Highlights from 2017

OK! Another year of making cards.  I am so thankful for so much support from family & friends.  They have helped me learn, critiqued my work, and helped me stretch as a card maker.  The quest for knowledge doesn't wane.  I find I just can't get enough, or try too many new things.  For every card tutorial posted on YouTube (yes, even the "not perfect" ones), there is something to learn! Thank you to all the people who have posted things there!  Maybe one day I'll be one of them!

 Let's start with my first shaker card.  I had to cut the bones and tennis balls as I didn't have sequins, but I liked the results.  It's true! Necessity IS the Motherhood of invention! The lesson here is you can usually find something that works!

Same goes for the inside of the card.  I used the "garbage" pieces of die cuts to get different size circles.

On to Valentine's Day.....I had to "one-up" my card this year from the one I made last year.  I saw this tutorial on shading with inks.  The heart outfits were from that tutorial.  In person, they are amazing!

Once again, I needed to learn something new, make something "different." I saw this tutorial somewhere on Youtube (It's such a GREAT resource!"  This folds flat, and I made a box for it to go in.  It was a huge hit!

This card! Yeah! I searched high and low thru my stash of paper, and just couldn't find the right background!  I didn't just want to stamp it.   I stamped image, then traced it onto another piece of paper so that it "wasn't so perfect", then popped up the rest with dimensionals.  I was very pleased with the result.  This started me thinking about making my own backgrounds rather than relying on paper that "didn't quite work."

This lead me to Distress Oxide inks. WOW!  Need I say more?! By this time I had lots of ink, including distress inks, but nothing works quite like the Distress Oxide ones!  More stuff that I want/need?! So I got a few of the colors.  This is the first background I made.  As with everything....it gets better with time and practice.

This was another of those "I don't have what I need to make this card" cards. I wanted a robot for my grandson.  I saw this idea somewhere,  and decided to give it a try.  I had to scrounge around thru my dies to find the right shapes & Sizes, some, I had to make up from other dies.  (the antenna were arrow dies that I cut down, the grill was the rest of the arrows!)  The caption really is how you say Happy Birthday in binary language.  This was worth all the research I did, cuz the first thing he did was to go online and make sure that's what it said!  TOTALLY made my day!

This is just a "doodle quilt" I made out of paper.  No real use for it, I just wanted to try it.  I also wanted to try the  "Buster the Dog" die out with different papers instead of making him look "real"

This card was a blast! First, I had to figure out what I could put in the pocket. Then came the fun...pencils made out of toothpicks,  and yes, I made the notebook too! The hooks on the straps were actually waste out of the "Chilly the Penguin" Die from Karen Burniston/Elizabeth craft designs.  When I made the final draft, I changed the straps to show off more of the hooks.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the final card.  These were my Father's Day cards this year.  Big hit!

This was a fun card too!  It's a great stamp & Die set from Simon Says Stamp.  I had to make the fish food container,  not the best feature of this card, but it needed something in that area. The fishbowl is a bunch of die cuts stacked up. The water was another inked background. The sign was made with square dies.  Wiggly eyes & pearls finished it off.

I decided to try an easel card.  Found some designs for the actual easel itself on the internet.  Yes, it does stand up on it's own! Rather than make this card open in the traditional way, I started with an "L" shaped, embossed section.  Added the polkadot paper on the upper right, then added a tag.  The tag is hinged at the top, and flips upwards.  The diamond shaped area is attached to the "tag", and moves with it.  Under the tag is an area to write a message.  The stamps I used were from Lawn Fawn.





I made many more cards this year than needs to be shown here.  My love for the art just keeps on growing.  My supplies are growing as well.  My Husband continues to support me, encourages me to buy more tools, dies & such, and even surprises me with stuff he's bought for me.  Way better than flowers!  How lucky can a gal be?  On to 2018!