Colorful cards

Still playing with my Valentine supplies and loved the contrast of the pink and white against the brown. I left this blank so I could use it as a Thank you or Birthday card or even just a Happy Valentine's Day card.



I have to admit when I first started to make this card it had a completely different look, but one thing led to another and I felt it looked pretty good going in this direction. 

Dusting off my sewing skills

My dd was complaining how the boys especially Zack like to throw things in her house and of course something inevitably gets broken. So I decided to make some soft plush balls just for tossing around the house.

A quick visit to Joann's resulted in some fabric. I wasn't happy that most of the pre-cut squares were not that boyish let alone childlike so I opted for what they did have that wasn't pink or purple. I love that you can just buy remnants rather than stand in line and cut a bunch of 1/4 yd pieces of material. These square were just $1.99 ea. 

I cut out 8 sides from a pattern that I downloaded from the internet and stitched them together, coordinating the colors.

Here you can see the last of the sides that needed to be sewn. I left a small opening to stuff some batting in and then hand sewed it close.

Next I wanted to make some circles for the ends so I used my Nestabilities for a template. I choose two sizes larger than what I wanted to end up with and traced it in pencil. Then I snipped the edge up to the line a few times to make tucking the ends under easy.

I also found that if I left the Nestability in place and ironed the fabric around it, it left me with a nice neat circle.

And lastly here is the end result.

Another Thank You

I don't know about you, but I work full time and it's hard to find time to play. By the time I get home, play and entertain the kitty, go through the mail, socialize with dh, cook dinner, eat dinner and get in exercise time it barely leaves much time left for fun time. I am so ready for retirement.

I threw together this card and was inspired by the semi-spring time colors. Unfortunately by the time I finished it there was no sunlight left to take a decent photo and I had to scan it in.

A Few Thank Yous

Still enjoying my new goodies, I decided that they could be used for Thank you cards too. Since I needed to make a few anyways. 

December Daily - Finished at last!

So now that I am finally done with this I thought I would reflect back and share my lessons learned for creating a DD since this was my first year.

1. Scanning the pages is much easier than taking photos for sharing online.

2. I need a better printer. I didn't like how some of my prints came out.

3. Have a backup camera. I lost my camera which made me have to use an older one and the quality was just not what I was used to having.

4. Have an agenda. I actually did and that helped me premake some pages that eventually helped save me some time

5.  Collect ephemera through the year. I used a lot of embellishments which I had stashed and used that for most of my pages.

After all that I think I can do this again. I did struggle for a bit and most of that was because I was sick and took a week out of my vaca life which I had hoped to use to scrap.

If you were doing a DD are you finished or am I just the last one done?



Sneaking in a few more V-day cards

I was having so much fun with the Valentine's stuff I just had to make a few more cards. Everything below uses Papertrey Ink supplies, except the pp. I did have those heart banners for awhile and the red heart card uses stamps from their release last year.

Ringing in the New Year, but...

I am still working on the old year's project, December Daily that is. I am almost done just have 5 more days left and hopefully will have these done today.

Wishing everyone a very Happy and Healthy New Year!