My favorite Easter card so far...

This card is also very "flowery," but I actually really like this one. I think it's the brick wall behind the floral wreath that I really appreciate. LOL

I brayered the top side of my Tim Holtz embossing folder with "bundled sage" distress ink, then carefully closed it onto a white piece of cardstock and ran it through my Cuttlebug. I think the "bundled sage" was the perfect color! I happened to have some cardstock that same color to use as my mat.

To make the wreath, I used two circle dies, one evenly spaced inside the other on a piece of white cardstock to cut a 1/4" wide ring that was about 2 1/2" in diameter (outer edge to outer edge). I used three different leaf punches and three different flower punches. I also used three different colors of cardstock for the leaves and, as you can see, three different colors for the flowers. Once I had everything punched it was easy to assemble the wreath. I put a glob of glue onto a scrap of paper and just lightly dipped each leaf or leafy branch into the glue and then adhered it to the ring. Once all the leaves were on, I shaped the flowers with an embossing tool and began to adhere them.

After the flowers had all been adhered, I added the double bow and some Viva Decor liquid pearl to the center of each of the flowers.

It honestly didn't take long at all and was kind of fun to put together.

After the wreath was thoroughly dried, it was easy to adhere the whole thing to the front of the card.

For the inside, I used one of the beautiful sentiments from Hannelie (Desert Diva). She creates absolutely wonderful word art and shares it all with her readers. You'll find her blog here and her Easter sentiments here.

I think sentiments are some of the hardest parts of card making, so I really appreciate Hannelie's generosity.

You can see in the photo that I added a few flowers to the inside of the card, too. I had some of the flowers and leaves left over after making my wreath, so I thought this was the perfect way to use them up.

I hope you enjoyed seeing another one of my flowery Easter cards. We are supposed to get 6-10" of snow tonight, so I NEED to keep looking at these flowers to maintain any semblance of sanity!

Thanks so much for stopping by and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day. If you see someone running amok in the snowdrifts laughing like a crazy person - it'll be me. Gone mad with the onslaught of yet another storm!
Cheryl

It's been a loooooong winter...

...and I guess I'm craving flowers, because most of my Easter cards are very floral-focused.  Here's what I mean:

The 3-dimensional flowers on this card are each made with 3 different punches and adhered to a Spellbinders Romantic Rectangles die cut. Although it doesn't look like it in the photo, I tried to match them to the pink, blue and purple flowers in the DSP. I think they look much better IRL.

The leafy flourish was made with a Cheery Lynn die. There are actually two of these flourishes on the card.

The framed "Happy Easter" is a stamp - one of those dollar stamps from Michael's - that I heat embossed and then cut out. I colored the little frame with a ProMarker and added the tiny lavendar bow.

On the inside, I mirrored the front design by using some more of the DSP and another of the die cuts for the sentiment

Hope you enjoyed seeing another of my flowery Easter cards.

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

Finally, some Easter cards to share...

...and not a moment too soon. In fact, if I don't get them all done in short order, it'll be too late to even get them in the mail. I've managed to make 16 or so, but don't worry - I'm not going to share them ALL with you today--just a couple of them.

My first card was pretty simple:

I cut a scalloped oval with a Spellbinders die in a piece of white card. I cut the blue mat to size, placed the white card (with the cutout) on top and slid my oval die between the two until it was in the right place. I used some washi tape to hold it there and then ran it through my Cuttlebug to cut out the oval. The sentiment is stamped directly onto the card base.

The flourish is a Cheery Lynn die. I cut the leafy flourish out of some adhesive-backed cardstock to make it easy to adhere onto the card.

The flowers were made with two different sized punches and a Viva Decor pearl pen for the centers.

I thought this card was okay, but a little plain, so I decided to try again:

I used the same process on this card, except I dry-embossed the top layer of white card. I was much happier with the result!

Here's a close-up peek at the sentiment and the flowers and flourish.

Do you ever have trouble with Liquid Pearls, Viva Decor pearls or glitter glue remaining a little sticky even after you've given it ample time to dry?  I sprinkle on a little baby powder and then blow off the excess to cure this problem.

This is a little peek at the inside. In seeing how plain it looks in the photo, I think I should add a flower or two before I send this out.

Edited to add: The inside sentiment is from the wonderfully talented Hannelie (Desert Diva) who shares her artwork with all of us. You'll find her Easter sentiments here.

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

My sister has been busy making Easter cards...

I had a fun chat on the phone with my sister today. As usual, we talked about our cardmaking and the fun of buying new supplies. She has purchased a new Cricut cartridge called Edge to Edge and has used it to make some of her Easter cards.

My sister cut the "doilies" on each of these cards from the Edge to Edge cartridge. Aren't they pretty?

