Cheating

I tried something new last week. I tried "cheating"! At least that is the way I always felt about using pre-printed journaling cards for the focal point of a card. It's cheating! And it's a journaling card for scrapbooking...pass, not interested. Well, I've been feeling a little overly-busy lately, and I thought that these journaling cards were cute and colorful (in all the right colors for me), so I challenged myself to cheat on the projects I needed to create for the scrapbook store. Guess what? It was fun! These made cute quick cards...and just the kind of thing I seem to need for friends and neighbors. Who would have thunk! :)

The journaling cards are typically 3" by 4"...so 16 on a 12 X12 paper (with a coordinating pattern on back!). This tag makes a bag of chocolate a thoughtful gift. Why take someone a bag of chocolate when you can spend hours making a coordinating card or tag to go with the bag of chocolate! (Ahem!) Seriously, this was so easy. Everything on the package is paper, even the brown and white "ribbon".

The Recipe:

The brown and white stripe paper is by Canvas Corp, and is called "Chocolate & Ivory Ribbon Stripe". It took very little imagination to know what to do with this paper :). All other papers are from the Jillibean Soup's spring collection "Southern Chicken Dumpling Soup". Strange name, beautiful collection. The stripe paper is named "shortening"? (Is this a cook turned scrapbooker?) I added clear Stickles glue to some of the stripes... you know, because it's fun! "Good Friend" and "Chocolate" were glittered using the glue and glitter from The Rubber Cafe (I wrote about them both here) and a paintbrush so I could have some control over the glue application. Four little green pearls ...and done! Just a note...the green hounds tooth paper is the backside of the journaling cards paper.

This card went together so well I tried another one:

I had these fun spiral flowers sitting on my desk from the start of another project...that is never going to get done because I keep using the flowers  on other things. Sigh. Anyways, the flower cuts are from the Cricut cartridge Art Philosophy and cut at 2.5". The paper is Stampin' Up! and so old it probably isn't a current color anymore...another sigh. Apricot something maybe? The flower centers are more or less a progressive experiment in how NOT to do a flower center! When one thing doesn't work...add something on top! I started with half pearls and colored them with alcohol ink (from a dropper bottle). The glue took some of the color off and the whole thing sunk into the middle of my flower sideways. GRRR! So I pushed the half pearls all the way to the bottom and colored a whole pearl with the alcohol ink and used the sunken pearl as a base to glue the whole pearl to...but I wasn't really happy with the color...so out comes the Sequin colored Stickles! I was starting to panic about having ruined it all...but I talked myself into not being so detail-particular!

Note: After all the trouble with the pearls sinking into my flowers, I saw the perfect solution! Press the inside layers of the rolled flower inwards to create a place to glue pearls or jewels. Well duh! Why didn't that occur to me?! I can't wait to try it!

The Recipe:

All patterned paper is from Jillibean Soup's  "Southern Chicken Dumpling Soup" collection. The seed packet is another journaling card. The card stock is SU!... Apricot something, Red Riding hood  (?...sorry! I have had it for several years!). The ribbon is from May Arts and was white. I finally got to color a white ribbon! I used Tim Holtz's Distress Stain in Fired Brick. It was easy and quick! Yeah! It was fun too. Another easy and quick card, and it can work for any occasion! Too bad it is at the scrapbook store, I could use a card like this this week. I will have to go look at some of the other journaling cards and see what I can come up with.

Definitely not a mailing card :)!

Have a good Monday!