Braggin’ Rights

The world of papercrafters is large and vast. So many possibilities exist, so many new territories can be explored. Scrapbooking is one of them. Cardmaking is another. Many who scrap cross over to cardmaking. Many who create beautiful, hand-made cards also enjoy designing gorgeous scrapbook pages.

I, however, am not one of them.

In all fairness, I must say I have given it the old college try. I have attended Stampin’ Up! demonstrations. I have gone to cardmaking classes. I even went to a D.O.T.S. home show eons ago – before cardmaking was all the rage – and learned how to make cute little gift bags from #10 security envelopes. I bought stamps and stamp pads with my imagination wide open to the prospect of saving a fortune by making memorable cards for every occasion.

And then I made a very important discovery: I don’t like making cards.

Scrapbooking, I love. Cardmaking, notsomuch.

I love buying the beautiful handmade cards created by others, and oohing and ahhing over them and thinking to myself, “Now I could make that!” and then never doing it.

So it is justifiable, I reason, to allow myself this brag post. The McGowen Country Fair is coming up next weekend, and as I have done in the past for the McNeil auctions, I wanted to offer a gift certificate for a free month of lessons. But that meant actually making the gift certificate. And, being the overachiever I am known to be, I wanted it to be a magnificent gift certificate, truly one-of-a-kind. Eye catching. Sure to draw attention. Impressive.

I started with my basic color scheme of black, red, white and a hint of grey if necessary and set out to create this masterpiece. Several hours (and scads of discarded scraps) later, I emerged with this:

I knew I’d done a good job when I showed it to Matt the next morning and he said, “That’s GORGEOUS.”  Yep, I rocked it.

For those who are interested, details on making this are below the fold.

I began with red Bazzil cardstock.  I cut a 12″ x 12″ in half to make 6″x12″.  The cover was made with white cardstock on pop-dots to elevate it and give some dimension.  I used the same red Bazzil stock to cut the letters “A” and the phrase “For You” using the George cartridge, size 1 1/2″.  The “For You” is an actual phrase selection, so the letters are all connected.  I used black white-core cardstock for the word “gift” and cut it with the Cricut cartridge Mini Monograms, size 2″.  The flowers were made with the George cartridge, Flower 2, using the shadow feature with the red cardstock and the silhouette feature for the black.  The letters and flowers were adhered with the Xyron.  I wished I’d had some cute little red brads to use for the center of the flowers, but I didn’t have any on hand.

Inside the card, I adhered my business card to the top flap using pop-dots.  In the center flap, I cut a piece of printed paper to 3″ x 6″ to fit the panel, printed the information on white cardstock using my computer (font is Monotype Corsiva), and then added a small strip with the red Bazzil across the bottom.  Again, I was wishing for some cute little black brads to add a little spark, but it is what it is.  The bottom flap is simply printed on white cardstock and adhered to the red panel with hermafix squares.

Simple, I know, but I was really pleased with how it came out.  Having a color scheme to start with really helped!