my 1st grown-up handmade card

I just folded this blue cardstock in half after cutting it with a provocraft cutter. The top border is something I purchased at Hobby Lobby for 99 cents...

...using scissors, I cut out some design from metal sheet paper to help with opening the card...

...I used bright green cardstock to print out my captions. I used the same font for these....

...the paper on the top in this photo was also from the paper used as the background for the caption on the front cover...

...I used this heart-designed vellum that I bought from Hobby Lobby to keep a heart/love theme. The heart that I used on top of the dark blue cardstock was cut from a gift bag...

...this is the back of the card.

And this is front.

And now it's goin' in the mail!

Mother's Day card ideas

So I found this great website for referencing great ideas for hand-crafted Mother's Day cards.

Here it is: http://www.kaisercraft.net/blog/mothers-day-cards-and-crafts/

I'm hoping to do a card for my Mother-in-law, Nick's dad's mother (so my grandmother-in-law), and also my own mother.

The tough part is gathering the ideas and developing your own into the making of the personalized cards. But I'm looking forward to seeing what happens for each one! I'm hoping to post my progress on them as well. Hopefully Nick and I will be able to figure out why my camera is producing blurry pictures.

Let me know your thoughts or any other feedback on what you're doing or what things you'd like to do!

Mini scrapbook DONE!

Here are the last few squares of the COMPLETED project for this coming Mother's Day...I have so much emphasis on this because I'm an ENFP (according to Myers-Briggs) and ENFPs usually get excited about projects, but rarely finish them. Thankfully, this case is an exception.

Disclaimer: I think my camera is on a weird setting. I'll have Nick check it...

Purple was used as the base color on both squares. The gold lettering are all stickers; from Walmart. I think they were $1-$3. Teal-ish and bright green cardstock was used to accent. The bronze heart in the top right corner was cut from bronze tissue paper. The heart on the bottom right was cut from a gift bag.
The verses are from the NIV and were printed out on cardstock.

Light pink cardstock was used as the base. Dark pink cardstock used as the accent behind the stickers: "m o t h e r" & "love". This is a poem I typed up on my own, and used only one font. I printed it on decorated paper and cut it using the provocraft cutter.

This is the back square!!! the base is orange, and the accents are the decorated paper on top and bottom. Each letter in "t h a n k  y o u" are their own sticker; again from Walmart. And the "M O M" was from a magazine.

I am thankful that God allowed me time to work on this project; that it would be for the encouragement of my mom for all the years of mothering us while sacrificing most of what she had or wanted to do.

I pray that this mini scrapbook be a blessing to her, and to those who see this, that they may be encouraged to encourage their mother; not just on "Mother's Day" but every moment they meet with them.

As we're called to be a blessing, let's choose to be a blessing.

Mini scrapbook almost finished!

There's only a few more squares to go! About 3 to be exact. Maybe I'll get them done today?  We'll see.

Left square: Orange cardstock was used as the base. Black decorated paper was used as the back base for the top caption. And light/bright green cardstock was used to print off both of the captions on this left square. I used a different font for each word on each caption. The blue almost-circle is cut out from the package of the provocraft my friend Gen gave me. See? You can use anything. The "A 2 Z" are all stickers. The "B R O T H E R S" are each a sticker.

Right sqaure: Yellow-Orange cardstock was used as the base. Black decorated paper was cut to be a roof. Red cardstock was cut to be a chimney, and a black sharpie was used to make the inline bricks. Underneath "T H E R S", orange cardstock was used to keep the continuity from the left square. The caption from my brother on the left was done with bright green cardstock that I formatted in Word and printed out, then cut first with the provocraft, then cut to fit with scissors.

Left square: Bright pink cardstock was used as the base. Purple, bright green, light pink, and yellow-orange cardstock were used as accents. The flower in the top left corner is a sticker, as is the "S I S". The caption in the middle is a quote by Cardinal Mermillod that I found online. It says, "A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take." I used a different font for each word in MS Word, and then formatted it to make it appear heart-shaped, then printed it out & cut it to fit using the provocraft. The writing on the bottom is done by hand with a green ballpoint pen.

Right square: Bright pink cardstock is the base to preserve fluidity of the color scheme. Scraps of yellow-orange cardstock were used to accent this right square next to the photo. The photo was printed out using normal printing paper; not photo paper, and was cut to fit using the provocraft cutter & scissors.

Sorry about the blurriness.
Left Sqaure: Orange cardstock was used as the base. "F A T H E R" has each letter as a sticker. Red cardstock was cut to fit using the provocraft cutter, and glued on via Elmer's Craft Bond all purpose glue stick. The bright green cardstock was again used to print out the multi-fonted captions and then cut to fit using provocraft cutter & scissors to fine tune.

Right Square: Orange cardstock was used as the base. A bright green cardstock scrap was used to connect the caption on the right sqaure to my dad's mouth. Red cardstock again was cut to fit using provocraft cutter. Bright green cardstock was used as the background of the caption on top of the red cardstock. The rest of the writing on this square is done by hand. The photo was cut from the original photo using scissors.

