High Hopes for Christmas in July

It's time for Christmas in July cards!  In the past, I hosted a crop to make Christmas Cards for the Southern Ontario Animal Rescue (SOAR) to use during the holidays.  I am currently testing out my 6 x 6 one sheet wonder to make a holiday card set, so I am in the mood for holiday cards!

This week's card-making challenge at High Hopes Rubber Stamps is "Anything Goes".  I happen to have a holiday stamp from High Hopes that I bought specifically with SOAR in mind.  Here it is on my Christmas in July card:

I'm also on a scrap kick.  With my 6x6 one sheet wonder template, I'm trying to use up lots of my cardstock scraps for mats and things.  I decided to rifle through my patterned paper strips to come up with this ribbon border.  My High Hopes stamps are all very large images so I felt that only a touch of extra embellishment was needed.

I coloured the image very simply with my copic markers.  I was going to put a sentiment, but I think it's a pretty self-explanatory card!!

One Sheet Wonder Card Workshop

Seems I've spent less time crafting this year, so I decided I have some catching up to do.  I went to my idea list and found the "One Sheet Wonder" ("OSW").  If you Google this term, you will find all kinds of examples.  Basically, the idea is to make many cards from one sheet of patterned paper.  The cards could be identical, but most often are not.  This way, you can create a whole set of cards with different designs but unifying colours.  It makes a great gift set or helps fatten up the Holiday card stash!

I spent a long time looking at OSW cards and their templates and how different people produced cards under the same templates.  Then, I sat down, with Microsoft Excel serving as my graph paper, and came up with my own template using a blend of cards that I liked from all the templates I viewed.

My template builds sixteen cards, using 12 x 12 inch papers.  Some designs are made in multiples.  In total, there are nine different designs.  I just posted one of the multiples to my hand made greeting card store on iCraft.

I did alter this duplicate a tad by simply changing the sentiment.  I don't often make cards with large sentiments, so this was refreshing.  I also don't often stamp directly on my cards (for fear of mistakes), but the designs in this set called for it a few times.

In place of a second patterned paper, I used embossing a lot instead.  Dry Embossing adds a textured pattern to a paper.  If you have several embossing folders or plates, you can keep making the same pattern over and over in any colour, so it is more economical than patterned paper.

It took me a very long time to put these together.  Once I cut the patterned paper, there were SO MANY little pieces to keep track of.  I had to stop and recount the remaining pieces multiple times!  You see, the trick with the OSW technique is, the smaller you cut your pieces, the more cards you can make with one sheet.

This project was really good for using up the stash.  I used ribbon, stickers, buttons and stickles!  I also used A LOT of stamps.  This set consists of a mix of: thank-you, birthday, sympathy and thinking of you.

I enjoyed the variety that popped out from a single sheet of patterned paper.  I think this would be an awesome gift set.  I even went ahead and designed a One Sheet Wonder template for a 6 x 6 inch paper.  This way, I can get 4 from a 12 x 12 inch paper, or I can use the 6 x 6 inch paper pads.  I haven't created from the template yet, so there may still be some tweaking to do.  I can't wait to try it out!

Masculine Birthday Cards - Robots

For my card making workshop in May, my creative crew and I used a robot stamp set called Bunch of Bots by the company, My Favorite Things, to make some masculine birthday cards.

This is the sample that I made, using scrap strips for the background and a scrap piece for the mat.

My crew all used different bots from each other.  They were given some scrap groupings that went together and they were able to choose which strips they wanted to use.  Some also brought their own scrap bits to work from.  We ended up with three very different and wonderful cards!

Click to see larger picture.

By varying the colours and the message, you can make this card work for any age of man from babies to grand-daddies!  Using the strips as a background creates a neutral design.  This style of card would work just as well with other typically male icons, like a sailing ship or other nautical imagery (anchors, compasses, etc.), a vehicle, plane, or train, a pocket watch, etc.

Just as easily, this design can be used for feminine cards too.  I really like this layout.  While it is a great way to use scraps, it only uses 5 little pieces.  I have enough scraps to make dozens of them!

P.S. HAPPY CANADA DAY everyone!