Have an EGGcellent birthday!

I have a friend who is a farmer.  She and I have exchanged cow themed cards for years.  I'm running out of cow puns though, and since she also has chickens (I buy my eggs from her) I decided to go with an egg themed card.  The sentiment inside says "Have an EGGcellent birthday!"

Again, please excuse the poor photography.  I had to use the camera on my laptop.

The tag is from Tags, Bags, Boxes and More.  The brown eggs are from Smiley Cards.  The cracked egg on the tag was cut freehand with scissors.

This card will be entered in the Skipping Stones Design's sketch challenge.

Summer Sunshine

One of my coworkers lost her brother unexpectedly a few weeks ago.  We passed around a calendar signing up to bring a meal to her family.  Tomorrow is my turn.  I knew that in addition to a meal, I wanted to bring some cookies.  So, the blog hop and challenge at Baking up Crafts was perfect timing.  Actually, I had been planning on making chocolate chip cookies, but on the blog hop, I came across a recipe for easy lemon cookies on The Joyful Stamper's blog and decided to try those instead.  Of course, I had to taste test one first to make sure they were good enough to give away :)

Then, I wanted to make a card to cheer her up.  A smiling summer sun came to mind.  I used My Cut Search to search through the carts to find a good one.  (This site seems faster than using the Gypsy search, and I like that you can see the whole handbook page rather than just the keypad overlay.)  I used the sun from Smiley Cards.  His sunglasses are from EDPD.  The tags on the top of the card and the base of the pedestal are form Tags, Bags, Boxes and More.  The turquoise background was run through the D'Vine Swirls Cuttlebug folder and the white square was run through Spots and Dots.     I also used an Action Wobble for the first time.  I had signed up months ago for a free sample on Momo's blog and was saving them for the perfect occasion.  I thought it would add some extra cheer to this card.

This card will be entered in the following challenges:

Whimsical Wednesdays--Fun with color challenge #11--I used the required red and yellow and also pulled the colors turquoise and white from the provided photo.

Baking up Crafts--project involving baking and crafts

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #65--summer sun

Cute Card Thursday #170--sketch challenge

More Thank Favors Wacky Wednesday #32--tags

More Than Favors CCCC #22--Tags, Bags, Boxes and More

Celebrate the Occasion #19--Celebrating Summer (must have a sun)

After posting this, I got an e-mail from the Joyful Stamper suggesting I link up my project to her Inspire Me Friday, so that perhaps I can inspire others to do something similar for someone in need.

Turtley Awesome Birthday Cards

My stepdaughter's birthday is coming up soon.  She lives far away with her mother, so we need to mail her a birthday card.  At this point, it is probably going to arrive a bit late, so I planned for that and made a card with a turtle on it and the sentiment "Sorry I'm late."  I made 6 of these cards so I'll have some in my stash. I made 2 with the same sentiment in Spanish and 2 with "Hope your birthday is turtley awesome!"  (The inspiration for the punny card came from some My Pink Stamper stamps.)

The 3 different sentiments:

The turtle on this card is from Animal Kingdom.  Using my Gypsy, I hid the interior cut lines on the turtle's shell and cut them out plain.  Then on another layer on the Gypsy, I left the interior cut lines but hid the outline of the shell.  I did the interior lines with a Cricut marker.  The turtle's face is from the Peachy Keen Stamps Animal Faces Small set (PK-750).  The tags are from Tags, Bags, Boxes and More.  The top pink tag was run though the Cuttlebug D'Vine Swirls folder.  If I were to make this card again, I would not have used the white paper with the floral design for one of the tags.  It coordinates with the base paper, but does not look good right up against it.  Oh well, I'm learning about color and design as I go along...

This card will be entered in the following challenges:
Skipping Stones Design #77--sketch challenge
Peachy Keen Stamps LFIF--designer's choice
Really Reasonable Ribbon #24--anything goes
Totally Papercrafts #68--pink and girlie

Sympathy cards

Unfortunately, I needed to make 2 sympathy cards (and decided to make a third right away to have one in my stash).  One for a fellow cardmaker and one for a former coworker, both of whom have lost loved ones to cancer.  I wanted to make them simple, and the sketch at Die Cuttin' Divas fit the bill for that.  I had some scrap paper from a Colorbok pad of paper that had colors I liked.  The stack also included some punch-outs, and I stamped my sentiment on those for the front of the card.  I wanted to add some ribbon, but am not yet an expert bow tier.  I got one of them to look alright, but with the other two cards I decided to try a technique I saw on Youtube.  It is so much simpler, and I think it looks pretty nice.  I added a few brads at the bottom.  Inside the card, I used a cut from Accent Essentials.  I cut it once in purple and another time, smaller, in cream.  I ran the cream colored ones through my printer (see this great tip here).  The idea for the sentiment inside the card came from Simple Sympathy.

I had recently picked up a little roll of ribbon for one of the recipients.  She is a proud dog owner and the ribbon has little paw prints on it.  I decided to give her that along with the card to brighten her day.  I had received Tags, Bags, Boxes and More from the free Gypsy download, but hadn't used it yet.  Using that cart, I made a little "purse" to hold the spool of ribbon.  I also decorated the sides of the spool of ribbon a bit.