Creating Kris

I’m grateful that even if it’s somewhat difficult for our family right now to swing events, occasions, gifts, etc., I can always manage to create a personal hand-made card to send people the message that they are thought of and valued. We’ve always liked to do as much as we can to show our friends and family how much we care about them.

These two cards were created for the occasions of a Housewarming party and a birthday party for friends of ours. We didn’t even end up getting to the housewarming party – it took all our energy to prepare for it and do some shopping and then we were tired and had to go home and get the kids some dinner and send them to bed! And only my DH was able to go to the birthday party. But I can always be there in spirit through my creations…

Materials: Riding Hood Red cardstock base and ink, Close to Cocoa cardstock, Pirouette Pink cardstock, Chocolate Chip cardstock and ink, “Tagger’s Dozen” stamp set, Tag Punches (small and large – from Stampin’ Up), chocolate brown ribbon. The small flower stamp is actually from another set altogether, yet the petals look very similar to the flowers in the little box in the Tagger’s Dozen stamp – see this closeup!

Materials: I tried a really different colour combination for this one: Elegant Eggplant, Not Quite Navy, Tempting Turquoise and Black. The ribbon is Bashful Blue. Also included a lot of silver pen writing (wide pen from Martha Stewart, narrow pen from Creative Memories) and inked onto a star stamp (from Stampin’ Up). The “Happy Birthday” stamp is a single from Stampin’ Up. The inside of the card has a message written on cardstock edged with the notebook punch (SU) which is one of my faves!

You can’t tell to look at it, but my blog has been moved over to a new host. If you notice anything “glitchy”, please let me know so that I can fix it. Or ask my wonderful engineer hubby to fix it (have I mentioned that he’s wonderful?). Thanks hon for patiently helping me with this big transition of all my sites!

On the subject of family, I’ve also taken this opportunity to update my Family page. Both of my munchkins celebrated a birthday in the past few months, so their tickers needed to be updated. This time around, I’ve just created the type of ticker that counts up and says how old they are now instead of counting down to their next birthday…

Speaking of updating pages, my Friends page could probably use a little bit of updating too! For instance, I have a little blurb in there about my neighbour friends but of course since we’ve moved I don’t have the same neighbours!

Another change on the blog is placing all my Blogroll Links and links to my websites on their own page. I pruned down the list to include blogs that are posted to on a regular basis and/or friends I still keep in touch with regularly as well. I plan to share some of my other fave blogs in a “link love” post format sometime… There are so many wonderful creative women out there!

I’ve updated my “Site support” sections as well to try to get good results with not too much distraction. I’d better become more successful at this mompreneur stuff if I want to be sharing what I’ve learned with other WAHMs on this blog! I don’t consider pennies a week to be successful! One thing I did learn about writing a good blog is to keep posting your new material and don’t get stuck in too long of a “lull”.

One new feature I’ve been playing around with is the Scheduler… I can write blog entries when I’m feeling up for it and then schedule them to be posted at a later date and time! A few of my entries over the past couple weeks were posted using this feature and I’ll bet you can’t tell which ones!

Thanks for reading my “Creating Kris” blog! Whether you are a WAHM, aspiring mompreneur, creative scrapbooker or card-maker, new home-owner decorating her space, or just a friend or curious online guest stopping by for some inspiration, I’m glad to have you along for the ride!

These cards have been up for a few weeks or more in my Scrappy Gallery, but with holidays and other things to post about, I hadn’t had a chance to post about them!

I had a lot of fun playing with my new stamp set – the “Thank Yoy Kindly” set of 4. Thank-you cards aren’t something I’ve done super often (except for milestone occasions like my wedding and baby showers) but I know they are wonderful to give and receive.

The tradition of thank-you cards runs so deeply in my family that we kept joking that surely one day my British grand-mother would send me a Thank-you card in return for a thank-you card… and you know what? She did!! “Thank you for the lovely thank you card…” was how her card started off. I was tempted to send a similar card back and attempt to create a never-ending loop but I just laughed, smiled, and tucked it away.

Materials: Pirouette Pink cardstock, Close to Cocoa cardstock, Riding Hood Red cardstock and ink, Old Olive cardstock, Chocolate Chip ink, red mini-brads, felt flowers in Chocolate Chip and Pirouette Pink, white cardstock, ribbons, punched flower shapes (Stampin’ Up scallop for large and Fiskars for small) and circles (Stampin’ Up).

Techniques: Paper-piercing, embossing, oval-shaped window, scalloped edge punching.

Each of these cards is available for sale in my KStar Store: Thank-You Cards.

Since I enjoy both blinkie-making and digital scrapbooking, it’s no surprise that I’ve combined the two crafts into one by creating a few digital-scrapbook style blinkies. These blinkies have some stitching, buttons, eyelets, and flowers to add a more realistic element to them.

You can find the started collection here, which so far includes ages 1 to 5.

The digital scrapbook images are from a free kit created by Marie at FreeDigitalScrapbooking.com (who also seems very friendly! I e-mailed her about the blinkies).

This of course reminds me that I haven’t created a digital layout in quite some time and should really get back to that sometime soon! To see all the layouts I have created in the past, visit this section of my Scrappy/Stampy Gallery!