Happy Birthday, Polly!

My sweet granddaughter turns eight years old today. EIGHT! I can hardly believe it. It seems like just yesterday she was a baby.

Polly loves to climb the monkey bars and hang by her knees. I remember loving that, too, when I was her age. When I saw Tiddly Inks' "Wryn Hanging Around" digital image, I had to purchase it for Polly's birthday card. I did make one little alteration to the image, however. I added some glasses. Polly has worn glasses since she was less than a year old. The other day she pointed at an image of a little girl with glasses and said that she likes girls with glasses better than those without, so I wanted Wryn to have glasses, too!

Polly  has long, luxurious hair, just like Wryn. She's also at that "gangly" stage with long, thin arms and legs--again, just like this image of Wryn. I added a couple of buttons, tied with embroidery floss, to add some round edges to this mostly rectangular card. I also added a little blue chalk to the background, but it's difficult to see in the photos.

I colored Wryn up with my ProMarkers. It was a quick coloring job, as I didn't do anything fancy.


















I cut the number 8 out with my Cricut and glued it to the computer-generated sentiment. I popped the sentiment circle up on foam tape and then popped the red mat up on some foam tape, as well.

You can't see it in the photo, but I added some glitter to the word "GREAT" and the 8 with a glitter pen.














I kept the inside simple, with some more of the red-dotted blue paper matted with red. The sentiment panel is off-white, like the card base and I stamped the "Happy Birthday" and gave it some sparkle with my glitter pen. The stamp is a from the Fiskars Make a Wish set of clear stamps. I've gotten a lot of use out of that set for birthday cards.








I hope you enjoyed my birthday card for Polly, and I sure hope she likes it, too!

Thanks for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.
Cheryl

Even wrapping paper works...

While visiting one of my daughters recently, I watched her wrap a gift with some lovely, thick wrapping paper. Honestly, it was a higher quality paper than most of the DSP I have on hand right now! She insisted that I take a little of it home with me, and here's the first card I made with it:

I love that funky orange and gray print. It's a small print so it's easy to use as a background paper.

 

I cut some small scalloped squares out of shimmery gray cardstock with a Cuttlebug die. I just happened to have a few orange Petaloo flowers on hand that worked perfectly as embellishments.

 

 The sentiment was stamped onto some white cardstock and then punched out with an EK Success label punch and backed with some of the same shimmery gray cardstock.

 

I decorated the inside by adding a strip of the wrapping paper with a scalloped edge of gray peeking out.

I always keep my eye out for great paper--you never know where you're going to find it!  Thanks so much for stopping by. Remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day!

Cheryl

 



Matching cards to personalities...

When I create cards, I usually try to match the card to the personality of the receiver. At the same time, I put a little of my own preferences into each card.

I needed to make a thank you card for some friends this week. Knowing that they love the outdoors and also enjoy watching the birds at their bird feeders, made it easy. My first thought was to grab some C'oredinations Colorcore cardstock and my Cuttlebug "Bird Call" embossing folder.

I embossed the green cardstock and while it was still sitting in the embossing folder, I sanded it to highlight the embossing. The card base is Kraft cardstock, which I also used for the little tag, cut with a Spellbinders die. A black mat and some rustic black twine finished the outside of the card.

On the inside of the card, I used some light beige paper matted on black. To tie in the bird theme, I stamped some foliage and a small bird.
















During the years that I've been making cards, I've really come to believe that even simple-to-make cards can be the perfect choice. I think our friends are really going to like this card!

Thanks for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.
Cheryl

She is truly grand...

...and I'm talking about Mt. Rainier in Washington State. My DH and I just returned from a trip to Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash. We visited two of our kids and their families in the Portland area and then traveled by train to visit some friends in Seattle. Our friends have a gorgeous home on a hilltop with windows that frame a wonderful view of Lake Washington and Mt. Rainier. My DH took this photo from their deck:

He did use the zoom on our little digital camera, but we have no special lenses or other equipment. Isn't it amazing how Mt. Rainier just seems to rise up out of the ether? She is 14,411 feet high and is the highest peak in the lower 48.  Since this mountain is formed by a volcano, we asked our friends when they thought it might erupt, just as Mt. St. Helens did in 1980. Their answer? It could happen at any time!

