cards

Blogtoberfest Day 13

October 13, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 6 Comments

Young Crafters Unite challenge #2 and Simon Says Stamp Challenge – Halloween/Goth

Young Crafters Unite posted their second challenge, which is to make an envelope that matches your card. I had a lot of fun with this one because I decided to make the card rely on the envelope in order to make sense.

Said another way, you have to read what’s on the envelope first to complete the card’s meaning. Fun, huh?

I’m also entering this into the Simon Says Stamp Challenge for the their Halloween/Goth week!

It's a matter of perspective, really ...

I used a shape cut a few times with my Silhouette as the base of the card. Then I added the colors with distress inks before stamping the images. I’m not sure if you’ll notice in the photo that the cobwebs have little hints of glitter pen to make them appear more like gossamer.

Your trick is my treat!

I limited the color palette to add to the stark, creepy effect. I also stamped and inked the flip side of the envelope.

I stamped the back of the envelope to complete the look.

There’s still another couple of days to enter the challenge if you like this idea of embellishing your envelope to match your card. I know I’ll be doing it again!

Blogtoberfest Day 8

October 8, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Card kit review

Last year I found a Basic Grey Halloween card kit for sale at Big Lots. It was from BG’s 2009 Eerie collection and cost only $5.00, as opposed to the original price tag of $14.99. I thought that $5.00 might be worth paying to find out if I liked using kits. I don’t normally love the idea of card and layout kits; they remove that part of the crafting process that I love—making all the creative choices. But I also don’t believe in saying I dislike things I haven’t tried, so I bought the kit.

Basic Grey's Eerie card kit

Today I pulled out the kit and the extra supplies it calls for—adhesive, pens, etc.—and got to work. The kit contains everything needed to make eight cards (including envelopes). I made four before writing this review, as I wanted to be able to report on how long it took me to complete several, so we could extrapolate the length of time for the whole kit. Following are my perceptions of the kit and the whole process:

The four-page instruction sheet shows a black-and-white photo of each card and lists the step-by-step instructions. It’s well designed and easy to read.
There are two sheets of die-cuts and one sheet of self-adhesive chipboard pieces included. Each piece is numbered according to the card it fits. This seems like a good system, but I found locating all the items for one card a little difficult because they aren’t grouped together. But this is just a nit.
It took me 76 minutes to complete four cards. At that rate, it would take me just under three hours to finish them all. I am not a speedy crafter by any means, so this is good time for me! Your assessment may differ based on how quickly you can usually create a card.
Making these cards confirmed for me that I am not a kit lover. I don’t craft just to have the final project in hand. I want to create; I crave the process. So, punching out precut strips of patterned papers and shapes and gluing them to the base card just doesn’t do it for me. Some designer(s) at Basic Grey got to have the fun that I want out of crafting. I just assembled stuff. Not that fun, really.
Just because I don’t like using kits doesn’t mean I think there’s no place for them. If I was in a real hurry and had to have homemade cards for some reason, I might turn to a kit. All the decisions are made for you, and you don’t have any leftover scraps of patterned paper when you’re done.
Basic Grey’s kits are quite nice. The instructions are nicely done. Their paper designs are always beautiful. The card sketches are cute but not too complex. So, if you’re looking for a quick way to make eight coordinated and well-designed cards, I can certainly recommend their kits.

Young Crafters Unite blog hop!

July 1, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 81 Comments

Hi everyone, and welcome to the next stop on the Young Crafters Unite Blog Hop! If you’re following along the hop you should be arriving here from Chari Moss’ blog (She makes such adorable cards!). If you aren’t a hopper but want to join in the fun you can start at the beginning by visiting the Young Crafters Unite website.

Why do I consider myself a young crafter?

