Have you ever spent time on the Papertrey Ink forum? It's a fun and interesting and helpful community of stampers who are about as addicted to PTI stamps and products as I am. Kind of like a giant support group. Or, maybe, a big group of enablers. :) Anyway, several weeks ago I noticed a thread for a Valentine card swap and decided that it would be fun to participate. When you signed up, you private messaged your mailing address to the person above you, who was then responsible for sending you a handmade Valentine card. Well, when I pm-ed the person above me, she responded by asking for my address so she could send me one, too. How nice was that?!? However, it made me feel a bit like a heel because I hadn't even considered doing that to the person below me. (Are you following this?) So, of course, I then sent a pm to that person asking for her address so I could send her one, too.
All that to set up this card, which is the one I sent to the person below me.
SHOW
First, let me be perfectly clear. This card is not an original idea with me! In 2008, not too many months after I discovered this wonderful thing called blogs, I saw this post by Sharon Johnson on the Just Rite Stampers blog. I've been wanting to try it ever since and as soon as I signed up for the Valentine swap I knew that this type of greeting was what I wanted to do. I'm not going to go into too much detail here. I'll save that for another post that I'll have in a day or two — Accordian Tags: The Long of It.
Here are some pictures taken closer up. Feel free to click on them to make them bigger.
You can probably tell by the pictures that this card would not fit in a regular envelope. So, using this post by Sharon Johnson as a guide, I created a little box for the card to go into. I've heard from Kim and know that she's received the card — I just hope that it traveled well and arrived looking as good as it did when I boxed it up!
Speaking of Kim, the "love" recipient, here is the gorgeous card that she sent to me. I love all the inking around the edges. She did it so perfectly! And the inside of the card is finished, too. Just beautiful! And, check it out. That's fabric she sewed to the front. And what about that layered heart. Don't know if you can tell, but it's glittery, too. (Click on the picture — part of the text on the heart reads, "Pink is not your color". Isn't that hysterical for a Valentine? Makes me giggle everytime I think of it.) Here is a link to the exact post on her blog with the card she made and a much better picture of it.
Someday, I'm going to get brave and try to learn how to ink my card edges this well.
AND TELL: normally I would list all the products that I used here, but there were so many that I'm not going to do that. I may try harder on the "Long of It" post in a couple of days. If you have questions about anything in particular, just ask and I'll get back to you.
So — onto other stuff. Here's what it looked like outside yesterday morning.
I know it doesn't look like much — but this paralyzes Charlotte, NC. It's not just the snow, though. It's the layer of ice that's on top of the snow. And underneath the snow. And the persistent cold. Today the sun is shining but it's still really cold outside and so IF anything melts, it will refreeze tonight and they will probably call school off for tomorrow. Normally I love a good snow day, but not this week. Too much to do regarding next year's preschool registration to have a day off now. If only I could schedule our snow days. I'd like one for Thursday, February 4, please. (Or, just about any day but tomorrow...)
So — apparently the snowy, icy weather paralyzed me, too. Yesterday I did something I don't recall ever doing. I looked for movies to watch on TV. I found a movie called "Mystery Woman" and watched it. Definitely not worth the time. I'm not too discriminating in the movie department, but this one was pretty full of bad acting and a mediocre story line.
To justify couch time I decided I should be doing something while watching, so I went through my pretty big stash of cards and organized them into categories. This is the before picture. Didn't think to take an after shot. At least they are not piles in the craft room closet anymore.
After Mystery Woman was over, I noticed "Fiddler on the Roof" was on. I love that movie! Reminds me of my 13th birthday — my party was going to Salem (Oregon) with a few friends to see the movie when it first came out.
This time I had another friend to watch it with. She's hard to photograph, but maybe you can see her. Our family will be shocked. Yes, we've started letting Roxie up on the couch with us. We got tired of her pacing around, whining about her lot in life. We're weak. What can I say. She wore us down.
So, that was two movies. Lagtely we've been adding movies that people recommend to us to our Netflix queue. (Do you use Netflix? It's an amazing thing!) We've watched a couple films lately that we've enjoyed. "Thank You for Smoking" was one. Another was "The Visitor." Oh, I loved that one. So after dinner, we decided to watch the movie we had received this week, "The Grey Zone." What a depressing movie. Haunting. Definitely not light-hearted and fun. Unless you like movies that remind you of how depraved human beings can be, I don't recommend it.
That's about it for now. After not being too chatty for a few days, I think I made up for it. I'm impressed if you hung in there through my ramblings this long! Come back tomorrow for more cards... and probably less talk... Thanks for today's visit!!
