Tag Archives: Paper

Custom Note Cards – DIY

17 Jan

I recently send one of my dearest girlfriends her January gift.

What’s a January gift?
It’s a Christmas gift that never got completed prior to Christmas and once it was finished you realized the recipient was celebrating the holiday abroad and doesn’t return till the New Year…so you send it mid-January.

Personally, I like to give “useable” gifts, things that won’t just sit on a self or in a closet. So I created some personalized notecards for her.

 Since she’s in an industry that requires a lot of networking I figured these would be something nice for her to use either personally or professionally (which is why they’re silver, as her company branding uses a grey).

Each card featured a die-cut “K” for her first initial and was backed with a silver paper. I love the texture of the silver and the faux-debossed look that it gives the card. If you only need a handful, they’re much cheaper than getting something letterpressed. They have a similar feel to them and are pretty thick since they each use two pieces of cardstock mounted together. They’d look even more like letterpressed cards if they were backed with the same white paper, although the letter would be much more subtle.

Since I was creating some for her I figured I’d make a few for myself (I’m so thoughtful).

Plus it was a good way to get rid of some scrap cardstock that I’d been held on to, determined to find a use for.

I did several different colors for mine since they will probably go to friends or family. Such an easy project & I love that I can just make a few more whenever I need them.

Instructions:

Obviously, there aren’t many. This was a pretty easy project on my Silhouette Cameo – it may be possible to do with a handheld letter punch but I’m not sure.

I just set my cutter to cut out the letters and the white cards. Then spray mounted those to a sheet of silver cardstock and trimmed them out.

Cost:

I love letterpressed items but these are a much cheaper alternative if you only need a small quantity. Paper was around $6.00 ($.60/sheet for 10 sheets – 5 white, 5 silver) and the envelopes were from Hobby Lobby for $4.

So the whole project was less than $10!

Advent Calendar & Pre-pregnancy Weight

24 Dec

Two goal accomplished this week, first off, I finished my advent calendar (I know it’s the week of Christmas and kind of pointless now but I bought it with the intention of using it next year once Baby E is old enough to enjoy something like that).

Look how sparkly…

Oh and I’m
BACK TO MY PRE-PREGNANCY WEIGHT!

WOO-HOO! Just in time to enjoy tons of Christmas goodies.

 

 

 

 

Early Christmas!

29 Nov

Christmas came early at our house! Look what arrived over the holiday weekend…

The new Silhouette Cameo! To which my husband responded, “Now WHAT is it?” I just told him it was his Christmas gift to me and that I loved it.

I don’t do a ton of scrapbooking (mostly because it involved too much planning of going to the store and buying the page decorations etc) so I’m excited to be able to just make what I want as I need it. Plus I like to make paper decor for parties and holidays so this will save me a few hours with the scissors.

Initially I’d considered getting the KNK Zing (since it cuts thicker materials) but as the first batch of preorders arrived it seemed that even those familiar with cutters were having difficulty getting consistant cuts. The Cameo cuts beautiful intricate cuts right out of the box. I’m pretty savvy when it comes to these type of things but I didn’t want frustration to limit it’s usefulness (and having a 6 month old limits the amount of time I can dedicate to getting something to work as it should).

My first cuts looked like this…

This is straight from the Silhouette Store. The Cameo comes with $10 worth of downloads and this weekend designs were half price so I was able to get 20 for the price of 10! I mostly chose things like boxes and templates that I could alter since I have about 5,000 fonts.

Also the Designer Studio software will allow you to cut and edit svg files so I can do all my designing in Adobe Illustrator (and use the huge collection of vector art I own).

More detail shots…