Here are a few more of her Easter cards:

For this last card, she used a basket stamp that she found at the used craft supply store that we shopped in when she last came to visit. We had so much fun finding bargains and feeling good about re-using items that had been donated by someone else.

One last card of my sister's that I'd like to share with you is a fun birthday card:

She used the Robotz cartridge to cut the letters out of some glittery paper. She added to the sparkle with some glittery silver rickrack. You can't have too much bling, right?

Thanks so much, Michelle, for allowing me to share your cards.  And thank YOU for stopping by and looking at them, too. Just remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.
Cheryl

A birthday card for a young girl...

Did you see my recent post about the Envelope Punch Board? If not, you can check it out here. On that post, I explained how I made some faux-rickrack with the Punch Board. Here is a card on which I used that faux-rickrack:

I layered the rickrack to reflect the pink and yellow in the DSP. The image was colored with my ProMarkers and cut out with a Spellbinders die (the scalloped oval behind it, too!). The sentiment was computer-generated and cut out with a La La Land folding banner die. The decorative corners were cut with a Lifestyle Crafts die.

I love the dimension of these banner dies. I created a word file that prints the sentiments out in a slight arc, and I print a whole page of them at a time. I cut a banner out of vellum to use as a guide to mark where I need to place my die to cut each sentiment out correctly. That makes it super easy to cut out the sentiments, even though I can't see through the dies.

The inside was kept pretty simple with a stamped sentiment and 4 of the Lifestyle Crafts corners.

This was a quick and fun card to make. I love having the option of creating my own rickrack to coordinate with the papers on my cards.

Again, if you want to know how I made it, just click here.

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

March Christmas cards and tags...

As I promised (myself) in January, I have made my batch of Christmas cards and tags for March. I'm hoping to ease the Christmas card making job come November and December by making 4-6 cards and tags each month.

This month's card design was VERY simple. I bought a simple tree die during Archiver's going-out-of-business sale. It was one of their "gently used" items so it didn't have the original packaging with it. I'm not even sure what brand it is. The set also included a simple snowflake-type star die - meant for the top of the tree, I think - which I used as a star in the "sky." Here's what my card looks like:

I cut the tree out twice - once from kraft cardstock and once from patterned cardstock at an angle.  I cut the trunk off the patterned tree and then adhered it on top of the kraft cardstock tree so that there was the appearance of a brown trunk. The tree was then adhered to the card front with foam squares. I used my Swiss Dots embossing folder on the green cardstock and added some red stitched ribbon that I've had in my stash for ages.

The star was cut from gold cardstock, and I added some stickles to its points to to coordinate with the gold glittery stripes in the patterned paper.

The inside is pretty simple. I happen to have a small stamp that was very similar to the star on the front of the card, so I stamped some at random on the inside, too.

These cards were so quick to make that I actually got six of them done in a very short time.

Last month, I had so much fun making tags from kraft cardstock using a Hero Arts house stamp and matching die, that I decided to make some more. This time, however, I used white cardstock and colored them in pastel colors, using my ProMarkers.

The two "candy trees" on either side of the houses were popped up on foam squares, and I used my Marvy Uchida Snow marker to add snow on the roof and bushes. While the snow was still wet, I sprinkled it heavily with glitter and let it dry. Once dry, I used my heat gun to puff up the snow.

Here's a side view :

You can see the candy trees that were popped up on foam squares and the puffiness of the "snow" after it's been heated. It adds such wonderful dimension to these tags.

The back of each tag was stamped with "Merry Christmas" and "To" and "From."


I plan to use these tags with some of the pastel-colored Christmas wrapping that I seem to buy with some regularity. I'm always on the lookout for something other than the usual Christmas colors, so I find myself picking up pale aquas, blues and yellows whenever I see them. These tags will be perfect to use with those papers.

Well that's it for me today. We had real snow here again this morning. Will it ever stop??? I am looking forward to the warm summer months like never before! I sure hope it's warm where you are.


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

LEGO card with Card Candi...

This was a fun card that I made for my daughter to add to her stash of birthday cards. It was a bit time-consuming, but fun to see it come together.

The card candy was colored with my ProMarkers to match, as closely as possible, to the cardstock. I then used some tiny foam squares to attach each piece of Candi.

This side view shows the fun dimension of this card. It did get a little heavy with all the Card Candi and foam squares, but since these cards are generally attached to a gift that is taken to a birthday party, the weight was no problem.

The inside was kept simple very simple. No reason to detract from the fun front of the card, right?






One of my grandchildren will most likely be giving this card to a friend. I think they'll enjoy doing that because they seemed to think this card was pretty cool.


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