Custom wedding card, and Christmas news

I need to have a whole great big separate post about Christmas cards, because man alive it is getting big around here. I sold over 200 Christmas cards in 3 days because of a free shipping promo I ran, and I've got a lot to talk about!!

Before that - - here are a few pictures of some wedding cards I whipped up for a customer to choose from after being given these guidelines " a fall-themed wedding with champagne, frappuccino and cranberry colors"

Card One:




Card Two:




Card Three:

A few random bits.

Instead of buying loads of new papers, I've been doing some custom orders (see below) that are allowing me to raid my "scraps" drawers. It is only half full now, and before it was overflowing. Here are the 3 main drawers I use to organize my papers, though there are others elsewhere.



I'm starting to get a few of these "smooch" things, I looove the tip of them for coloring in and the ink is super shimmery and nice. I get these at my Archivers.


I've been doing a lot of watercoloring lately, here is the setup to fill in all the little monsters I put in the shop today.


And even though this is annoyingly sideways, heres a pic of a girlie birthday card I recently made for someone, I was happy with how pink it was without being barfingly pink, you know? :)

Custom moving cards

I also recently completed a custom order for "We're Moving" cards. I was allowed the creativity to make each one different, which I loooooove. I've got a whole drawer full of papers that I've only got scraps of, so doing a load of individual cards allows me to go through and use up some of my favorite papers that I just dno't have a lot of. Plus it is super fun to be creative. :) I used watercolors in the stamped images, and printed th text from my computer. The back are for writing the new address in, and they came with envelopes, as always. I loved doing this order!

Sorry some of the pics are sideways. :/

Thanksgiving Invitations

Here is a custom order I did for Thanksgiving invitations. I was shown an image of a turkey handprint, the kind kindergartners do as crafts every fall, and told to work around that. Luckily I have a kindergartner who offered up his hands for me, and earned a little pocket money in the process. He loved getting paid for a job! :)

This is the final turkey guy:


The set up:


Sizing the paper pieces:


Making some mistakes... (to do 20 cards we must have done at least 40 handprints):


Cleaning his hands off every once in a while between prints:


Final stages of the messiest bit:


Initial handprints:


The print:


Adding the matting and legs:


Adding the eyeballs, felt beak, and words (which are up on 3D adhesive):


A close-up:


The finished product, which also included RSVP cards for the insides:

Blue! Red! Purple(ish)! Orange!

4 necklaces I made this morning. 5am wake-up calls are good for being productive, if you have enough caffeine and your kid takes a nap.And if you don't think the picture of my 2 year old holding the blue beads isn't precious, then your heart is dead.

BLUE









RED





PURPLE(ishblueishgreyish)






ORANGE (same design as the one I posted about earlier)






I love the big discs on the purplish blueish greyish one, I think I'll get some of those in green and make that one for myself.

owls, papers, and necklaces

Sometimes when I go to Archivers to buy paper, I find a piece that I love so much I really don't want to part with it, and just want to make it into wallpaper in my bedroom or something. I've listed a few cards lately that have some of my uber-favorite papers recently, but I kind of secretly hope no one buys them because I like looking at them so much!!

Also - I'm still not sure why blogger sometimes turns my pictures on their sides. This doesn't happen when I post the pictures anywhere else, so I guess I'll just have to put up with it and so will you! Sorry. :/







I've also got several new owl fellows on the site.







And finally, I did manage to figure out the technique I wrote about in my last entry, and look! My 2 favorite necklaces to date. Pretty oranges and reds!

necklaces

Right! Lets start this off by saying That I don't know how to bead. I got the supplies as a gift from a friend who beads, and I've just taken those tools and totally guessed at what I'm doing.

Then I bought this necklace on etsy from marolsha.etsy.com ( which I ADORE ) and sat there examining it, trying to figure out how to do the technique she used. I know I could just buy a book or something, but I kind of like crafting in the dark and just figuring it out on my own. This is the necklace I bought and am now working on the technique she used:


Pictures of that project to follow.

So anyway. My 4 yr old beaded along side me while I did the following necklaces, done while Henry was asleep.

Here is the 1st necklace where I tried to figure out how to hang a pendant using a jump ring. It looks uneven, but thats just how I'm holding my neck. I kept this one.

This one, a simple grey & black one, was given to a friend.

I've since taken this one apart because I didn't like the plasticy look of the brighter green beads, but you get the idea. I'm still learning! I love this pendant though.

Here's the simple black one again:

And here's a purple one I gave to the same friend, my first success at putting a pendant on, this is done all purpley.

So that is it for now, beginning stages to be sure. I bought some beautiful beads yesterday and the tools that I *think* I need to make the kind of necklace in the first pictures, we shall see! That's what this craft experimenting is all about. After I'm sick of beading I think I'll go back to teaching myself how to embroider, that was going quite well I thought.