Peridot Cards

A long time customer contacted me about making some change of address cards.  She had recently moved and wanted to send out cards to family and friends with her new address.  I definitely wanted to include a house image or shape in the design.  As I would be making many cards, hand cutting the card base into a house shape wasn’t feasible.  I knew I had a house image stamp and thought I’d try that.  The stamp is part of an old stamp set and included a street scene with 3 houses.

I choose a layout with clean lines which would work well with an assembly line process – stamp, color, cut all the individual pieces and then assemble.  I colored one house with colored pencil, using colors that coordinated with the printed papers I was planning to use.  Once my customer approved the mock-up, I got to work.

First I cut all of the individual pieces – white cardstock for the stamped image, printed paper for the bottom panel on the card, blue cardstock for the top panel on the card, cardstock strips for across the card and then the matting for everything.

I then stamped the image on each of the white cardstock pieces, allowing time for the ink to fully dry before beginning the coloring.  I colored batches of about 10 images and then matted them before coloring the next batch.

I die cut all of the cardstock strips to have a scalloped border and then assembled the top and bottom panels and the scalloped border for all of the cards.

For an embellishment, I tied a coordinating ribbon around the middle of the panel.  Using foam tape, I attached the house image to the center of the panel.  The completed panel was then matted and attached to the card base.

As a sentiment I printed “We’ve Moved” which I cut, matted and attached to the lower right corner of the card.

For the inside of the card, I printed the new address on white cardstock and then die cut and matted using the Gina Marie Venetian Label die set.

I was doing some clean-up in my craft room and came across an 8×8 paper pad I’ve had forever, probably about 10 years.  Yikes!  The cover has been gone for ages so I have no idea who made the paper.  I decided to challenge myself to use at least 1 sheet of each paper.  I did pretty good, using 1 of all but 2 of the papers to make 21 cards.

I didn’t have a particular plan when I started so the cards are all over the place with general sentiments, holidays, etc.  With all the bright colors, I used several colors of cardstock for matting and inks for stamping.  Embellishments included enamel dots, sequins and Love from Lizi peel-offs.

Here are a few of my favorites…

 

Like my last batch of cards from scraps, I picked a simple layout – #91 from Operation Write Home.  I was able to quickly cut a bunch of 1 1/2 x 4 inch strips.  Then all I had to do was match up 3 coordinating papers and pick the background cardstock.  Instead of doing 1 card to completion, I made all of the card fronts and then went back and added the sentiment.  By using an “assembly line” process, I was able to complete 20 cards over the weekend.

With such a simple layout, the cards needed something to add interest.  I used Love from Lizi Peel-offs on all of the cards to separate the paper strips.  I added enamel dots, paper flowers, Nuvo drops, rhinestones and brads on several of the cards.  I kept the sentiments simple using some stamps and Queen and Company dies.

A great thing about this layout is that it works well vertically or horizontally which made it easy to accommodate the patterns on the printed papers.  Here are a few of my favorites.

This really thinned out my paper scraps.  Now to find some older paper pads to try and use up.

I wasn’t in the mood to make a bunch of cards so decided to just pull out a few sheets of paper from the American Crafts Travel 12×12 paper pack.  The papers are all nice and bright with only a few colors – black, red, light blue and bright green.

I settled on an airplane print, a green check and a black/red/light blue and bright green check.  With black being one of the few colors, I was able to use black cardstock for all the matting.  I found a few sheets of solid blue and green cardstock in my craft room to pair with the prints.  I also threw in some red and white polka dot paper from my scrap bin.

For some “bling”, I added Queen and Co. pearls, Love from Lizi peel-offs and Nuvo Crystal Drops.  I believe the sentiments are all from various Ms. Sparkle & Co. stamp sets and are stamped with Versafine Onyx Black ink.

I used 8 different layouts to make 10 general sentiment cards – Thank You, Birthday and Hello, which should all work well for donating.

I decided to take a break from holiday cards but couldn’t decide on a new project.  I figured a clean craft room might help me get motivated so I organized my desk and work areas.  As I was putting away tools, inks, papers, embellishments… I noticed my scrap bin was getting quite full.  I decided to pull out some of the smaller scraps and make a few cards.  To keep it simple I selected 1 layout and 1 type of embellishment.  This made it easy to quickly cut the paper and assemble the cards.  For even more ease, I used the same sentiment on all but 1 of the cards.

It was quite fun to flip through the scraps and pair up papers that were not originally part of the same collection.  I’m thinking maybe I should try this once a month or so.  It didn’t use up a lot of scraps, but made a small dent in the scrap bin.

Before starting on my next batch of fall/winter holiday cards, I thought I’d take a quick detour and do a few general cards.  I pulled out the Echo Park Pirate’s Life kit that I purchased at last years Scrapbook Mega Meet.  The kit includes 12 double sided 12×12 sheets of paper, 1 sheet of element stickers and 1 sheet of alphabet stickers.  I also picked up a package of dimensional pirate stickers from the Dollar Tree.

With all the colorful paper, I was able to find several colors of cardstock to use with the paper.  After that I was ready to get started but for some reason the 12×12 sheets seemed a bit overwhelming.  So, I cut them all down to 6×6 size and found it much easier to work with.

Here are a few of my favorite cards.  In the first 2 cards I used a couple of the Dollar Tree stickers as the focal point.  I think they worked well with the Pirate’s Life papers.  I also used a couple of the element stickers – the blue flag and the “Buccaneer” sentiment.

The next 2 cards used element stickers included in the Pirate’s Life kit as the focal point.  Black and white bakers twine was used to separate the striped and polka dot papers on the parrot card.

While at the mega meet, I picked up the Ahoy Mateys stamp set which coordinates with the Pirate’s Life kit.  I used a couple of the sentiments from the set on the next 2 cards.

For these cards I used some of the larger scrap pieces.  I kept the sentiments generic as none of the papers were specifically pirate themed.

I ended up making a total of 66 cards, which took me over a week.  So much for a “quick” detour.  LOL.  I used up all but a few small scraps of the paper and all of the element stickers.

Now it’s back to making holiday cards.  I’ve already started pulling out Halloween themed papers and stamps.