Preface: If you read my post yesterday, you're going to wonder why my post is so long today! It was about 95% complete when I wrote last night's post. Just to clarify, I am not going away from blogdom--just attempting to be moderate. I will still be posting. I'm just not aiming for six or seven days a week any more. What gets done, gets done. I read every comment from yesterday; some brought smiles, and some brought tears. You all are the best! Now on to our regularly scheduled programming. . .
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"Out with the old, in with the new" certainly doesn't apply to everything in life, but one area that I'm making a concerted effort to apply that adage to is the organization of my workspace and crafting supplies. This month Nichole had challenged the PaperTrey Ink senior design team to create a system for remembering and organizing birthday cards, with the focus being on getting them out on time.
I started with some PaperTrey Ink sets that I thought might work well for this project: Wedding Day, Mixed Messages, Trajan Monogram Edition Alphabet, and Recipe Box Label. I also dug up an old Hallmark organizer box that was large enough to hold cards--you know, the "inexpensive gift with purchase of three cards" kind. Next I rummaged through my older patterned papers. I'm finding that I collect a lot of patterned papers, and once they become last season's, they usually don't get used. I have given away stacks of these to try to bless others and get a grip on my growing stash, but I still had quite a few that were lovely and just begging to be used. One was Basic Grey's Dasher paper pack--so pretty, and not too Christmas-y, if you picked through the patterns. To seal the choice, this paper worked well with my PaperTrey Ink Pure Poppy, Ocean Tides, Ripe Avocado, and Sweet Blush cardstock and inks.
I started with a slick box (7-5/8" high x 10" wide x 4-1/2" deep) and should probably have sanded it with sandpaper before trying to cover it; since I knew I would need good holding power, I used permanent Xyron adhesive to hold the papers. After covering the entire box, I coated all except for the front panel with some matte finish Royal Coat Decoupage Medium. (I left the front uncoated because I knew that I would have a hard time getting my decorations to stick if it had a slick surface. I'll have to go back and carefully coat the front later.)
For the front decoration, I used the Trajan Monogram Edition Alphabet to spell out "CARDS," and stamped it in Pure Poppy ink. Originally I had wanted to use the Recipe Box Label holder for the front, but I couldn't get the works quite large enough for the box front using it; so I used the large oval from the Wedding Day set, along with some dingbats from the Recipe Box Label set, stamped in Ocean Tides ink. Buttons are from my stash--mostly Autumn Leaves Foof-a-La and ButtonsGalore.com.
For the inside, I cut sixteen divider pages--four each from Ocean Tides, Sweet Blush, Pure Poppy, and Ripe Avocado cardstock, adding a 1" wide strip of patterned paper for visual interest. The month stamps are from the Wedding Day set and are die cut with a Spellbinders Plain Circle Nestability die. Besides months, I chose Get Well, With Sympathy, Just Because, and I think I'll do the last one as a Thank You, since these are all categories that one doesn't plan into a certain month. Sentiments for the additional categories were from the Mixed Messages set.
For the inside lid of the box, I used some E-6000 glue to attach two Tim Holtz clips to hold a book of stamps and the elusive pen--I'm trying to cover all of my bases and hope that my husband takes over the task of sending cards. It's really only fair since he has far more family members than I do, right? I think I hear laughing somewhere out there--cut it out!
Dividers are shown on the left and below; I created a document with lines for dates and occasions and attached this to each of the month pages. (I still need to make the top tab for the Thank You divider.)
Now, for some cards to fill in that file folder: when I look back at the two or three years worth of cards that I have kept, I am amazed how much style (or at least my style) has changed! I give stack of cards to my mother and mother-in-law occasionally, but the ones that I have kept will easily fill most of our needs for the year. The area that I am generally lacking in is masculine birthday cards--simple, no-fuss, we-remembered-you-today birthday cards. So while I was already hard at work stamping, I used some of the scraps to create a few generic guy-birthday cards. These use the Recipe Box Label set, and sentiments (both inside and outside) from the Birthday Basics set.
I'm hoping that this little system will help to alleviate the "Do-you-have-a-card-for ______'s-birthday? It-was-yesterday" syndrome. Be sure to check out what other players came up with too: Lisa Johnson, Lauren Meader, Heather Nichols, Mish Wooderson, and of course Nichole; if my system won't work for you, I'm sure that someone out there has a system that will!
Thanks for visiting.