First Fathers Day

My son in law celebrated his very first Fathers Day last weekend so I wanted to send a card letting him know how very special he is. When I saw the new Instacube cards at the Lori Whitlock shop, I knew it would make a perfect card for him.

Lori Whitlock's Instacube cards are so super COOL! These cubes are rubberband activated...they fold flat to slide into a sleeve for giving, then...POP! open into a cube when pulled out of the sleeve. Totally LOVE THIS!

Decided to make this card extra special by using photos of my son in law and our new granddaughter to decorate the sides of the cube.

I added a poppa and baby bear paper piecing to the front panel and our sentiment to the back panel of the cube. Lori's original file creates a 2-1/2 inch cube, but I enlarged the file slightly to get a 3 inch cube since I was having difficulty getting my paper piecings and cropped photos to fit.

Folded flat, the cube easily slides into it's sleeve, ready to pop back into a cube when removed. Ah! A new favorite card to make! LOL, I've already done a few more of these (so fun to make!) and will share in the weeks to come.

Golfer's Shadow Box for Fathers Day

Today is Fathers Day and this is the card hubby got from me before he headed out to the golf course with his buddies early this morning.

Yup, yet another golf themed card and yet another shadow box card. Happily, I had most of the cutting files needed to put this card together already saved on my computer from previous cards I've made. But even so, I struggled with the sizing, placement and welding of each of the images onto the different layers of this shadow box.

Golfer and golf cart images were rendered into cutting files from images found on the internet and the trees are from Cricut Zooballoo cartridge.

To get the right amount of dimension I wanted, I used three layers inside the box. The layers each have a window that gets smaller as they get closer to the back of the box; and I tried to place the layers about a fourth of an inch apart.

      

Fathers Day sentiment was added to the back of the box. This card actually folds flat to fit in an envelope, but I decided to make a box for this instead since some of the cuts on this were pretty thin and I didn't want to risk the chance of any of the cuts and layers getting tangled.
Enjoy celebrating with all your dads, hubbies and grandpas today. Don't forget to let them know how special they are!

Retired and Doin' the Happy Dance

Hurray! I officially joined the ranks of the retired a little over a month ago and am totally enjoying it! So nice to be able to do what I want, when I want. One of the first things on my agenda was to get those retirement thank you cards done. Needed to do 20+ cards so they had to be quick and easy!

Using the same cutting file I created for my thank you cards two Christmases ago, I added a print and cut image of a happy chick in place of the panda on the original card. So glad I've finally mastered the technique of print and cut using the Make the Cut design program and Silhouette!

A strip of pink striped cardstock was adhered to the inside of the card so it would show through on the front of the card as a backdrop for the "thank you".

On the inside, another chickie doin' the happy dance and my sentiment. I used the print and cut technique to add the sentiment as well, which meant it would be perfectly placed where I wanted on each of the 20+ cards...nice!

Also want to share this fabulous handmade retirement card I received from my sweet and talented friend, Gwen. Love all the wonderful textures and layering on this beautiful card! Stamped images are from Stampin' Up's Thoughtful Branches set. But here comes the best part...

Open the card, and surprise! An adorable shopping bag pops up from the center of the card. Very, very cool, don't you think? Inside the shopping bag was a gift card...what a clever way to give a gift card! Totally love this idea and you can bet I will be CASE-ing this soon!

Finally, just had to share a pic of the 21 bentos I made very early one morning and delivered together with the retirement thank you cards to my friends at work.

A Star Is Born

Our daughter gave birth to a sweet baby girl in April...I'm a gramma! Baby's name is Evelyn Leilani and here is the first card gramma made for her.

Being that I've recently become intrigued with layered shadowboxes, I decided to try another one for Baby Evelyn. Before I go on, I should mention that the original card has baby's full name on it, I just blocked her last name out in the photos to protect her privacy. Yeah, that's why it looks kinda off centered and weird.

View from the top shows the two layers that were added inside the box. The window openings for each of the layers is about half in inch smaller than the one before it, with the last layer inside the box having the smallest opening. Each of the layers was cut half an inch wider than the width of the finished box so I could fold 1/4 inch on each side as tabs to adhere the layers in the box. I used Lori Whitlock's instructional video on Youtube as a guide to assemble my card.

Paper pieced baby and moon come from Cricut's Baby Steps cartridge. I used a strip of acetate glued to the second layer in the box to suspend her in the center of the shadowbox. Tiny stars were hung using fishing line. 

Pharmacy font and Make the Cut were used to cut out baby's name and backed with pink cardstock.

Added our sentiment to the back of the box using digital paper from Bella Blvd. Love this paper! Also used this same paper to line inside the box as the back drop. Having too much fun with these layered shadowbox style cards and hope to continue making more of them!
Oh! And of course I couldn't end without sharing a few photos of our precious new granddaughter... because that's what grammas do, right?