand style this weekend. There was cake and presents and hamsters and all sorts of stuff. Here's Amy, blowing out the candles on her cake (don't pay attention to the boxes all over, as we were in the middle of setting up the Christmas tree and decorating):



Naturally, I made a card for her. She loves the Bananaphone song that's been making the rounds of the internet, so I went to the website and did a couple of ctrl + print screens and printed them out at work. I cut them out and put it all in a card, as seen below:





While I was making Christmas cards last weekend, Amy made a Christmas card of her own and I thought I'd share it here. She drew the tree freehand, picked out the paper at the store and put it all together:



I did mention hamsters.... we decided to get Kitty a hamster for Christmas. We thought she'd enjoy watching it, but she seems to be more scared of it than anything else. Maybe she'll get used to it. Anyway, the hamster's here and she's really cute. There's an ongoing fight over her name. I suggested Nutmeg and everyone thought it was fine (the inside joke there is that when I asked what kind of Christmas cookies everyone wanted, Onil yelled "NUTMEG!"), but then Onil and Anna saw the Omen 2 and wanted to name her Bugenhagen. So we have me and Amy calling the hamster Nutmeg and Onil and Anna calling her Bugenhagen. I figure if I stick to my guns and keep calling her Nutmeg it will stick. Here's a picture of Nutmeg in her cage, and of Anna helping to set the cage up: