Sharing Smiles

Today I'm sharing some of the fun and crafty projects that I've recently received from my sweet, thoughtful and talented friends.

My dear friend Bev surprised me on Mothers Day with this beautiful U-fold or Bridgefold style card. View from the top shows how she adhered the jar filled with layered paper pieced flowers and foilage onto the center strut inside to give the appearance of a shadowbox. Love, love the bright and cheery colors she used...so pretty!

This amazing Mothers Day surprise is from my multi talented friend, Lorna. Really love the sparkly  daisy dish scrubby she crocheted...almost too pretty to use! Lorna packaged her lovely scrubby together with a sweet treat in a cello bag sealed with some polka dot washi tape and a cute layered tag to match the scrubby.

Awww! Lorna also created this super kawaii Boys Day Totoro treat holder. I especially liked the intricate cuts on Totoro's brightly colored koinobori or flying carp...very festive!

Now this treat holder from Lorna is truly a sign of the times, right? She decorated this sleeve style treat holder with the most adorable peeking bunny wearing a face mask and filled it with a package of mini oreos; cuter than cute!

Here's a fun card that's a little unconventional, but sure to bring a smile from my sweet crafting buddy, Kris. For one thing, this definitely has to be the first toilet bowl card I've ever received!

Pulling down on the toilet paper of this Waterfall style card makes the toilet bowl lid flip open to show a mouse inside your toilet with a request... and pulling the toilet paper down further flips the toilet seat up! Hubby and I both got a good laugh from this fun card.
Special thanks to my thoughtful and caring friends who shared their crafty talents to lift my spirits and bring a little cheer during these unprecedented times of uncertainty. The good news is that we have significantly "flattened the curve" in our state and stay at home restrictions are slowly being eased. Please continue to stay safe, everyone!

Happy Holidays! (...just a little late...)

WHOA!!!! Is it over already? It's only been a month since my last post, but it feels like it's been a lot longer. Got back home about 2 weeks ago, and didn't think I could do it, but got all my holiday cards and packages done and mailed out in time, plus a few more things. Yay for me! Whew! Don't want to sound like a GRINCH, but man, I am sure glad Christmas is over!
For our cards this year, I decided to do a waterfall type of card. Created the prototype for the card a week prior to mom's surgery, then went crazy cutting all the pieces needed to make our 80 cards. Turned out to be a good plan as I found enough free time late at night after putting mom and dad to bed to put all the pieces together and assemble the cards.

 I found many tutorials on YouTube for waterfall cards, but I tweaked mine just a bit so I would have just two oversized flaps. And in place of the brads that usually hold the sliding mechanism in place, I simply used staples. I used the tiered O Christmas Tree cutfile from My Scrap Chick for the front of the card and a circle punch to cut the simple ornaments from red foil. I was a little sad that my poor tree looked like a pre-schooler had put it together but since I didn't have access to any of my crafty supplies, there wasn't much I could do. LOL, all I could do was hope that the fun sliding and page flipping movement of this card would make everyone not notice the sad tree as much!

Pulling down on the tab on the bottom of the card brings the first flap up with a photo of our funny Santa doggie, sitting in a gift box.

Pulling down on the tab further brings the second flap up with our family photo. A little time consuming to assemble, but not too difficult at all.

Uh oh...look who got curious and wanted to help while I was taking pictures for this post! Hope everyone had a joyous Christmas! Still have a few holiday projects to share...hopefully I can get them posted before the New Year!

Always Our Princess

When it came time to make a birthday card for dd, I decided to do another waterfall card because I figured she'd get a big kick out of all the neat page flipping action. And after seeing the images of all the cute girls with "attitude"  on the Rock Princess cartridge, I knew they would be perfect for her card.

Pulling down on the tab on the bottom at the front of the card flips open the pages...

Using Design Studio to size the girls large enough, I cropped off the bodies so I could get just their head shots onto the pages. Then since I wanted it to look like they were all the same person (my dd), I used Design Studio to copy and paste the eyes of one of the girls (the "Andrea" image) onto the faces of all the other girls.

All patterned papers for the background are digital, from Lettering Delights, Designer Digitals (Mindy Terasawa), and Little Dreamer Designs (Nancy Kubo). I really like that with digital papers, I can print the papers together with the greetings, and just to the size needed, eliminating the neverending problem of having to stash more scraps.

