Using Photos On Cards

Before I get to the topic at hand, let me pose a question to all of you out in the blogosphere: What is it with cats and boxes? If I have an empty shipping box, she is in it, or lurking behind it and giving me the "bet you can't see me now" look over the top.

I have an empty box near the front door. It used to hold 250 envelopes, but then I used it to take new cards to my car for the market, and well, now it is just empty and there. She usually sticks her front feet into it and claws at it (as cats do), I am sure to let me know how frustrated she is that I closed the front door and would not let her run free. But one night she did this:

Yes, she put her whole body into the thing and sat down.

Then this morning, we're back to this.

So what IS it with cats and boxes? Inquiring minds want to know.


Okay, on to the subject at hand: photos and cards. Every once in a blue moon* I take a decent photo. Most of the time I just get lucky, like with this one:

I was stuck in traffic on the highway coming home from Florida in 2005. Just sitting there on a perfectly GORgeous day, inhaling exhaust fumes, and fuming myself that there had better be a very nasty accident or at least some plausible reason for the delay. I even had my windows open - that's how still I was sitting!

Then I looked to to my right and saw this tall grass. PHOTO OP! So I took the pic. Done.

When I got home, I cropped it so I would lose the car parts, and this is what I got. Pretty, huh?

This is straight out of the camera, and except for the cropping part, unadulterated. No PhotoShopping, as I do not even own that product!

The photo has a sort of peaceful look, don't you think? So I made some cards with it! I made a few with just the photo and no sentiment, but most of the cards were this one:

Sympathy. I love this Eskimo saying, so I stamped it on vellum and put it over the photo. I am actually sold out of these, and when a friend asked me this weekend if I had any (she remembered it!) and I was out, I decided to make some more this weekend. Unfortunately, sympathy cards are selling like hot cakes**, so I need to have more variety in that section.

The last few batches I made did not have ribbon on them, so these are technically new & improved. :-) I needed ribbon today cuz I used red sticky tape to anchor the top of the vellum to the card, and I needed to hide it, dontcha know. One of these days I'll figure out how to stick vellum to something without the adhesive showing. So far, even vellum tape shows when I use it, and I have no plans to get spray adhesive - unless it comes in a teeny tiny can with a teeny, tiny nozzle so I can control the direction and amount of the spray. Until then, being a ribbon lover (duuuh!), I have absolutely NO problem using it to hide the adhesive.

Speaking of ribbon ... just so you know I am not making up stories about the volume of the stuff I have stashed in The Other Room, this is the spool of the yummy, thick and luscious off-white satin ribbon I got from the Ribbon Outlet nigh on two years ago. I put it on top of the card here for perspective. Do you now understand the seriousness of my situation? I will never, ever, ever, ever run out of this stuff!

Okay, folks, I'm off to play with all the stuff I've dragged out to work on the ole mojo. I think it's coming back! Yay!

Thanks for stopping by!

* From: Wikipedia: A blue moon is an extra full moon in a month, which occurs every 2-3 years. This is because there are an extra 11 days or so when you do the 28-day cycle thing, and they add up to an extra full moon, or 28-day cycle. It is so infrequent, the use of the term has come to mean 'rarely'.


** From phrases.org: SELL LIKE HOT CAKES - "Hot cakes cooked in bear grease or pork lard were popular from earliest times in American. First made of cornmeal, the griddle cakes or pancakes were of course best when served piping hot and were often sold at church benefits, fairs, and other functions. So popular were they that by the beginning of the 19th century 'to sell like hot cakes' was a familiar expression for anything that sold very quickly effortlessly, and in quantity." From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997)