Christmas Card Display

I am sad to admit that 2012 was the first year in YEARS that we did not send out a Christmas card. 

The intention was there but they just. didn't. happen.

My pregnancy nausea kicked in right around Thanksgiving and I went downhill from there.  I was sick.  I was tired.  And I just didn't care.  We stayed home for Christmas {which was wonderful} and we kept it simple and relaxed.  We put up a tree and hung stockings and I put together this little craft for hanging Christmas cards. 

While I didn't send one, I loved getting them all season long.  I love checking the mail during December.  And I love displaying all of the cards I get.  So, here's what I did.

I wanted to hang the cards with clothes pins but even glittered ones stilled looked ugly on the sides to me.  So, I started out dying the clothes pins.  I figured if vinegar and food coloring worked for eggs it would work for clothes pins.  And it did.  I didn't keep track of the ratio I used but I put a LOT of drops of food coloring in enough vinegar to cover the pins.

After the clothes pins dried I brushed one side with Mod Podge then sprinkled on glitter.  The porch made for a great place to glitter so it wasn't all over my house.

I strung some satin ribbon on a wall with clear 3M Command Mini Hooks.

As Christmas cards arrived in the mail, I placed them up on the wall with a clothes pin.  By the end of the month only the photo cards and handmade cards remained as I ran out of room.  I'll have to hang more ribbon next year!

Week Long Birthday Celebration

I wanted to send my best friend a fun birthday gift this year.  I'm guessing she doesn't spend much on herself these days so I wanted her to have the opportunity to go shopping and buy a few things herself.

I decided to get her five gift cards and spread out the celebration for a week.

 

I printed this card up.

Then these tags to go on the gift cards.  I bought her gift cards to Target, Sonic, Papa John's, Ulta and Charming Charlie.

I cut envelopes out of patterned paper.

Then I mailed them all off. 

What five gift cards would you have wanted?

My Memories Scrapbook Software Giveaway

I have an exciting giveaway for you this week!  My Memories will give away a free digital scrapbooking software package to one lucky reader.

The My Memories Suite is a digital scrapbook software that can be used to create scrapbook layouts, photo books, cards, videos and more.  

I downloaded the software a couple of weeks ago to try out.  I was surprised how user friendly it was from the start.  There were a few quirks to figure out but once I did, I found so many options  for backgrounds, colors, photo frames, shapes and elements, and more.  It took my fonts from my computer so I had plenty to choose from.

They have many templates you can choose from for layouts and photo books or you can create your own from scratch.  I decided to start with an Easter card to mail out.  I started from scratch and here's what I came up with.

I made this card fairly quickly and, like I said, I figured out the menu and interface pretty easily.  I printed them on white card stock, cropped them and mailed them off in yellow envelopes.

My Memories has plenty of free digital scrapbooking kits for you to choose from.  But, they also have many other kits you can purchase for a reasonable price.  I purchased this Spring Is My Thing kit by Connie Prince.  I'm going to use it to create Thank You cards for my daughter's upcoming rainbow birthday party.  I love all of the colorful elements and papers.

Overall, I'm impressed with the software.  You can purchase it for a very reasonable price compared to other software that costs hundreds of dollars.  It is compatible with a Mac or a PC.  While I don't dabble as much in digital scrapbooking as some, I'm excited to use it going forward for creating invitations, cards, photo books and even a few collages that I want to transfer to canvas.  My Memories also has an online gallery with over 1700 projects posted where you can go for ideas and inspiration.  

In addition to the giveaway, My Memories is offering a special discount for my readers as well.  Use the code below on MyMemories.com to get a $10 discount off the purchase of the My Memories Suite Scrapbook Software and a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store.  That's a $20 Value!

Code: STMMMS59730

To enter the giveaway, visit MyMemories.com and tell me which digital scrapbook kit is your favorite in a comment below.  

For extra entries you can do the following (and leave a comment for each that you do):

• Check out the My Memories Blog here.
• Like My Memories on Facebook here.
• Follow My Memories on Twitter here.

I'll choose a winner on Wednesday, April 11th so get your comments in by Tuesday night.

While I did receive a free download of the software to try out and review, all of the opinions here are my own.  

Christmas Card 2011

I love Christmas cards.  I love sending them.  I love receiving them.  Love everything about them.  If you've followed along for a while you'll remember my cards I drew for 2010, and my cards from 2009 and 2008. 

