A Potpourri Weekend

This week's cards are a bit of a potpourri! 

Love the mourning doves - quite a peaceful card.

Here's a bunch of pen work.  Took forever on the Pazzles Inspiration, but I love to watch it work.

 

The GraphicStock images are still amazing me.  Found this wonderful doodle - thought it would make a great birthday card.

This started out as part of a Cinco de Mayo ad, but now it's just right for some Hot Stuff Birthday wishes!

Had to work hard to figure out how to keep "crabby"-ness out of this card, but I think I got it!

I've been working on this card forever.  Finally found the right background at GraphicStock.

Fonts make all the difference in the world!

Just a little lighthearted fun!

Kind of a blue card - but the inside:

makes it all work!

Just love these print and cut cartoon animals - so fun to work with.

Still working on increasing the stock of Love cards.

This turned out to be my favorite this weekend!  I'm thinking about more cards based on song lyrics.

I hope the "Rock" is understood to mean the rocking chair!  Having a little fun with this Retirement Card.

I've had these round designs for a long time - it took a bit of planning but I like they way they turned out. 

So nice to get back to cardmaking.  If only I could do it 24/7!

A Whole New Category

I received a request that I was stumped to fill - Love cards!  Why don't I have any Love cards?  Well, here's a start.

I'm starting off with some serious cards and some fun ones.

Like this fun guy who states that he's "Bananas about you!"

And it helps to pull ideas from cards in other categories.  This design is from the Birthday cards.

But others, like this butterfly, are new designs.

This started its life as a Valentine's card.

After finding a bird silhouette I liked, this card was made quickly.

Love the color spectrum!

"When shared with you!"

"than bacon!"  The perfect guy card!

Finally found a card to be able to use this "ribbon" - small metal dots on a mesh.  Glad I thought of it!

So, now I need to make room in my carousels for the new Love Collection! 

Just Having a Ball!

It has been a blast working with the GraphicStock images.  I have a friend helping me with some puns and I'm creating fun little cards with GS images and silly puns!

 

Puns may indeed be the lowest form of comedy, but they are funny!  This one has an inside verse "It may be a pain in the neck to be another year older, but it's awesome having you around!"  I just love this giraffe - he's so cute!

Inside Verse:  Hope you have as much fun as a barrel of monkeys!  I think the HUGE feet make this card really funny.

And did you expect "Party 'til the cows come home"?

Again, "Go hog wild" was probably expected.  Don't you wish you really could just dive into your birthday cake and make a complete mess?

So it's no surprise that this one says "Put on your game face and have a ball!"

A little less common - Happy Brrrr-thday! 

Inside Verse:  One of the nicest, wisest people I know, that's whoooo!  I think Kathy caught all the stereotypes for an owl on this one!

 

This smiling little snail is perfect for a belated card since he's so slow!

And not really a pun, but just for fun!

 

You know, we all groan at puns, but we all know them!  I think we need a revival of good puns - a little humor never hurt anyone!

Dingbats!

Gotta love a dingbat!  A dingbat is a non-alphabetic font - all the letters are replaced with characters or drawings.  And the authors of these fonts are amazing - the artwork they put in is beautiful and very creative.  You can find dingbats on most of the free font websites.

The scrolls and flourishes I used for these sympathy cards are from a single dingbat font.  It takes a bit of time for my Pazzles Inspiration to draw them, but they are worth the wait.

 

 

My little critter at the bottom is a dingbat.  Isn't he cute?

 

The ribbon tags that say Merry Christmas are also dingbats.  I've used quite a few of those from that file!  Just download the font like any other.  I've created a sheet where I can change the font to see all the designs.  Some authors also use the number and symbols characters.  Gotta catch those too.

 

Even the flowers in these Pergamano Parchment designs are from dingbats, as well as the scrolls around the flowers. 

 

Dingbats range from flowers, scrolls, and cartoon characters to sports, logos and medieval weapons.  Take a look at dingbats and find a whole new range of options for your creative projects!

All About Embellishments

I realized that this weekend's cards had lots of embellishments.  They can really make a card.  Here's a selection that highlight what I mean:

 

This card would go nowhere without the print and cut butterfly.

 

And ribbon flowers add so much - texture, color and dimension.

 

 

 

And pairing a ribbon flower with a fancy button added just the right touch.

 

This is a remake of a previous card where I used pearls in the spiral pattern.  This time I went with rhinestones.

 

Even ribbon can enhance a card.  But the string of pearls really makes it pop.

Had a little fun with feathers.