Quick & Simple Sympathy Cards

Good morning! Today I'm sharing some super simple Sympathy cards. I whipped these up in about an hour, after I figured out what I was doing, and the colours I wanted to use. I hate making sympathy cards because death is extremely sad, no matter how well you did or did not know someone. I prefer to make cards for happy occasions like birthdays, babies, etc. 

I did a similar style of this a year and a half ago, when I first started this blog. Today I'm going to share the measurements so you can make them yourself! (I'd make a sketch, but I have no idea how to, without drawing it out by hand)

The card base is 4x4, and if you cut a piece of 12x12 paper just right, you can get four cards out of it! Bonus right? The grey paper on the left is 2"x3 3/4". The YEllow Flower paper is 1 5/16" x 1 7/16". The thin yellow strip with the white gems on it is 1 5/16 x 1/4. The little white tag is 1 1/2" x 2 3/4".

Happy crafting! Thanks for coming by to check out these cards. I'd love to see what you make with them! Have a great day!
-Alexandria

Happy 2nd Birthday!

This card was inspired by another card magazine. I attempted to use some scrap paper from my nearly overflowing box of scrap paper.

One day either my desk will be clean enough to not have clutter in the background of my photos, or I'll go downstairs and use the portable photo studio that I bough Jon for Christmas the year before last. Anyway, here's the card.

This is the piece I struggled with the most. I definitely had to step outside of my perfectionist bubble here, and accept that this ribbon would never look as good as I wanted it to. The circle with the number 2 on it, is from Elle Studio's Day to Day Tidbits. 

I adhered a scrap piece of polka dot paper and wrapped twine around the card. Stamped happy birthday in the bottom corner (for some reason I gravitate towards the right side).

Here's the side view of the card. The circle of the ribbon was adhered with foam squares and the bottom half of it wasn't adhered at all. I didn't want them to be so one dimensional. I love that not adhering them would add some dimension to the card.

My goal this year is to push myself out of my comfort zone. Do you have any goals in regards to your crafting?

Have a great day!

-Alex

Thank You

For some reason, I have a limited number of thank you cards. Maybe it's because I never have a reason to use them, and when I do, I never have one. So I made some using the left over paper from my celebrate card the other day.

This card was inspired by a graduation card I made, but instead of putting the sentiment across the top, I put it on the bottom, and put ribbon across the top.

I combined stamps from different sets to create this custom thank you stamp. I stamped it all in black to tie in the ribbon, and keep the card from being too bright.

I cut the strips in different lengths and widths and layered them starting with the orange one. Then slightly overlapped the pink one, then the blue and finally the floral one.

I tied the ribbon in a knot to add some visual interest to it. All the strips are lined up at the top.

Last but not least, the side view of the completed card, and a glimpse at the giant mess that is my desk.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thursday, I'd love to see your projects, both cards and other. Feel free to e-mail them to me any time! creationsbycoal@gmail.com

-Alex

Hello Darling - Project Life Inspired

Good morning darlings! I hope you all had a wonderful Wednesday!

First off, I made a few cards (like 4 or 5) and there was a giant mess afterwards. Today, instead of cleaning up my mess I simply made it worse. Now tomorrow I'll have to clean it all up.

Today's card is inspired by the Midnight Edition of Project Life. I was opening up my kits today, and flipping through all the cards. I'm so in love with the variety, and I can't wait to mix and match them throughout my album. I've decided that I'm going to start documenting things with Project Life starting in January. I have a lot of changes happening in my personal life towards the end of this year and  the beginning of next.

The Midnight Edition is black, yellow and grey. I rounded the corners to look like a Project Life card (only larger), and added ribbon to bring in more yellow. The gems were an after thought.

Here's a slight side view of the card. The "Hello Darling" is raised above the ribbon with foam squares, and the ribbon wraps around slightly inside.

I originally wanted it just to say hello, then I remembered I had this stamp, and it really tied the whole card together. I rounded opposite corners for a unique shape, and inked the edges with orange and yellow.

This card was so simple, and I love it so much! I love the yellow and black colour combo. It's bright and happy without being too in your face cheerful.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thursday! See you all tomorrow, for one last post before the weekend! Maybe I'll do something a little more exciting! We'll see how much time I have after work!