Each year mid-summer I start to come up with ideas for our family's card. I come up with all these ideas and tell myself that I'm going to do them in October so they'll be ready to go come December 1st.  And each year, I wait until the VERY LAST MINUTE.  But, I get them out.  In the end, that's all that matters, right?  Right.

This year I had this idea to do silly photo booth type poses with props.  I gathered a few silly props, bought a table cloth and a fleece blanket for back drops and recruited a friend, Tony, to take our photos.  I had plans (again, I'm great at making them, not always at executing them) to come up with a cute layout and print them myself.  But, I waited too long, was leaving town the next day for a month, and didn't have time to mess with them.  So, I uploaded the pictures to Shutterfly and found a layout that was perfect.  I love how it turned out.  I chose their premium card stock and it has a great matte finish.  It's so easy to upload everything, type my message and be done.

The best part this year was that we didn't even try to get a group shot.  No taking 200 shots to get everyone looking/smiling/not blinking/not wigging.  It was perfect for our two year and and four year old. 

Here they are all ready to send.  I find myself thinking I'm going to cut back on my list each year but we seem to keep adding to it.  We sent out 128 cards this year.  I know, crazy.  But, again, I love them and I love keeping in touch with friends and family.  I also send out a monthly recap of our year with our cards each year.  It gives people a glimpse of our year without being too wordy.

Do you send out cards?  How many do you send?  Do you love getting them as much as me?

Plantable Paper Cards

I saw this idea few years ago in Family Fun Magazine to make home made paper cards with flower seeds in them to plant. This year we carried out the idea.

First my son cut up paper. He loves to cut so this was a perfect job for him.
We soaked it all day in water to soften it.
I blended it up then he poured it in.
My neighbor had a paper making kit we borrowed to do all of the steps but there are plenty of tutorials and videos out there on how to make it with just a screen.
I added perennial seeds to the wet paper and then we let it dry.
When all was dry he drew on them and we mailed them off to his grandmas for Mother's Day.

Valentines

I like to write heart-felt messages in my Valentine cards to let my family and friends know just how much they mean to me. This year I decided to tell them all ten things I love about them. I printed up these cards then hand wrote in ten things on each of their valentines. I kept the front of the card simple with a heart punched out and mailed them off last week.

My son made dinosaur valentines to mail off this year since he's been into dinosaurs lately. He cut out the little hearts and I cut out the dinosaur bodies. Then he glued all the pieces on and wrote his name on the back.


Did you send valentines? Don't you love getting them (or anything hand written) in the mail? I do.

Illustrated Christmas Cards

We moved to a new city this year and had plans to take a picture of our family with the new skyline but it never happened. So instead of a photograph this year I drew our Christmas card. I included several recognizable buildings and tried to get simple characteristics in each of us. I drew the final version with a Sharpie pen then copied them onto cardstock and had them cut to 10 x 7 size. I printed, "Merry Christmas from the Windy Cindy" on the inside. Then I colored a few details of each card with red pencil. I mailed them off in red envelopes.

Texas Valentines

I sent out my last holiday cards from Texas this week. We are in the process of relocating and, sadly, we're leaving the great Lone Star State. So I made up these simples Valetines to send to our out of town family and friends. I had to keep them simple as my craft supplies are all nicely put away and organized and I need them to stay that way so I didn't pull much out.

Thank You Cards

I had this great idea in my head to have my kids hold papers that said "Thank" and "You" and then use that picture to send Christmas thank you cards this year. My kids had other plans. They were all over the place, the words weren't always visible and my baby girl started screaming when my two year old tried to hold her on his lap. Then he started giving that cheesy smile he gives when I ask him to smile. So, I made a collage of several of the pictures, printed them, mounted them on red card stock and wrote, "So much for the perfect shot" on the front. Then I used them as thank you notes for all of our Christmas gifts and goodies we received this year. Even though I didn't get a perfect shot, I got a pretty good one for my family Christmas cards and thought these were a good reflection of what it's like trying to get them both to hold still and smile for a pose!

Christmas Card

Here is my Christmas card I sent this year. Again, Christmas was about simple this year so I took a pic of my kids in front of the tree, added some text and printed them 5 x 7 in matte finish. I include a monthly recap of the year with our cards and it's a nice way to update people without a long, lengthy letter to read. Don't get me wrong, I like reading other people's but have a hard time writing my own without feeling like I'm braggin about how great my life is. Is it just me?

Missionary Cards

We had a service gift exchange at church and the woman who opened (actually stole in a white elephant style game) my gift got her choice of some hand made cards. She asked for "Thank you" cards to send to her son who is serving a mission for our church in New York. The missionaries for our church dress like this six days a week:
White shirt. Tie. Black tag with their name and our church logo. (My bro-in-law and another missionary)

So, I made up the cards to look like white shirts and wrote "Thank you" in a white marker on the tags.

