How to make a simple thank you card

Did you know that Close to my Heart pattern papers have two sides? The back is just as pretty as the front as you can see here. I turned Twitterpated paper over to make this card. I'm a sucker for blues and greens on any project!

To make this card you will need to cut your paper as follows:

5 1/2 by 11 colonial white paper, folded in half. You will attach the card front to this when it's done.
5 1/2 by 5 1/2 crystal blue pattern paper
5 1/4 by 5 1/4 colonial white paper
5 1/2 by 1 1/4 sweet leaf pattern paper
5 1/2 by 1/2 colonial white paper
2 by 2 crystal blue pattern paper
1 3/4 by 1 3/4 colonial white paper
3/4 by 3/4 colonial white paper (you'll need two)
1 by 1 crystal blue pattern paper (you'll need two)
2 by 2 sweet leaf pattern paper
5 1/2 by 1/2 crystal blue pattern paper

Distress everything in cocoa ink if desired.

Using the Gratitude stamp set, stamp a flower in tulip ink on the larger colonial white cardstock square.

Glue to crystal blue matching mat. Poke a hole in the center of the flower and add a crystal blue brad.

Attach large colonial white cardstock to the crystal blue card front. Add the long sweet leaf strip 1/2 inch up from bottom of card, glue long colonial white strip in center of green one. Turn your flower diagonally and attach to the right of the green strip as shown.

Stamp the Thank you on the left hand side of the skinny colonial white strip in crystal blue ink.

After getting this far I realized I had a little too much "white space" so I took the two smallest stamps and randomly stamped in sweet leaf and crystal blue all over the white background.

Add crystal blue strip one inch down from top of card. Glue sweet leaf square 1/2 inch from top and 1/4 inch from left side of the card.

Stamp small flowers on little colonial white squares in tulip ink then mat it onto the crystal blue squares and attach as shown on card. It's easy and fast. Use a different paper pack and stamps and you can have a whole new look!

Gratitude

How appropriate that it's so close to Thanksgiving and that today's featured stamp is called Gratitude. Using the Everlasting paper set (remember I used one of our bulk card making patterns for most of these cards this month so the paper is nearly all the same). Cut your paper as follows:

8 1/2 by 5 1/2 colonial white card base, folded in half
5 1/2 by 4 1/4 cranberry cardstock
1/2 by 5 1/2 ponderosa pine striped pattern paper
1 1/2 by 5 1/2 floral pattern paper
2 by 2 1/4 striped pattern paper
1 1/2 by 2 1/4 colonial white cardstock

Distress everything with desert sand ink if desired.

Use your trimmer and a dry embossing tool to impress lines into the cranberry cardstock, then sand to show off the white core. I was very haphazard on my lines for this one so it would be even more of a rustic, used look.

Put your skinny striped strip on the bottom of your card about 1/8 inch up from the bottom.

Add the floral paper 1/8 inch up from that. Sorry about the angle on these photos.

Stamp one of the small flowers from the Gratitude set in a random way on the small piece of colonial white cardstock, using cranberry ink.

Add "Thank You" in ponderosa pine centered right over the flower stamped image.

Glue striped piece 1/2 inch from left hand side of card and the Thank You piece to the right of that piece, about 1/4 inch from right hand side of card and 1/4 inch from striped piece.

Add three colonial white brads to the left hand side of the card in that small spot of cranberry cardstock and down at the bottom on the stripe about 1 inch from left hand side.

Add matching ribbon across the floral piece of pattern paper, glue down with Tombow.

Tie a bow in another piece of red ribbon then glue down on the ribbon strip, so much easier than trying to tie a knot once the ribbon is on. One thing I'm grateful for is the wonderful viewers like you who check in to see what I'm doing on my blog, it means more than I can say!

Christmas Melodies

Don't you just love Christmas music? Not too early and not too long but right in the holiday season, it's so nice to have the radio on playing those tunes we've loved since we were children. Well, here's the stamp set for you. Christmas Melodies has 14 stamps that will remind you of those happy & meaningful songs. Again I've used Everlasting paper, can you tell I have been using one of the bulk card making patterns from Wishes? For this card you will also need a couple of flowers from the Gratitude stamp set too.

