Saturday's Post

Hi Everyone!

Happy Saturday to all of you.

What a GORGEOUS day! Robbie and I walked along one of the paths at Great Meadows Wildlife Sanctuary in Concord. We walk there often. I always feel as if we are going on a treasure hunt. We never know what we’re going to hear or see.

Today we saw 3 snakes, 1 frog, some butterflies, lots of red winged blackbirds, some baltimore orioles, robins, and geese. When we walked about a month ago we saw a turtle and lots of skunk cabbage.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...I’ve continued to play with my "Citronella" paper from K&Company. I like to create sets of 4 cards and store them in an Around Town tote from PaperTrey Ink. Now that I’ve made at least a couple of dozen of those Around Town totes I have some "tips" to share with you.

I start out by cutting 2 sheets of 12" x 12" double sided tag weight paper down to 8.5" x 11". Double sided tag paper means there is a Side A and a Side B. Two sheets of paper that are 3.5" x 12" are leftover from the original paper. As the directions state I run off 2 copies of the main pattern for the large tote. When I put the paper in my printer I make sure that the pattern prints onto the sides of the paper that will become the inside of the bag. I run the pattern for the side pieces of the bag off onto one sheet of copy paper instead of using another piece of tag paper. (Toni, Pattye, MaryEllen, and Janet you may remember that it bothered all of us when we ran the sides off on the tag paper because they only use a part of the paper.) I am able to cut both side pieces out of one of the leftover sheets of 3.5" x 12". When I put the bag together the outside of the bag is "Side A" from the tag paper and the side pieces are "Side B" from the tag paper. On the bag shown in the photograph I used a daisy paper punch to cut some daisies out of the remaining 3.5" x 11" piece of paper. I attached the "daisies" to the bag with glue dots. I tied some cord through some buttons and attached the buttons to the daisies with glue dots.

A2 cards measure 4.25’’ x 5.5". When I am making cards I cut 6 pieces of 3.75" x 5" paper from a 12" x 12" sheet of paper and attach those papers to six blank A2 cards.

If you look closely at this "Hello" card (click on the image to enlarge it) you can see that I used a scalloped circle paper punch to punch a hole through the pink patterned tag before I attached it to the A2 blank card. I used a circle Nestability to punch out and emboss the white circle that has "Hello" stamped on it.


Now look closely at this "thank you" card (click on the image to enlarge it) and you will see that I glued the scalloped circle that I had punched out from the first piece of patterned tag to the tag on this card. Remember the tag is 2 sided so you are seeing the second side of the tag instead of the pink flowered side.

Keep looking. The scalloped circle on the "Happy Birthday" card was punched out of the pink paper before it was glued. The punched out circle was glued to the "Just Because" card.

The scalloped circle on the "Feel Better Soon" card was punched out of the pink paper before the paper was glued. The punched out circle was glued to the "Hi" card. What I am trying to say is that I was able to use the "positive" and the "negative" parts of a sheet of paper to create 2 cards.

I’ve read that odd numbers are more pleasing to the eye. You can see that I added dimension and interest to the cards by adding an odd number of silk flowers to each of the cards.

I hope this post has helped you and not confused you. A few people have e-mailed with questions and I was trying to answer those questions and share that information with other readers at the same time.

Talk to you again soon.
Carol