A simpler set-up, possibly the most simple yet, is this paged theme. "B e a c h" are each a sticker from a packet of stickers I got from Walmart (i.e. all/most of the stickers I have used so far are from Walmart). Blue cardstock was used as the base. I had a stencil that allowed me to trace the palm tree on the bottom right in each yellow-orange and bright green cardstock; cut out using scissors. I took this photo, lined it up on the provocraft cutter, and sliced it in half. Then I lined it up with where I would want it on the sqaures, took a pencil and traced where the hole punches would be. Then I took the single hole punch and punched holes in their respective places, then glued the photos in place. The caption on the bottom left was done in only one font on a teal-ish piece of cardstock.

Still a few more to come!

Let me know if you have any comments/questions/concerns!!

blessings

Pages 1-7 complete!

This is the cover for the memory book. I used gold tissue paper for the binding and flower. "MOM" is made up of golden stickers that I bought at Walmart in a set that cost about $1. The orange background is cardstock, cause my Mom's favorite color is peach (this was the closest I had). And the "what i like about you" is a punch-out that I just glued onto the cardboard square.

"Spring" is cut out from a magazine I have called Real Simple. The flower background is from the cover of the May issue of that magazine. The green "hill" is made from cardstock (the faux grass was done by hand with a regular ballpoint pen). And the word "gardening" was handmade by a black retractable sharpie.
*My mom loves to garden.

The square on the right, has a base that consists of a yellow-goldish cardstock. The black patterned square is paper. The dots are different: I used a single hole-puncher to punch out dots from a cardboard gift box that I haven't used in a while. Why not, right?!  All of the topical phrases and brand name are from Real Simple magazine.
*My mom deserves to have time to take care of herself, and I want to encourage that to happen for her.

"Traditions" is a punch-out that I glued onto the gray-ish flowery torn paper beneath it. And beneath the paper is another patterned paper (that was seen on the last decorated cardboard square). At the top is a thick cardboard border that I glued.

The next square (as well as the other two that follow it) consists of a favored summer outing. The green, pink, and light blue (underneath the word "pool") dots are from the cardboard gift box I mentioned earlier. It's difficult to see, but the "Life Made Easier" phrase at the binding, is from Real Simple magazine (it's the magazine's tagline on the cover). I used the blue and yellow cardboard circles from some item I found laying around the apartment (I can't recall what it was). The "sun's" rays are twisted gold/bronze tissue paper. The smiley face is a sticker. And the word "pool", each letter, is a sticker.

This isn't as good of a picture, unfortunately, but both of these squares consist of traditions we did with Mom.
The left contains to traditions, just as well as the right. The top left is decorating Christmas cookies. The "cookies" are buttons, and again I used the single hole-puncher to make "confetti-like" sprinkles as if decorating. Red tissue paper is the base.

The bottom left is painting Easter Eggs. The base is cut out from the cardboard gift box where I punched out the dots. I used them to signify eggs for this topic. The "e g g s" are each a sticker in a designated "egg". The 2nd "g" got cracked by the ring...

The top right signifies our traditional Valentine's dinner where Mom would make us a dinner (usually steak), and make us a poster with a long note on it that would include words of our favorite candy. However, instead of writing the word of our favorite candy, she would put the literal candy bar or sweet in its place. Clever mama :-)  The heart is a cardboard tracer. So I got a hot pink post-it note, traced the paper, cut out the shape, then glued onto the tracer. The background is red tissue paper.

The bottom right is of our traditional St. Patrick's Day breakfast. Everything was green. Seven-up, scrambled eggs, kiwis (obviously), apples (Granny Smith), and other surprises. She would use her special green food coloring to make the morning creative.

Progress
I have mapped out the themes of the next 13 squares, and am hoping to get a few more accomplished this evening.

Feel free to share what you're up to and any ways I can improve!

Mother's Day mini scrapbook

Now that Tour de Engagement is complete (only need a cover), I decided to start a mini scrapbook for Mom for Mother's Day on May 8th.

My friends Gen, her daughter Angel, and I went to a couple of scrapbooking stores today (Hobby Lobby & Archiver's) to get some ideas; as well as to spend some quality time together :-)

Gen found out that I didn't have a cutter, so I now have another tool! This is better than an X-Acto in that you can measure item on which you want to fit the paper/cardstock, then measure the cardstock on this tool to match it up. It also saves you some time, and gives your straighter, nicer-looking cuts!

I found my husband's single hole-puncher! This will help with the the details of the mini scrapbook itself.  In this picture, I have made notes as to what kind of themes may be included in the scrapbook, and how many pages (or in this case boxes, as you will see) it will consume. This helps me keep a tab on my topics, themes, and how many pages I have total.

This is the mini scrapbook! Gen and I found it at Archiver's and thought it would work really well. It's plain and just cries out, "be creative!" Love it. There will be pictures from my mother's past, her family, friends, and now her family and some Bible verses that encourage her as our mother and as a child of God.

I'm looking forward to seeing how God works in this project. I pray it blesses my Mom.

Feel free to comment!