World Cardmaking Day 2018 (Bonus Post)

Hey guys and gals! Yesterday was a fun day in the papercrafting world, it was World Cardmaking Day. Don't worry if you have never heard of it, I only discovered it a couple of months ago. I decided to go online and see what could be found about this obscure holiday and I discovered that it was created by Paper Craft Magazine in 2006 and is held annually on the first Saturday in October.

In order to celebrate, I decided to finish a large group of cards that I had started working on awhile back but never got around to finishing. I had previously cut an entire 8.5 x 11 patterned paper pad into 4.25 x 5.5 inch rectangles in order to be used on cards.

I spent the entire day cutting, gluing (with double sided tape), stamping and sorting so that I could finish off this large batch of cards. I even got to use up some of my ENDLESS supply of Project Life cards (I swear that those cards have a way of multiplying when I am not looking). In the end I had about 150 finished cards (I made 4-6 of each card design).

Because I made so many cards of different types (birthday, friendship, encouragement, etc.), I decided to also make some boxes so that I could sell the cards in sets. I put eight different cards into each box so that each box would contain a variety of different occasions. 

Wow, it was a LONG day of crafting. I didn't finish until around 3 o'clock this morning, my back is KILLING me but at least I got a lot accomplished! 

Let me know if you are interested in purchasing one (or more) of these fun boxed sets. Email me at thesweetscrapper@gmail.com

Cake Card

Many of you are probably wondering why September has turned into the month that I share so many of my OLD cards that I made years ago. Well, there is a simple reason for that. At the end of August my grandpa had to come up to my house to stay for several days because everyone in the family who is acting as caregivers, either had a doctors appointment or was out of town for that week. The only solution was to bring him to our house. The only downside...I had eight MONTHS of craftroom mess to clean up and organize in just a couple of days (because my craftroom doubles as the spare bedroom).

Because I haven't had much time at home to work in my scraproom lately, what I have been able to work on was typically quick and I didn't have time to put the stuff I used away when I was finished. Hence the room was a complete DISASTER!!

I worked extremely hard for three days straight to get the room into a presentable state. While moving, shuffling, organizing and straightening the entire room  I came across a box full of old cards that I made back when my craft supplies were so small that they fit into a little corner of a desk in my bedroom. In the box, along with the photos was an old computer flash drive that contained all of the photos of the cards that I have been sharing with you (that is why the quality is so poor). It was really fun to come across this little piece of the past that I had forgotten about.

I first started making cards and other paper crafts back in 2009, after I received a Cricut for my birthday. Back then the only way to really get a feel (at least for me) of what an image was going to look like when cut at a certain size, was to actually cut it out. Today's card is one of those early cutouts. It comes from the Cricut Sweet Treats cartridge and I still like it a lot (and not just because it is the same purple, pink and teal of my craft room today, although that is a BONUS). 

Looking at the card now makes me want to play around with the cartridge again, maybe cut this cake card in a size that will fit a gift card? Maybe just use the cake (that isn't a card) and add it to the front of a gift bag? Hmmm, the ideas keep coming.

I hope that you are all enjoying this flash back to some of my early stuff and I think that I have a few more but I will try to space them out a bit more over the next couple of months so that you don't get bored. 

Framed Cupcake Card

Hey friends, did you miss me?

I can't believe that this is the first time that I have posted anything since December. Life has sure been busy this year. Back in January my grandpa became ill and was hospitalized with the flu, pneumonia and a whole host of other issues, including the fact that he hadn't slept more that an hour each night in over a month.

I am happy to say that he is doing much better now, although he can no longer live alone. Our family has been spending a great deal of time going back and forth from our homes to my grandpa's house to care for him. It has been exhausting and has left little time for crafting much less blogging, but I have made it my mission to try and dedicate more time to myself and this blog so I am going to "hopefully" try to post THREE times a week until Christmas. We will see how it goes, luckily for me I have quite a few older projects that I have never got around to posting that I can share with you until I can find more time to create.

Enough blabbering lets get to the card. I decided to share a birthday card with you in honor of my aunt whose birthday was on Saturday, and I also have a file full of birthday card photos to share.

Today's card came about as a way to use up some of the supplies around my craft room. Side note, do you ever find things in your craft room or around your house and say, where did that come from? I don't remember buying that, what am I going to do with it? Well it seems that after I have been stressed I say this A LOT more!! Anyway this card came about as a result of such a moment. I have to say though I really love how this card turned out.

