Carol Hartery's Creations: Thank you cards

Hi Everyone!

I've been spinning in so many directions that I am getting dizzy! In addition to trainings, classes, and dinners with friends, I've been busy with phone calls, face to face requests, and e-mails asking for thank you, bridal shower, St. Patrick's Day, and birthday cards. Speaking of birthays last night my friend Patty took me out for Chinese food for yet another birthday celebration. Love those crab rangoon! I think I'll be celebrating my next birthday before the celebrations for this one ends! Mind you, I am not complaining at all!

When I got home I decided to focus on thank you cards. Many of you that follow my papercrafting blog also follow other papercrafting blogs so you are familiar with the challenges that magazines, stamping companies, paper companies, etc. sponsor to help us get to know their products. Well, I decided to rein myself in by creating a challenge of my very own. I pulled out my Cuttlebug "thank you" embossing folder and all of my clear and wooden "thank you" stamps. My challenge is for me to use every one of those stamps to create the thank you cards that I need. I could just make multiples of a few cards, but it's going to be much more fun this way.

Diane, please study the photographs of my stamp collection. Notice that there is more than one stamp that says, "Thanks a Bunch!" Each one is a different size and font. They give me choices when I am creating "thank you" cards that may have a bunch of flowers or a bunch of balloons or whatever other "bunch" I want to use with the stamp.

I store most of my clear stamps in clear plastic cd cases as the set they were when I purchased them, but a long time ago I decided to store all of my "thanks" stamps in a cd case of their own. I did the same thing with "hello" and "happy birthday" stamps. That way I don't need to go through each case to find those messages which I tend to use quite often.

Now here's a funny story. After pulling out the embossing folder and all of those stamps without even thinking about them I used stickers to create the "thanks" message on these first 2 cards. The papers I used are from the Pixie-Licious 6" x 6" Mini Deck that Jeanne bought me. The flowers, brads, stickers, and ribbons are from my stash. Look at that large brad on the first card. Don't you just love how it picks up all of the colors of the papers on the card! MaryBeth you gave me those brads a long time ago!

These next 3 cards were created with papers from the GORGEOUS Sweet Nectar Designer Mat Pad from K & Company. Toni gave me this collection for my birthday. Toni, I LOVE this paper. The floral papers look like rich fabrics.

I should probably just end this post right here, but I love this last card so much that I want to share it with you today. I told you I created this "thank you" challenge for myself. I figure I made the rules so I can break them too. My collection of clear "thanks" stamps is fairly extensive so I decided rather than use each one of them on their own card, I'd use most of them on just one card. What fun I had randomnly tapping each stamp onto a different color ink pad and pressing them here and there onto my card. I heat embossed each message with detail clear embossing powder. I didn't like the empty space I had created at the top of the card so I added some Favorite Findings crayon buttons that were in my stash. I love this card. It may be one of my favorites.