I'm making more to send to my bro-in-law and my nephew for Christmas.

Halloween Card

Here is the Halloween card I sent out to relatives and a few friends this year. I try to send one each year but don't always get to it. This is my six month old pudge of a daughter. I made her a little tutu out of toile ribbon and sewed a purple boa on a little witch's hat. I found the hat in the dollar spot at Target and the purple boa at the dollar store. We took about 100 pictures in this photo shoot at my sister's house since she has a black kitten. As it works with pets and babies, we didn't get a good one where they were both holding still so we ended up using the one of just her. I printed the pictures 3 1/2 x 5 and mounted them on colored card stock. Then I wrote, "Witching You a Happy Halloween" on the inside.
Did you send Halloween cards this year?

Since she's not actually going to be this witch for Halloween, I threw the tutu under our pumpkin and put them up with some of my Halloween decor.

Birthday Cards

I have been crafting lately, I just haven't been blogging. I'll take some pics this week and try to post some new things. One thing I did about a month ago, while I had card supplies out and my dining room table was covered with stuff, was make a stock pile of birthday cards. It's so much easier to do an assembly line and make twenty of one card than to pull out supplies and make one at a time. I used a Stampin' Up Word Search stamp for these ones and made them pretty generic. I did a few with more embellishments but then I did a stack of simple ones. The simple ones are perfect for kids or men who don't care much about a handmade card but they're cheaper to make than buying birthday cards.
So let me tell you about this stamp. It's one of my favs. It is a word search and you circle the words you want to apply to that recipient and you can make cards, tags, whatever with it. The words you can circle include all twelve months, brother, sister, dad, mom, baby, sweet, son, daughter, boy, girl, marriages, kisses, love, yes, always, good, times, friends, think of you, welcome, happy, birthday, wishes, party, holidays, thanksgiving, new year, seasons greetings, joy, one, two, first, shop, hello, life, home, talk, you, hot, cold, water, now and fun. SO versatile. For the birthday cards I circled happy, birthday, wishes, good times and fun.

Birthday Card

Here's a birthday card I made for a friend last week. I made it on heavy cardstock then glued the package of Extra Gum to it. I mailed it in a bubble envelope.

Going Green

While this care package isn't quite eco-friendly it is green. Here is another package I'm sending this week to my brother-in-law out on a mission. He is a brand new missionary and there's a tradition of calling the new ones "greenies" so I'm sending him a green package. I spray painted the inside of the box green and then threw in plenty of snacks, candy, some Irish Spring soap, a toothbrush, some post-it notes, a green slinky, and a small green picture album with pictures from his last few weeks in town.
I threw this on the top when I packaged it so he'll see it when he opens the box.
If you could get a colored package what color would you want? I'd want purple. Wouldn't that be fun?

Birthday Card

My sister-in-law is turning 30 this weekend so I made this card today to mail off to her.
I'll send a package of Razzles to the first person who can name the movie.

Congrats to Manina who guessed Thirteen Going on Thirty! Send me your name and address to sometimescreative @ yahoo . com and I'll send off your Razzles. Enjoy!

Teacher's Retirement Card

My neighbor is retiring after a career of teaching middle school. I made her this card and took her over some fresh tomatoes from my garden today.

Wooden Letters & Thank You Card

My sister's neighbor has a wood shop in his garage and she took my son over there one day to see his "tools." He's obsessed with tools and anything guy related. So, the nice man cut out his name in these great wood letters. He didn't paint or stain them since he wasn't sure what colors I wanted them. I think I'll let James paint them himself and then seal them. I love that they are rounded and he can play with them and arrange the letters. He also cut out a wooden toy truck for him to play with but we left it at my sister's house. He's putting together a website to sell names, alphabet sets and other small wooden toys. When he finishes it, I'll post the link.
Today, I made this card for him and took him a Sonic gift card to keep him cool while he's working in the garage in our Texas heat. I punched out the grey card stock to look like a tool peg board. I cut up strips of brown card stock and drew on them with a marker to look like wood grain and then I cut it into the small sticks to piece the words together. Then I added some flat finished silver brads to look like nails.

Texas Collage Card

I've always enjoyed making collages so when my husband asked me to make a "Texas" card for someone at work I was right on it. He had an intern here for a year who was moving back home so I made a card for everyone to sign.