30 Minutes or Less Cards!

     Don't you just love receiving handmade cards. They can be so much fun to make or receive. I discovered that I enjoy making cards for special occasions for family and friends. Especially for the nieces and nephews. 

     Earlier this year, I attended Scrapbook & Cards Today's Crop & Create in Burnaby, BC.

While there, a group of us were discussing how to store scraps and what did we do with our scraps and a card maker told us after she's done making cards, she takes an additional few minutes and makes card bases from those scraps and stores them. Then when she needs to make a quick card, she just pulls out that base, adds embellishments and sentiments and viola! You have a card in just minutes.
 

     I thought this was a great idea, so in June while making cards for upcoming birthdays, I took all my left over scraps (including those from scrapbooking) and made a couple dozen card fronts. (I kinda got carried away trying out different colors and designs.)

 

So this month, I realized the day before my sister-in-law's birthday, that I hadn't made and mailed her birthday card, so I quickly went through the card fronts in the box and grabbed a very simple base front of blue & white with a simple pattern and attached it to a David Tutera 4.25 X 5.5 card base.

      I added a blue flower with green rhinestone leaves to the front, leaving enough room to add a Happy Birthday sentiment inked with Tahiti blue Powder Chalk Ink along the sides. (I trimmed the quote to fit the location) .

 

 

For the inside of the card, I inked another sentiment with the same color and attached it with brads, placed a back on the card due to the brads poking through and completed a birthday card in about 15 minutes. As you can see, it came out quite well. 

    So have a fun summer till we Craft Again!

 

     Hmmmm.... guess it is getting a little bit easier to write this blog.  

 

Aunt Dee

 

Products used: David Tutera 4.25 X 5.5 cards, Quick Quotes Vellum Sentiments, Quick Quotes Tahiti Blue Powder Chalk Ink, Reflections Green Rhinestone crystals, Doodlebug brads.

LUCKY DAY!

     Scrapbookers are always looking to scrap major events in their lives and nothing could be bigger than being just plain “lucky”. This layout was my “Lucky Day”.  

     I happen to live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest in the wonderful Skagit Valley. Home to the 2^nd largest salmon river in Washington State as well as fertile, productive farmland, mountains, hiking trails, parks and communities that pull together.

     On May 23^rd, our beautiful Skagit River made international news when the I5 Skagit River Bridge collapsed shortly after 7 pm. What could have been an awful tragedy, turned out to be a very lucky day. Only 3 people and 2 vehicles ended up in the river atop the bridge that carries over 71,000 commuters daily between the Canadian Border and Seattle. No serious injuries and NO LOSS OF LIFE! Now that's lucky. 

     Even luckier for me as I crossed the bridge about 10 minutes earlier than usual on my way home due to getting off work a few minute earlier than normal and I wasn't the only one.  My brother and his wife decided to go home a different way, a friend's daughter-in-law crossed just minutes before it collapsed and there are many other stories of why the bridge was almost empty at that time of night. In other words, it was a very lucky day.
 
  
 To create this layout, I drew a small sketch of the collapse of the bridge. Then I added the characteristics of a bridge such as the bolts, rust, twisted and bent metals. Then I recreated it on a piece of 12 X 12 paper and traced it on my background paper. I cut and distressed each strip, then added adhesive, twisted and folded the strip and attached to my drawn design.
 


 
       Then with a black marker I added the bolts and with a q-tip added copper accents  to create the rusty parts of the bridge from copper mist bottle.  Matted my picture on black and added it the center of the “collapsed” bridge.  

     Across the bottom, I  cut a film strip die using a QuiKutz die and added it to the bottom with journaling and pictures of the bridge. I also edged the layout with 1/4” strips of black to complete the polaroid effect.

      The title was created with American Craft Thickers  sprayed with Copper Mist until the color was dark enough and added to the layout.
 
     Page 2 of this layout was again designed to look like a polaroid with the edges and the film strip across the bottom with pictures of the bridge through reconstruction. (The last picture is from the DOT web  showing the bridge's progress). The before picture is  taken on the east side of the bridge,  the collapsed picture is taken the day after it collapsed from the west side and the after picture is taken from the NW side of the temporary bridge two days after it re-opened. The bridge was re-opened on June 19, 2013, just 26 days after it collapsed.
 
     The permanent bridge is being built right beside the temporary bridge and will be rolled into place and operational by October 1 according to the WA State Department of Transportation and before it's in place, we'll spend another month without the bridge and lots of traffic until the permanent one is installed.
 
    Happy Crafting till next time!
 
                                                                                           Crafty Aunt Dee

Products used:  Core'dinations, American Craft thickers, Reflections lettering stickers, Quickutz Die, Americian Craft light grey paper, Illuminaire Copper Mist, Quick Quotes Midnight Magic Chalk Ink and Xyron adhesive.