Greeting Card Stories: A Thank You Card, Birthday Cards, and Hello Card

I’ve started making cards again.  I’m not exactly sure why, but I definitely did stop for a while.  Probably because this year I decided to send out birthday stickers instead of birthday cards.  As of right now I’ve only sent out birthday stickers through May I believe, which officially makes me three months behind.  Which is approximately how far behind I usually am on cards.  However, I probably won’t be doing this sending stickers thing again after 2013 on a mass scale because I’ve learned exactly how expensive it is to send them.  It’s crazy – like $2 per package.  Plus the cost of stickers, plus the cost of shipping supplies.  I could have just taken them out for fancy Starbucks drinks in the meantime.

Anyway, there are a few occasions in 2013 that I am still making cards for – parties (birthday parties, bridal showers, weddings,) and thank you cards.  So, enjoy two cards that I created in the meantime.

Yellow Black and White Thank You Card

My Favorite Thing: the complimentary patterns and textures

The Challenge: honestly, my biggest problem with this card is that I was waiting for a picture order to come in from Rite Aid for me to put in the card and Rite Aid decided to completely screw me over and I don’t have the pictures and the card is officially a month late (read: still not sent)

Purple Birthday Card

My Favorite Thing: yet again, the way the patterns and textures work together

The Challenge: deciding whether or not to round the corners on the 4 different papers in the front, I’m still not sure I made the right decision

Purple Ribbon Polkadot Hello

This set is actually a really special set, it went to a winner from the Chasing Joy Brunch and Learn event in King of Prussia, PA.  Arlett of Chasing Joy took all of the live tweets from the event and entered all of those people in a drawing to win a set of homemade greeting cards.

I knew I wanted something fun, simple, and tiny.  I knew that I wanted to use a bold stamp in the middle of it, and I knew I wanted to accentuate the card with a ribbon.  This is what the answer ended up being.  (Please enjoy the chipped nail polish.)

When Karla of Belly Button Boutique received the cards, she put up a pretty awesome Instagram collage of the cards, so be sure to check that out.

Thank you, Arlett for letting me sponsor the Chasing Joy Brunch and Learn once again, hopefully next time I will be around to attend in person.

My Favorite Thing: the hello stamp on the front of the card

The Challenge: choosing the background color for the purple paper, honestly, if I had had gray, that might have been the answer, but I still like the cardboard-brown

Orange Cupcake Birthday Cards

One of my weekends that I was still in Louisiana I went to Hobby Lobby to spend the afternoon.   (Yes, people do this.  I actually think Hobby Lobby would be a great place to go on a date.  Not manly enough?  Fine, I’ll settle for Home Depot.  Paint sample section please, followed by kitchens, then maybe hardware, followed by power tools, ooh – and lighting.  Anyway, I’ve gotten distracted.)  I found these REALLY awesome cupcake stickers.  And I’ve been saving them for some really special people to use them for.  Well, these were two perfect people for the occasion – a friend from middle school and my new roommate.

I started off thinking blue-yellow-green for one of the cards and red for the other card.  But then I came across my orange paper and I knew that that was the answer and ended up using the other colors as accents.

My Favorite Thing: the fact that the red accent color brings out the pop of the cherry on the cupcake

The Challenge: deciding whether to stamp or hand write “happy birthday” on the card, I ended up deciding to write it because it feels more personal, but I’m still not 100% sure I made the right choice

My Favorite Thing: complementary colors, always

The Challenge: cutting that blue sheet of paper in a circle – I even traced the orange circle, but then making it smaller and even was difficult

A Pastel-Color Wedding Card

And here I bring to you a greeting card that I made for a friend’s wedding three weeks ago.  I was his RA 5 years ago.  That number is crazy to me.

Here’s a little bit about how the process went.  I first pulled out the wedding invitation for a little bit of color inspiration.  It’s a beautiful and delicate pattern of pink, green, and white.

I went through all of my paper looking for a pattern of pink, green, and white and everything I found looked was super feminine.  If I had known the bride instead of the groom I probably would have gone for it, but I couldn’t bring myself to give the groom a pink and green card – even if he had agreed to the wedding colors.

Then I went through all of my stickers and quote embellishments.  I found an entire packet of vellum love quotes that I had been holding onto and the first one I found said “meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you I had no control over.”  And after reading their wedding story, it sounded perfect!

It was a beautiful wedding ceremony with incredibly music and EVERYBODY was smiling that day.  It was also pretty adorable to get to talk to his grandmother about how awesome he is.

My Favorite Thing: the fact that I found blue background paper that incorporated hints of red into it to bring out the red in the quote.

The Challenge: cutting around the inverted-rounded corners on the quote