-Alex

Craft Supply Haul

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Today I have more craft supplies to share with all of you!

I spend very little time browsing the Yardsale Facebook page for my town. However I've bought so many craft supplies from one lady that she's kind enough to inform me when she's selling items. Unfortunately I didn't seem them soon enough to snag more baby stamps, or her Cuttlebug and a TON of accessories for it, but I still managed to get a lot of other things, mostly stamps.

This massive purchase of over $300 of used craft supplies happened over the course of two days. I'm a little ashamed it went so overboard, but at least she knows I'll buy a lot of things so it makes informing me worth her while!

Here's the two bags of things I got the on Friday. There's a lot more in them, than you'd think.

Here's everything that was in the bag on the left. So much ribbon, a few stamps, flowers books, cartridges, and an embellishment kit. (more photos below)

Here's the Stampin' Up! punches that were in the bag on the right. I can't wait to use them for lots of things! I've always been a fan of Stampin' Up! products, so these will be a wonderful addition to my collection.

Here's the Craft Mates embellishment kit when it's closed. It snaps shut so you can take it with you, which will be perfect for when I do Christmas cards and have a bunch of little pieces I need to carry around.

Here's what it looks like open. It came with a whole bunch of embellishments. The rows slide out and each individual compartment opens on its own. So handy!

Here's what came in the top row. Large button brads, coloured paper clips, metal flower embellishments, I'm not entirely sure what's in the next one. It looks like those things on the back of picture frames that you spin out of the way so you can take the back off to put your photo in. Next to that is little square mirrors, and then little wooden buttons.

Here we have the second row. Little square brads in the first, second and last compartment. Mini clothes pins, large solid colour and patterned circle brads.

In the third row we have three compartments of coloured clips, white circle tags, two compartments of metal letters and more square brads.

Here's a close up of the letters and the square brads. I'm in love with the letters!

I did close ups of the fourth and final compartment so you could see the little pieces better. The first two compartments have more square brads (all of them are a different colour. I plan to move them into the same row), little flower brads, and large flower brads.

In the second half of the last compartment we have metal spirals, different metal flowers and an empty compartment.

Above we have all the ribbon and fibres that I also bought. They all came together, and now I feel the need to make a bunch of different ribbon flowers.

I do have a cricut, I just hardly ever use it. But I was hoping that with some new cartridges I'd use it more. So I picked these up. I also got the Home Accents one, but I already have it, so I'm giving it to someone who will get more use out of it than I will.

I was really excited about these sentiment books. They're full of great things for cards and she highlighted a few that were great for different things! Can't wait to go through and mark different things for future use.

I love using these flowers, so of course I bought all of the ones she had. I also love the two taller glass jars. They're beautiful!

On Friday I also bought a bunch of stamps. I bought the above letter and number set

I love these flowers! I want to pull out my watercolours to bring some colour to them!

I'm always looking for stamps I can use on my baby cards (this is missing one), and when I saw this was the only one not snatched up yet, I had to get it!

I love the hearts on this one, and the sentiments.

I want to do more with my background stamps, but I fail when it comes to actually using them. Any tips?

Love love love this one. The writing is in French, but I thought it was the prettiest thing!

On Saturday, I bought more stamps. I need to make more sympathy cards, so I got this set.

And this alphabet and number set which has upper and lower case letters.

I love Christmas. I love making Christmas cards and these are perfect, except that the 'Merry!' stamp is missing the wood block. I'll get Jon to cut me a piece that will work. Won't be the same, but I'm not going to harass her for a missing stamp and a missing block.

This is hard to see, but they're double sided words. 

Love these stamps! Perfect for simple cards!

These are just wonderful. I love stamps that make the card for something specific without necessarily being a sentiment.

These are great for making my own sentiment and I love the container they come in. It has ridges on the bottom to keep the stamps in place!

I just realized how much I bought in the last week. How am I not broke yet?

In other news, I want to buy a Silhouette Cameo. Does anyone have one? Do you prefer it over the Cricut, or do you prefer the Cricut? I hardly use my Cricut so I want something that I'll use more.

Have a wonderful Monday!