After finishing my waterfall card, I glued it onto the front of another card, which opens up to reveal a pop-up card inside...

Here's what the pop-up card inside looks like from the top..

Really had fun doing this, it's sorta like making two interactive cards into one!

I used the Opposites Attract cartridge for the "YOU" on the inside of this card, George cartridge for the heart shape and a Sizzlet die from a set for the tag. Patterned cardstock on the inside is from the DCWV Glittered Sweet stack, and the cake was fussy cut from the same stack.

The Very Best Dad Ever!

I had so much fun making my niece's waterfall Sweet 16 birthday card, I decided to do a couple more as Fathers Day cards for my dad and dh. But this time I turned the card to it's side so it would open up like a little flip book. I used a theme of "best at all you do" and proceeded to describe some of the things these two men in our lives are so good at. And since I'm still lovin' the panda on the Create a Critter cart, I couldn't resist using him again for my cards.

Pulling the ribbon on the side flips open the pages...so cool! This first card was for my dad, who imho, is and has always been the best gardener, photographer, and handyman ever!

The waterfall/flipbook was attached to the front of a card, which opened up to a pop-up.

I made one panda to represent each of us...my dad and dd in the front, and dh and me in the back with the pink dress. Oh, and of course the doggie is our little Latte. When my mom saw the card, she said, "Where's ME?" ...ooops!

Cuts from 5 different cartridges were used to create this card...Create A Critter (pandas); Paper Pups (doggie); Walk In My Garden (flowers, watering can); Locker Talk (camera); and ZooBalloo (house). Couldn't find a cut for a hammer in any of my carts, so I used MTC to create one from a digital image. Nestabilities Label One dies used for the label on the front of the card. I just love it when I can justify my spending on craft tools and supplies!

For the patterned papers on these two cards, I finally took the plunge and went digital. I downloaded papers from Lettering Delights and Nancy Kubo at Little Dreamer Designs. Don't you just hate it when you start on a project and run out of the patterned paper? By using digital papers I was assured I'd have enough even if I made a boo-boo with measuring and cutting, as long as there was ink in the printer!

This second card was for my dh...

Golf club, ball and tee are MTC cuts from digital images.

Car cut is from Locker Talk and wrench is from Indie Arts.

Computer is from Locker Talk. Windows logo on the computer screen was downloaded from the internet and printed on cardstock.

Both the stack of money and piggy bank are MTC cuts from images found on the internet.

And here we are again as the Panda family!

Hope you all had a relaxing Fathers Day, remembering how special our dads are!

Sweet Sixteen

My niece turned Sweet 16 this year, and for her card I finally tried my very first waterfall type card. I know these type of cards have been around for a long time, but the thought of all the pieces to cut and assemble always kept me away. As it turned out, it really wasn't too difficult to put together at all and actually, it was kinda fun, especially with all the cute critters to choose from in the Create A Critter cartridge! For my card, I used a tutorial by my super talented & creative friend, Jen Young which you can find posted on her blog, Pieces of Me.

I changed the size of the card and panels to be a little larger (3"x3") than the original just so I'd have an easier time cutting and assembling my critters. I also cut the first top panel longer than the rest so it would completely hide all the panels underneath and allow me space to add a sentiment to the front of the card.

Then by increasing the length of the sliding strip to 12"and adding an extra scoreline at 5", I was able to add an additional panel to my card.

With the additional and larger panels, the overall size of the card turned out to be 7" tall and 4-1/4" wide. To avoid having to increase the width of the card by too much, I decided to staple the holding strip onto my card instead of using brads. Then to conceal the staples, I glued on a piece of patterned paper the same size onto the holding strip.
All critter images (bear, owl, poodle, & cupcake) are from the Create A Critter cartridge. "16" was cut using the Sizzix Fun Serif number dies, and die cut alphas are Quickutz Mini Maggie. Square & scalloped square are Nestabilities, and the font for the sentiment is LD Miss Rose.
Had fun playing around with this and altering the original waterfall card. Recently, I saw another where the panels were ovals instead of squares! Gonna have to give that one a try too!