It Seemed Simple ...

I thought I'd share a two things I made yesterday. First up is a card that is a candidate for this coming weekend's Stamp Camps:

It's based on this card that I fell in love with for it's simplicity. Believe it or not, this card uses 4 different punches, plus a corner rounder (which makes 5). Serious punch activity for such a simple card; thus it qualifies for the "it seemed simple" theme of this post.

I added a level of complexity by making my own button, which accounts for two of the punches. And yes, I seem to be obsessed with the little buggers lately, don't I? I love that I could make it the exact same color as the deep purple layer. The Ladies will not be using Crystal Effects to make their buttons shiny, but I'll certainly tell them about it, and if I get to it, I'll have one as a sample for them to fondle. Never discount the fondle factor.

Next up, I started out CASEing this card, and 2 hours later I ended up with just this:

I bought the Paper Smooches FOLKal Points set mostly for that Matryoshka doll, but after hours of futzing and layering and fussy-cutting, I decided I just liked the base paper by itself, and this became a quickie Thank You card. The sentiment is from another Paper Smooches set: Word Up. The paper is from a pack of Memory Box brioche papers that I fell in love with for the colors. Yeah, I'm weak like that.

The card is a non-standard size. It's 3x6, which is 1/4 of a 12x12 (6x6) folded in half. I learned from the Crafty Frugalista, who did the math for us, that you can get 4 cards this size from a 12x12 piece of card stock, and you can get 8 3x6 pieces of the patterned paper from a 12x12 piece of ... patterned paper. So one piece of 12x12 patterned paper and two pieces of 12x12 card base = 8 3x6 cards. A great quick Thank You card to include with a gift (or Etsy sale, if I'd actually promote my shop, or list anything there.) These fit into standard mailing envelopes like the ones you (used to) send checks in. I'm looking for non-security envelopes that size now, if only to fill out the envelope stash, you understand ...

All the parts-is-parts from my futzing hours will find their way onto other cards, or at least into the UFO drawer. You should know by now I almost never throw away anything.

I hope to get to a few more of the challenges in my backlog this week, plus I still need 2 more cards, at least, for this weekend's Stamp Camps, so I'll be back eventually with some crafty stuff to share.

Thanks for stopping by!