More Catching Up

I have been making cards pretty steadily, just not blogging them.  I have about two weeks' worth of cards to catch up on.  So without further ado, here are first few:

I originally intended this card as a birthday card.  However, some friends of ours who are also doing some backyard "farming" have decided to add a couple of beehives to their livestock, and I decided to give this card to them because they are so excited about their several thousand new tenants.  Stamps are all Hero Arts, burlap paper is from a DCWV slab, and the card is finished with some Making Memories brads and a bit of brown ribbon.  The tag was a premade gift tag from Target's post Christmas sales; the other side had a Christmas design on it but a lovely blank back side to use for anything at all!

This was a Clean and Simple sketch challenge.  I loved the chance to make a quick spring card and  this one took no time at all.  I don't have my long awaited Sizzix yet, the loopy background piece is a Martha Stewart doily.  The lavender and pink papers are two sides of the same piece of Crate Paper.  The center of the flower/doily was punched with a large circle punch.  The two butterflies are from the same mini-set of Recollections stamps.  I stamped the larger one in purple ink on a scrap of lighter purple paper and cut it out with an x-acto knife.  I folded up the wings for some dimensionality and added a tiny pink rhinestone to it, as well as three larger pink rhinestones on the lavender strip.  I stamped the greeting (Stampin' Up Mini Mates) and smaller butterfly in purple ink directly onto the brown kraft card.

I have also been working on going back through all the earlier Clean and Simple challenges on days when the current day's challenge isn't speaking to me.  This was the very first CAS challenge ever offered, in which we were supposed to look at Joanne's Fabric's line of Snuggle flannels and choose one to inspire a card of our own.  I chose a baby flannel that was printed with old-fashioned baby carriages.  For my card I again went to the scrap box for an old piece of blue background paper and a scrap of yellow.  I attached the plastic baby carriage (Dollar Tree cake decorations for baby showers) and drew faux stitches around it on the yellow square.  I added a Jessie James button from Michaels and stamped the greeting (AMuse stamps).  Now that I have a scoring board, I have become addicted to the side-folded 4.25x5.5" card!

I had three more cards left over from March's quota for my Christmas card goal of 8 cards per month.  My baby card design in turn inspired me to make up a quick CAS Christmas card design and to use some older items from my stash at the same time.  I made more of the side-folded cards and attached a square of red cardstock.  I had a 3-pack of metal plates from Making Memories which thankfully had adhesive on the backs.  I have some that pre-date the adhesive backs and get quite high from superglue fumes when I use them!

The horizontal border is actually a sticker from Flair Designs.  Two scrapbook-page border strips yielded enough for the three cards, and I added the stamped greeting to finish the cards.  All three took about an hour to do all together, so this is a good design for making cards in quantity.

Have a great day, and thanks for looking!