Birthdays and other celebrations!

Hello! This has been a wonderful week to make cards before all the outside activities begin. We've had some rain and then we've had more rain. This has added up to a lot of water and no gardening or planting taking place. So while we were inside, we used our time to catch up on a few cards and made these simple and easy cards for children entitled, "Enjoy your Birthday! Our clever card makers designed the front of the card with the stamp, the colored card stock, a print paper layer and the sentiment stamp. Easy enough... and the "wow" factor were the tied buttons. Cute, Judy! This was really clever. I call this simple design... Design 101. Everything is centered on the front of the card. The stamp design is attached to background on card stock,  which graduate in size from the center stamp design to the larger print paper on the card fronts.
Another design, Judy used all primary colors on this card and it looks great.

 The colorful print background gives the card "fun-appeal"--- and who doesn't like a cupcake for their birthday! The "balloons" stamp is printed onto  a white card stock, cut out, small bakery strings are attached to the back of the balloons and then, paper pieced onto the left side of the card front, with the sentiment stamp anchoring down the balloon cluster strings. Judy, Ellen, Ginny, our Card Makin' Cuties, did a great job on these birthday cards for Operation Write Home (OWH),  www.operationwritehome.org which provides hand made cards for our troops to send home to their loved ones.Click onto their link right here.Read more about what they are doing.

With lots of Graduations coming up this May, you might have just enough time to make your own hand made card. Here is another easy pattern to follow.

The idea we wanted to try was a bit different than the typical Graduation cards of black and gold. This design was based on the bright colors of the celebration papers. The lime green in the printed paper is placed along the right side of the card front. The colorful print is added off-side and the punch out scalloped oval is stamped with the sentiment.

 Just A Great Tip: ( thanks to OWH) We saw a need to multi-stamp our design stamp onto a blank sheet of card stock. These prints are colored when we need time fillers, like, waiting in long gas lines, at the doctors, or for children after school. Any time you have a second or two, color them in. Stamping and coloring them when you have a few minutes is a real time saver.
NO EXCUSE. When you need a card in an emergency---cut one of your pre-stamped, pre-colored prints out, attach it to colorful card stock and print backgrounds add the embellishments...and pop it in the mail.

 With Mother's Day, Graduation, Birthdays and more, spring is a wonderful time to be a card maker. I hope you can adapt these easy designs to your own cards. Share your thoughts and ideas too. Let me see what you are doing or leave a comment. What is your best tip? And by all means, show us how you used these tips and ideas.