My Go-To Craft: Card-Making

Hi there -- Carla here!

I have some exciting news from The Crafting Journals -- but we're not ready to share just yet!  Let's just say you'll want to stay tuned for the next month or two for an announcement!

Today I'm getting ready to go to a crop.  Whenever I have a crop I'm not prepared for (and let's face it, that would be most of the crops I attend), I turn to my go-to craft.  I grab a bunch of my paper scraps, plus maybe a few embellishments and stamps, and challenge myself to make cards.  I thought I’d share a few of these cards with you.

The first card is one I made for a swap. This is pretty representative of the style I find comes most naturally to me -- simple design, bright colors.  A couple of layers, a little patterned paper, ribbon, embellishment -- done.

Second is a card I made in a class with Heidi Bound at my friend Michele's Little Bird Creations. The scraps for this card were part of the class kit, and we made our own creations.  I challenged myself to go outside my comfort zone and create something more vintage-y and collage-y, with clustered embellishments.  I had a lot of fun with it, and I like the way it turned out.

The third card is one I made for my new neighbor.  I like house motifs, so I thought I’d try paper-piecing some houses from my patterned scraps to create a card welcoming her to our apartment building.  

Once I cut the houses, I was inspired to complete the scene with grass, a fence, clouds, and a greeting.  I added the word “welcome” with rub-ons on patterned paper, then used a tree punch to create the clouds.  I added dimension to the fence with 3-D Dots.

What's your go-to craft?  Knitting?  Stitching?  Scrapbooking?  Tell us about it!