Aloha, all!
Sometimes it may seem – even to me! – that my whole life is revolving around my papercrafting. But actually it's not, and it barely even squeezes into my time enough for me to say I spend half my time with it!
Other activities include playing duplicate bridge with my husband, sitting on the board of an organization that brings classical music to our part of Hawaii, and being a member of four different clubs, three of which are branches of international organizations. One of them is a fraternal organization (can you tell they used to accept only men as members?), and I am the person charged with sending out birthday cards to all of our members. In the beginning of this assignment, I made the cards as birthdays came along. But then I realized that, with a club our size, they were coming along at a pretty good clip. So now I spend a day every couple of months making all of the cards I'll need for the next couple of months! Today is the day for September, October, and early November birthdays.
With as many cards as I have to make, I (1) try to make sure that they're fairly simple and (2) try to make a design that is appropriate for both men and women. This month I mixed it up a bit, making the same basic design for both men and women, but with different stamps, colors and ribbon for the men and women.
The woman's card at the top features two of this year's Stampin' Up! In Colors, Sweet Sugarplum and Peekaboo Peach. I was originally going to make this a monochromatic card featuring only the Sweet Sugarplum. But, when I decided I wanted to color in the flowers in the border stamp, I needed another color to give it a bit of contrast. So Peekaboo Peach it was. After that, I added a mat of Peekaboo Peach Cardstock, not only on the stamped strip, but also on the card as a whole, matting behind the Designer Series Paper (DSP).
The colors in the man's card are Dapper Denim and Real Red. Again, my intention was to make this a monochromatic card. But once I had two colors in the woman's card, I felt that I wanted two colors in the man's card, too. Oh, why the heck not make it red, white, and blue! So I added the Real Red just as I did in the woman's card. To further the idea that this is a more masculine card, I tied a plain knot in the ribbon embellishment.
The DSP that's the second layer in both cards is from the 2016-2018 In Color DSP Stack. I chose the floral pattern for the woman's card and the polka-dotted pattern for the man's. The ribbons are the Peekaboo Peach 3/8" Ruched Ribbon for the top card and Real Red 3/8" Stitched Satin Ribbon. Finally, to take care of all that empty space in the top Whisper White Layer, I added some texture with the Large Polka Dot Textured Impressions Embossing Folder.
So there I have it – the prototypes for the cards for the next few months. It's going to be an assembly line set up, with all the pieces cut, then all the stamping done, then all the layers put together. Zip, zip, zip (well, unless I mess something up along the way, which is not unheard of!).
Here are the products featured in this set of projects. If you have any questions or want more information about any of them, just click on any of the pictures of the products and you'll be redirected to my very own Stampin' Up! store with more about the individual products that you can imagine!