Cut your paper as follows:

8 1/2 by 5 1/2 colonial white card base, folded in half
5 1/2 by 4 1/4 card front cranberry cardstock
1 by 5 1/x floral pattern paper
1/2 by 5 1/2 striped pattern paper
1 3/4 by 1 3/4 colonial white cardstock
2 by 2 striped pattern paper
scrap colonial white cardstock for stamping

Distress all with desert sand ink if desired.

Despite owning a cuddlebug, I still like to do some of my own dry embossing with my trimmer and dry embossing tool, draw a line down the groove of the trimmer every half inch for this particular design.

Sand the paper with a sanding block.

Glue the floral strip 1/4 inch up from the bottom of the card front.

Just above the floral strip (about 1/8 up) attach the striped piece.

Glue down the striped square 1/2 inch from right hand side. I use the grooves of the dry embossing to help me line it up perfectly.

Stamp the "Let There Be Peace" song title on the colonial white square in cranberry ink and glue it to the striped square.

Add three green brads to the left top of the card. I put one on each of the first three dry embossed lines.

Using the Gratitude stamp set, stamp 2 poinsettias on your scrap paper and cut them out. Attach next to the Peace stamp overlapping slightly. The card is easy and pretty, you can do it quickly and spread a little Christmas cheer by just making it and sending it out. Have fun!

Gift Jar

Hello! Before I start with this tutorial I hope that you'll sign on to be a follower on the sidebar of this blog. I'm aiming for 200 followers by the end of August and time is ticking. I will give one follower a bunch of blog candy (some handmade items that you see here on my blog along with others I make) in a drawing on September 1st.

Now on to this cute gift idea. I'm sure you have all seen the gift jars that are layers of dry baking ingredients along with a recipe for brownies, cookies, soups, etc. Many years ago I found one in particular that I liked and gave these jars for Christmas gifts. I decorated mainly with non-scrapbooking items then but now I have so many products to play with that I decided to do some with my scraps.

The first thing you'll need is a 1 quart canning jar, you can buy them separately but I found 12 of them for $10.00 so they are a bargain in bulk. I've also seen them all the time at garage sales so keep your eyes open this summer. I like to use the wide mouth jars because they are so much easier to fill. For the recipe of this particular gift I'm going to direct you to the website where I found this one that I used to use. The brownies are yummy! Click here at allrecipes.com!

I used Perfect Day paper for this gift jar. It's so pretty and can be used for something summery or for Christmas, how many papers can you say that about? Cut the piece that will wrap around the whole jar 12 by 3 inches.

Use your circle cutter or a really large punch and cut another piece of pattern paper in a circle with a 2 1/2 inch diameter. Cut a piece of Colonial white paper 2 inches in diameter.

Print out the recipe that you get off from the All Recipes site onto Colonial white paper making it measure about 5 by 2 1/2 inches.

Trim it and add a mat that measures 2 3/4 by 5 1/2 inches. Cut the corner off from the top of the mat with a corner rounder.

Now punch out four circles measuring about 1 1/4 inch in diameter and punch four circles 1 1/2 inches out of Juniper cardstock.

Attach all the pieces together as shown. Distress with Juniper ink.

I used our brand new eyelet setter and soft eyelets (no more pounding) and easily added a white eyelet to the top of this tag.

I used the empty circle from the new set, Just For the Holidays (not available yet) and line it up so the circle is centered. Since you don't have this set yet, look through your stamps for a circular design.

I filled the center with another new set (wait til you see the September catalog), Grown With Love, using a sweet little heart.

This stamp set you will recognize, Gratitude, one of my favorites for random stamping. Stamp it in the center of the large circle for the top of the jar. You can spice it up with a sparkle or button in the middle if you like.

Glue it to the top of the jar making sure you put the glue or adhesive close to the edges of the paper so it won't come up on the edges.

Attach some white embroidery floss in a slipknot at the top of your tag.

Using some Tombow, wrap that paper around the center of the jar making the back edges touch evenly. Looks yummy already, doesn't it?

