Cards? Me? Yes, indeed!
Something new for me this year is making cards, rather than going out and buying them for every occasion. Partly it’s to cut costs — I’ve already got the supplies, and now I have a set of pre-scored card blanks and envelopes that has made the process a lot easier — and it makes sense to do it this way. But I’ve started to really enjoy seeing what I can do with these little “canvases” to make something special for someone we care about.
I’m not “into it” enough (yet) to make a stockpile (right now I’m just making a card when it’s needed), or make cards to sell or give away as gift sets, but I am having a good time. 
And who knows — maybe I’ll start doing more, and start stockpiling sentiment stamps and subscribing to card-making magazines…. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t go there, if helping my financial bottom line is supposed to be part of the point of all this! Right now I’m using my scrapbooking stash, and that’s good enough for me. I have been pleased to discover that Sketch Support not only has card ideas, but uses card sketches for layouts and layout sketches for cards — very cool resource.
So far I’ve made two birthday cards (one for Sara and one for my nephew Haven, who will be 2 on April 10), a sympathy card (for our Early Childhood Intervention Program worker, who lost her husband last month), a thank you card (for my parents’ long-time neighbours, who sent an unexpected birthday gift for Sara), and a baby shower card, and right now I’m working on a card for my niece Quinn’s upcoming 5th (wow, already?!) birthday.
Here are a few pictures:
In scrapping-related news, I had a layout called “And Everywhere She Went” (about Sara and her stuffed toy Lambie) published in the Creating Keepsakes March/April 2011 issue, in the “Reader Gallery”. That was very encouraging, and gave me some additional incentive both to scrap and to clean up my crafting area. I really wish that I could hire a professional organizer who’s also a crafter to help me with this, but I can’t wait around for that — if I’m going to work on any crafting-related challenges over the next while, I need some space to work, and I REALLY need to get the stuff OFF my floor so that my 13-month-old doesn’t keep ripping up my magazines, grabbing random embellishments, and pouring her bottle of milk on my cardstock!
All right — I’m off to do some more card-making!