When we were in Portland, we got to spend some time with this little cutie:

This photo was taken at the beautiful Chinese Garden in the heart of downtown Portland. Hadley is 5 years old and we don't get to see her often enough. Isn't she just a lovely little girl?

When we visited, I was able to take a few birthday cards I had made for Hadley to use when she is invited to her little friends' birthday parties. Here's one of them:

This is just a simple card with an image of Pluto from the Mickey & Friends cartridge. I wondered how much I'd use this cartridge when I got it, but I find that it is pretty great for birthday cards. Everybody seems to love the classic Disney characters, so I've had a good time picking just the right image for various cards. The red patterned card base came from a tablet of card bases that also contained the "Party hardy" sentiment.

The inside is simple, with just a red mat setting off the sentiment panel. I created the inside sentiment with my computer.
















Thanks for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day!
Cheryl

With a cherry on top...

For today's card I used another one of those wonderful images from Angelique at Sliekje's digi Stamps.
 



Isn't this image of these two little mice enjoying some cake just precious? I colored it up with my ProMarkers and then added some Diamond Glaze to the cherries and some Stickles to the whipped cream.

Here you can see that I popped the matted image up on some foam dots to give it some dimension.  I also cut a long banner, stamped "Happy Birthday" in the center of it, and then scored it so that I could tuck a short section of the banner underneath on each side.
I used some glue dots to hold it in position. I think it turned out so cute and adds lots of dimension.

The yellow chevron patterned paper that I used is from Fancy Pants Designs - The Good Life.

I had a little bit of fun on the inside, too. I used my computer to generate the sentiment, but then I hand drew two little stems and a leaf and added two small flat-backed gems for the cherries.

This adds just the right amount of sparkle to the inside. This picture truly doesn't do it justice!

A red envelope really sets off the red in this card. I am definitely going to use this image again. If you'd like to use it, you'll find it here.

Thanks for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.
Cheryl

Are you a knitwit?

My daughter is definitely a "knitwit." She's a smart, beautiful, kind, generous, fun knitwit - but a knitwit, nonetheless. She knits up a storm (although not so much in the summer when it's hot) and gives her gorgeous hand-knitted items to family members and friends. I've been lucky enough to be on the receiving end of some of those wonderful gifts.

While I don't knit, I wanted to let her know how much I support her in her hobby. I visited a wonderful little yarn shop in my area, bought a few skeins of yarn and then made these notecards to send to her along with the yarn:

These are really just some simple notecards, but I hope she finds them fun to use. I colored the yarn and basket images with ProMarkers and the knitting needles with Letraset metallic markers. I used some flat-backed gems for the ends of each of the knitting needles.

I looked up some knitting quotes and put a different one inside each notecard.  Here's a sample:

It was fun to whip together these few notecards for my daughter. I hope she uses them--and asks for more when these are gone. I love making cards for my kids to use.

A bright envelope for each card helped make this set even more fun.

Thanks for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.
Cheryl

Sweet hedgehog birthday card...

A while ago I discovered Sliekje's digi Stamps. Angelique, the owner of that blog, is a wonderful artist and offers her artwork as free digi stamps for others to use. Here's a birthday card I made with one of her images:

Isn't that the cutest little hedgehog? I colored it up with my ProMarkers and added a little bit of brown Stickles to the flower centers and a little glitter pen to the butterfly. I then matted it with some purple glitter paper to add a little more sparkle.

I added a little daisy to the sentiment banner. I punched out two flowers with a Reflections punch, colored them and added some brown Stickles to the center.

For the inside, I just stamped an additional daisy in yellow ink and added more brown stickles to the center.

Visit Sliekje's digi Stamps and look over Angelique's many images. She may just have the perfect image for your next card!












Thank you so much for stopping by. Remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day!
Cheryl