Add each of your heart embellishments to the four sides of the jar, try to center them. Use Glue Dots because Tombow doesn't hold them securely since the jar is rounded. Glue Dots, as you know, hold everything!

You need some juniper ribbon. Run a strip of Tombow adhesive along the ribbon first so it will stay well. Before tying the bow, take your tag and tie it to the ribbon, moving it to the side of the jar. Tie a pretty bow in front and trim ends.

Here's your completed jar, now who wouldn't want to receive this? A pretty jar with delicious brownies inside.

By the way, while making this jar I thought it would look so cute with the Lights, Camera, Action set if you filled the jar with popcorn kernels instead. If you do go with this idea you will need larger circles for the stamps in the set, possible 2 inches in diameter. You could fill it with black and orange peanut butter kisses and use the Spooky Smiles stamp set or skip the lid, fill the jar with brand new pencils and give it as a back to school gift. Imagine the possibilities of this!

An Early Christmas

I'm preparing a Christmas card workshop so I've been experimenting with a few different cards. I don't have tutorials yet because my business is very busy this week but I'll get some up soon. In the meantime, here are some cards I might make! This first one is so simple, random stamping makes the base of the card with a simple strip of paper across the bottom third for sentiment stamping. Brads complete the look. The stamp set is Gratitude.


This is a 6 x 6 card, my new favorite size to make. The colors are juniper, creme brulee and cranberry, the stamp set is Vintage Christmas. I highlighted the circle with a window charm.

Back to a 5 1/2 by 4 1/4 card, the colors are creme brulee, juniper, olive, and tulip, the stamp set is Christmas Melodies and the paper is......a secret. Find out when the new catalog comes out in September! The dove is sparkled with Prisma Glitter. The patterns for card two and three are from the incredible Wishes book, you have to buy this book, I can't even properly explain how much I love it!

Thank you cards

How are you doing on completing your unfinished projects? I know you have some that are nagging at you. Take some time for yourself and pull one of them out.

Today I reached into my unfinished box again and pulled out some non-Close to my Heart cards this time. Yes, it's okay to use paper that doesn't belong to the company you work for! These already had the card faces attached to the card bases (hey, that rhymes) but they had no layers and no embellishments. I had a pile of scraps that went with them so I just started cutting them into shapes with no real rhyme or reason. I was just going to layer them on the cards and keep the stamping simple. I am not sure which company makes this paper, I'm thinking K & Company.


I don't have directions for these cards since I used scraps on all them so there was no real pattern. Hopefully you can get an idea just from the pictures this time.

I used my Gratitude stamp by Close to my Heart because it had a nice simple Thank You phrase. I used the same one on all the cards. You can never have too many thank you cards when you have customers as great as mine!

You can see I've used my favorite Magic Mesh product. I just love the texture that it adds. If you want to find out where to get some of this, let me know.

All sparkles are from Close to my Heart. Sparkles make any card better and they are perfect for filling up a space. I'd love to see how you use sparkles on your cards and layouts.

After you've done enough cards it isn't too hard to make up your own patterns. It takes lot of practice though, that would mean more scrapbooking and stamping, it's tough but you have to do it.

This one was actually already finished and I can tell I made it way back when I first started card making. I chose the wrong colors of eyelets and the flowers are way too dark. Don't make the mistake I made, choose colors that go together.

Here's another one that was previously made. I just added the Thank You.

Here's another one that had the flaws of my early card-making, too many eyelets of the wrong color and no layering. Layering makes the card!

This one was also completed. It looks okay but a strip across the bottom under the flower would have made it better. There's just too much empty space.

Without the flowers or fancy eyelets the card still looks great just with layering of the pretty paper and a few sparkles.

See how those sparkles look like they are all different colors? They really aren't. They just picked up the reflection of the papers, pretty cool, huh?

Even without instructions I hope these cards are giving you some inspiration. You can't imagine how great you'll feel after completing something that's been stuck in a box.

I love this one, when I layer the exact same print on itself with only a distressed edge separating the colors, it just looks cool!

Now everyone can do this card! So easy, just a few strips of paper across it and some magic mesh. A stamped saying and some sparkles and you're done.

It's your turn, get out something unfinshed and get it completed today!