Aloha, all!
Beginning in 2013, I had several years of being sick on and off pretty much all of the time. Because of that, I had to have frequent lab work done. The ladies (and the occasional gentleman) in the lab and I developed a friendship born of the need to make what could have been a difficult time a bit more enjoyable. Of course, I made them little gifts and cards when occasions came up – it's what I do, after all! They have a large refrigerator in the lab and every year they displayed my Christmas or Thank You or New Year's card on the front of it.
At the beginning of 2017, I'm now in good health, and it's been a while since I've had to go to the clinic. But yesterday I had to go there for a regular physical, which gave me the opportunity finally to take my friends in the lab a New Year's card. When I walked into the lab, there on the refrigerator was the 2016 card, still in a place of honor. I almost cried. They explained that they knew I'd bring them a new card, and they thought my 2016 card was so beautiful that they didn't want to take it down until they had a suitable replacement. Now they have it.
All sorts of thoughts went through my mind when I was trying to decide what kinds of papers and layout I should use for this card. Most of what's out on my work table right now is birthday-related, and that just wasn't appropriate. When I opened up my paper box, Valentines papers were at the top and I nearly dismissed them as inappropriate also. But, no! Anything with a heart is TOTALLY the right thing to use for a group of people who deal with blood all day. My heart's pumping the stuff just fine these days, so why not highlight that!
The first thing I did was to decide that the card would have a top-folded 5-1/2" high by 4-1/4" wide card base. The main reason is that last year's card had a landscape orientation with 2016 across the card. I really wanted something with a different layout, but wanted to have the year's numbers on the front. Once I had that settled, I grabbed the heart border framelit from the Love Notes Framelits Dies and used it to cut the right front of the card. Then I trimmed the back of the card so that the hearts stood out from the whole card, not just from the front.
I cut the Large Numbers Framelits 2017 out of a piece of paper from the Sending Love Designer Series Paper Stack and then mounted that onto a piece of Whisper White Cardstock. Both of these pieces are narrower than usual because the heart framelit trimmed the size of the card front down a bit.
Once I had this all put together, I needed a place to put the Happy New Year. My first thought was to put it on the inside of the card with my note. But then I realized that those little hearts gave me a perfect place to tie a tag! Out came the Classic Label Punch and a piece of Cherry Cobbler Baker's Twine, and I tied the greeting onto the right side of the card. Nice! One little side note about the hole I punched into the end of the Label-Punched piece: While the 1/8" Handheld Circle Punch is available, I find that I get a much nicer hole for a project like this by using the smallest holes in the Owl Builder Punch. There's no wasted paper because those little holes are right at the edge of the punch, so I just slip the punched label in and I've got my nice hole for the Baker's Twine!
Now I've got those pretty letters that I punched out of the Designer Series Paper! I'll be making another New Year's Card today for sure!
