Friendly Valentine

With Valentine's Day fast approaching, I've been busy putting together some greeting cards. Typically cards for this holiday go out to friends and family, so I'm less focussed on romantic sentiments and more on friendly reminders on how much their friendship is valued. Of course, being told you're appreciated never goes out of season. Am I right?!

This first card I'm sharing is using non-typical valentine colors, perfect for your guy friends or co-workers. The images are from the Silhouette library. I print and cut several images, some with borders and some without so I could layer.

A window was cut using one of the MFT Peek-a-boo die-namics. The square and the rectangle Peek-a-boos are definitely one of my favorite dies.

A little stenciling to create the window backdrop and washi tape trim, which surprisingly matched up with the colors in the hearts pretty well. In my world, this seems to rarely happen despite my large stash of washi. Card one and done.

Stash Busting

Another round of stash busting. We have our Great Agers program this week at the church. It's a monthly event hosted by our church, which brings together community members for lunch, social time and entertainment. I've been frequently asked to provide treat boxes/items for our guest. It's right up my alley. This year I'm partnering with a friend to plan and assemble the monthly treat items, a big bonus because over time the program has grown to include up to 40 guests.

This month's theme is winter...of course. Even though the temperatures have been fluctuating and have even hit close to 50 degrees we figured you can never go wrong with cookies, hot chocolate mix, and cute snowmen.

 The snowmen were print & cut from my Silhouette library as were the phrases. I only needed to add to the mix as I already had a lot of the items in my stash. Glitter snowflakes I bought from WalMart years ago. Colors for the treat boxes was dictated by what I had on hand...blue, teal, pink, red and green.

21st Birthday

My nephew turns 21 this month. He's the third one of my nephews and niece to hit 21 so we won't even go into just how old that makes me feel. Not only does he turn 21, but it is also his golden birthday. I don't think it gets much better than 21 on the 21st. We're gearing up for a big celebration, though I'm going to leave the partying into the wee hours to those much younger.

The special day (and guy) deserves a special card. This one came together pretty quickly thanks to the Silhouette design store, some old chipboard numbers, glitter paper, and glitter tape. I use the Radiant Banner card from Hero Arts. Did a gradient fill and then just printed the background onto some Staples photo supreme matte paper. I love this paper for printing. It always delivers vibrant, crisp color. It's a bit more of a challenge if I use it for print and cuts. I think it has a high fiber count because I have to use a well-loved mat or risk tearing the paper when I try to release the cut images. It also requires a double cut and preferably a new blade. But I deviate, since this time I just printed the image and trimmed by hand.

Honestly, I can't remember the manufacturer of the chipboard numbers. They've been in my stash for a very long time. I'm not big on chipboard and you know I generally like my card pretty flat. These have quite a bit of dimension but since this card is hand delivered it is not a problem.

I really like the card but I'm guessing that he'll spend more time admiring the check inside the card than the card itself.