In my stash of never ending supplies I found a chipboard picture frame (I can't remember now if it had the pink pattern on it or if that is something that I added) that I decided to put on a card and see how it  worked, and I was happy to see that it would fit. Next I had to decide what it was I was going to frame, and if you know me AT ALL you will have known that that was a no brainier. Cupcakes should ALWAYS take center stage! So, now I have a frame and a cupcake, what next? I should dig through some more of my stash of course, and see what else I can add to this card. In my search I found some alphabet stickers that I thought would look nice, as well as some pink rhinestones to match and some fun cupcake cardstock. In hindsight I probably would have changed the cardstock behind the cupcake in the frame because it has a lot of white in it and clashes with the cupcake paper behind it but ultimately I can live with it and the more I look at it the more I like it. 

Since there is SO much going on, on the front of the card I decided to keep the inside pretty simple, with a cute stamped cupcake that I colored in and then embellished with some more of the pink rhinestones.

Let me know what you guys think and I will (hopefully) be back on Monday with another card or project. Is there anything that you would like to see? If so, leave a comment below. 

Dad's Birthday Lines Card

Good Morning blog readers. It is time for another masculine birthday card. Monday is my dad's birthday and as usual I needed to make him a card and I have been stumped for days on what to make. Usually when I am stuck on what to do I head on over to Pinterest for a while until inspiration usually strikes, but this time I decided to do something a little different. I decided to clean out my scrap drawer for three reasons, one as way of distracting myself from the task at hand. Two, because it needed to be done and this month seemed like the prefect time to do it since most of my cards have been centered around using up products found around my craftroom. And, thirdly in hope that some of my scraps would be the inspiration that I needed. Lo and behold I got lucky. I found some great masculine cardstock strips leftover from a get well card I made in June. Since I didn't get a chance to share the card back in June and I need a card for my dad I thought, why reinvent the wheel, I would simply reuse the card design. I did end up changing one or two small things but in the end the only large difference is in the sentiment. I definitely need to keep this in mind. Maybe it is time to revisit some of the card designs that I have used in the past, and try to revamp them into new cards for different occasions.

Happy Birthday Dad!!

Old to New Birthday

Today's card is another one that I found tucked away amongst other things as I was going through some containers in my Scraproom (attempting to clean but I got sidetracked.) The large cupcake diecut on the front was one of the first cuts that I made when I got my Cricut back in 2009. Back then I cut it out to see how it would look, and the overall size of it and then just sat it aside because I didn't know what to do with it (BTW I did this A LOT back then.) At some point along the way I must have decided to make it into a card, because when I found it in the container it had already been adhered to the patterned paper in the background and the blue card base. In order to finish up the card, so that it was an actual card instead of a large cupcake glued to paper, I went through my stash of stickers and found these fun chipboard birthday stickers.  (I was even able to find the scraps of the same patterned cardstock to stick on the inside.)

It was really sweet to see a project from so long ago and it made me realize just how far my crafting has come.

Quilled Birthday

Sometimes I forget how much fun a card kit can be. All the supplies you will need come prepackaged in one color coordinated bundle just ready to be assembled in whatever manner you choose. A while back, I can't even remember when now, I bought a quilling card kit simply because I thought that it would be fun. I have never actually done any quilling but I have seen several people online do it and thought that it looked complicated and fun. When I came across this cute quilling kit I thought that it was time that I give this new craft a try. So far, this is the only card that I have completed (because it was the easiest one) but I do plan to make more in the future.

Quick question for you? When you are attempting a new project, such as a new craft, do you like to take it easy and start with a beginner project? Or, do you jump straight in to the deep end with an ADVANCED project and then get mad when it fails because you don't know the basics?

I am definitely the latter which is why I only have one card to show you today, the rest of my "attempts" are lying crumpled up in a ball at the bottom of my trash can because they ultimately resembled a blob. So after several frustrating hours trying to make these complicated quilled masterpieces that I saw on Pinterest, I finally hung my head and went back to the beginner projects to learn the basics. But, I made a promise to myself and those crumpled attempts as I lovingly placed them in the trash that I would be back to  defeat them another day.

Celebrate Cupcakes

Happy September 1st everyone and a very Happy Birthday to my aunt. The card that I have for you (and my aunt) is one that I started several months ago as a way to kill (aka use up entirely) a paper pad. As many of the things in my craft room have been lately, it got pushed aside to finish later and I forgot all about it. Well, I just recently found the pieces again. I decided to change up the new cards that I made just slightly for a different look using the same supplies in order to offer some variation. 

The original design features two long panels side by side with the cupcake focal image (which was stamped and hand cut) off center. 

In order to change it up for the second card I cut one larger and one smaller piece of patterned paper and put the cupcake in the uppermost center of the card. 

Since my goal was to kill an entire 6 x 6 paper pad, I ended up with quite a few cards of each design.  In order to achieve the variations in the cards I colored the frosting on the cupcakes in three different colors that coordinated with the base of the card.  I also chose a variety of different birthday themed sentiments for the inside.