Happy Thanksgiving!

We here at The Crafting Journals would like to wish 

You & Your Family

A 

Wonderful and Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 5: Fall, Thanksgiving and Gratitude Hooplah

Hello Friends,

Here we are at the end of our week long "Fall, Thanksgiving & Gratitude Hooplah".  We hope you enjoyed the things we have shared and we are truly Grateful to you for stopping by for a visit.  

For today's post I am going to share with you a pumpkin I altered with scrap paper and mod podge.  

I am also going to share with you some cards I made:

Thanks for visiting us here on the blog.

Day 4: Fall, Thanksgiving and Gratitude Hooplah

Hi, it's Carla with some fall-ish cards for our Thanksgiving week of fun and craftiness!

I like to customize the cards I make according to the occasion and the recipient. It's definitely not the most efficient way to make cards, though. I end up designing a new card each time because I don't want to mass-produce the same card -- and designing a new card each time is pretty time-consuming. 

Lately I've been playing with a solution to this dilemma. I call it modular card-making. The idea is to create my own card components so I can put together a custom card quickly. My main components are card bases, stamped sentiments, patterned paper, and embellishments. I find that with those things, plus a punch or two, I can assemble a pretty good little modular card kit. Then, whenever I need a specific kind of card, I have all the pieces ready, and I can put together a custom card in just a few minutes.

Here are three simple cards I made using this idea.  I dug into my extensive stash of leftover paper scraps and pulled out colors that would work for my fall card-sending. I made three card bases, all different sizes, according to the sizes of scraps I had. Then I added a bit of patterned paper. I found three stamps in my stash with sentiments that would fit in my circle punch. I punched and layered circles and scalloped circles, punched some fall leaves in different colors, and then I was ready to mix and match! 

For this Hello card, I added a few punched leaves and a couple of tiny flower embellishments.

To the Thinking of You card, I added a couple of leaf punches and a bit of ribbon.

For my Thank You card, you guessed it -- more leaf punches, plus my Martha Stewart Crafts Punch Around the Page maple leaf set.

And here's the whole little family of fall-colored cards.

You can see that any of these sentiments and embellishments could have gone on any of the cards. Even the patterned paper could be mixed and matched. I'm looking forward to putting together some more modular kits like this!

Have you done something similar? Tell us about it!

Day 3: Fall, Thanksgiving and Gratitude Hooplah

Hello everyone….Darlene here!

I decided to make some place cards for Thanksgiving this year using the most adorable digital stamp from Sassy Cheryl Stamps called, "What's Up Turkey?" I like to use my Copics as a base color  on my images and then I work with a combination of Prismacolor and Faber Castell pencils to color my image. Sometimes for blending my colors I will use some odorless mineral spirits but only in moderation. Once I was done coloring, I cut my image out and matted onto several pieces of cardstock in coordinating colors. The base of the place card measures 5 1/2" x 4 1/2 ".  I printed out my guest's names onto white cardstock, trimmed and matted it. With the use of glue dots I adhered the guest name to his hands while popping the name up (see photo #3) as this helped add some dimension to the place card. Isn't he adorable?