I always feel younger than the calendar says I am. I really believe that being “young” or “old” is up to us. So I act the way I want to feel. And crafting is one of the things I do that helps me stay young. Shopping for crafting supplies surely must reduce wrinkles because it makes me giddy like a little girl. And the feeling I get when I start to cut, stamp and glue things together…well, if my hair was longer I would put it up in pigtails! I suspect all crafters are young crafters. 🙂

My “favorite thing” project

We were asked to create a new project using our favorite things, and I chose to create a layout using two favorite things:

These photos are of my brother, Phil, and me at the baby pool in our hometown. I love everything about these photos: Phil’ls scrunchy smile, our darling bathing suits pushed low on our round bellies, our suntanned skin, our happy faces and my memories of many hours spent at that pool together with our mom. Wow, these are awesome photos!
I recently created a tutorial about crocheting on your scrapbook pages, so that’s my new favorite technique! I’ve used it on this layout to create the sun element. It takes some extra time, so I’ll probably save it for more special photos/memories, but I love the even more handmade and vintage feel it gives to my layouts. 🙂

At the Pool highlights a few special photos of me and my brother in the summer of 1970.

More of my personal favorites

I thought I would also share just a few more of my recent layouts and cards because they are all about being or staying young, and they make me happy to look at!

I think you are…
I made this little set of 2×3-inch cards so that I could occasionally pop a love note in my husband’s laptop bag before he leaves the house. Why does food with faces make us smile?

I think you are...hot, cool, sweet and cheesy!

I am I because my little dog knows me
I can’t help it—I love this layout. That photo of our precious family dog, Spenser, is from 1991 when he was only a few months old. We all adored him and he adored us. And I think this Gertrude Stein quote is awesome.

I think this Gertrude Stein quote is all this layout needed to capture my feeling.

He will go far
This is a photo from 2000, when our nephew Jerad was only 4. I thought this new October Afternoon line, Rocket Age, would work perfectly to highlight all the potential I see in his little face.

This outer space-themed paper just seemed like the perfect way to showcase a child's potential.

Thank you so much for hopping by today. Don’t forget to leave a comment on this post because there are prizes up for grabs for some lucky participants. Randomly selected commenters will have the opportunity to win prizes from Simon Says Stamp, Paper Smooches and Lawn Fawn! Comment by Monday, July 4th at 11:59PM CST to win; winners will be announced Wednesday, July 6th at noon CST.

The next young crafter on this hop is Kelly Latevola (This woman is a master with Distress Inks!). Thanks again for stopping by, and I do hope you’ll come back again soon.

Oh Christmas card, oh Christmas card!

December 15, 2010 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

I remember reading once that uber-organized crafter, Becky Higgins, designs and creates her Christmas cards in July. Then in December she just adds the family photo and they’re done. Wow. I would love to be able to get my cards ready that far in advance, but honestly I just can’t get into it in July. But every summer since reading that idea I think to myself, “I should design this year’s Christmas card now so I’m ahead of the game.” But who am I kidding?

I’m pretty slow at crafting, so when I announced last weekend that it was time to start my Christmas card-making project, Matt moaned. He’s been through this with me too many times to look forward to it! He suggested, “Can’t you just buy cards to send, like normal people do?” To which I proudly replied, “I’m not normal. I’m a crafter!” And I immediately began tearing my hair out over my design.

The right Christmas card design is not easy to conjure. In my opinion it should include the following characteristics, if at all possible (which is why it’s such a tall order for a scrapper who seldom makes cards, like me):

It should use a good cross section of your many Christmas scrap supplies (so you feel justified in buying them all!).
It should be relatively flat so that it’s easy to mail and doesn’t require extra postage.
It should sparkle like the season.
It should come across as heartfelt and cozy.
It should be complicated enough to impress your receivers without being so complicated that replicating it in numbers is painful.
It should make you feel proud to sign it.

So with my list of prerequisites in mind, here is this year’s effort. I went for a vintage/shabby look, combining the subtle distressing in the design of the patterned paper and the old-fashioned Santa image. The supplies I used include glitter patterned paper from the Oh Christmas Tree collection by My Mind’s Eye, stamps from the Classic Holiday set by Inkadinkado and a Martha Stewart edge punch.

Our 2010 Christmas card

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