Kindergarten Graduation Card

We were invited to a shared graduation party last weekend for a girl exiting 8th grade and one that completed kindergarten. For the younger girl, I made the following card.



The bear comes from The Angel Company's retired Birthday Bear stamp set. To make it graduation worthy I drew in the cap and the diploma, which was an awesome suggestion given to me by my Create A Bunch at Lunch group.

The bear is colored with Copic Markers E: 25, 29 and 35 and the red is R24 and 27 and the shadow is C1. The border on the side is a Fiskars punch, Treading Water, and I used a star button punch to punch stars where the original circles were.

May Create A Bunch At Lunch Club - Graduation Card

This month, my CBL group made a Father's Day card that I posted last year. They loved using the "blasting box" so much in the January class, that they were asking to do it again, so we made the Ship Collage Father's Day card where we made a spray from Perfect Pearls and used the Tim Holtz compass mask. You can find it by choosing the Father's Day label on the right side-bar if you missed it before.

The other card for today was a graduation card made with The Angel Company's retired Keep Smilin' stamp set and the current Hostess Level C Thinking of You set that will be retiring in June. The solid green and yellow paper is Die Cuts With a View and the patterned paper came from JoAnn's open paper stock.



Since not everyone might need a graduation card, I made a variation that could be used for a birthday using the same stamp sets and supplies. Some of the girls in the club even used the same stamp set and supplies to make a baby card instead.

Ten Minute Gift Bag

I've got an adult graduation party to go to this weekend. My friend Deb has been going to school for what seems like forever, and she's finally graduated and on her way to becoming a teacher. Way to go Deb! You've worked so hard for this and finally siezed the brass ring.

My husband and I bought Deb a bottle of wine for the occasion. I had trouble finding a wine bag that I really liked, so I went to Target and purchased a plain white one for 99 cents to decorate myself. Here are the supplies I used.


Plain white bag, 4 pieces of 4 1/2 x 6 black cardstock, Congratulations Cuttlebug embossing template and Cuttlebug, ribbon, Giga and Mega Scalloped Clever Lever punches, white paper, silver paper, adhesive, grey marker, pop-dots, and The Angel Company's Congrats Grad set stamped with Noir Palette ink.

This bag was very, very simple to make. I ran the 4 pieces of black cardstock through the Cuttlebug; adhered them to the bag; put adhesive on the ribbon and ran it around the middle of the bag to cover the seam from the paper; cut two scalloped squares with the punches and stamped the diploma on the white one; layered the two together and stuck them to the ribbon in the center of the bag with pop dots.

The only thing remotely challenging about this is that you have to push the bottom of the bag up into a "V" so that you have flat pannels to work with on both the front and the back of the bag.



Here's the final gift (card made using the Scor-Pal, a paper piercer, and the same Clever Lever scalloped punches and stamp set):



And here's a close up of the embossing detail:



Now you have a classy wine bag that cost maybe $2 and took only 10 minutes of your time. I have used this trick to cover a gift bag with wrapping paper to cover spots or designs that didn't go with the theme I was giving the gift for, and I always gets a lot of ooohs and aaahs. I've also taken bags that have patterns that I like and dressed them up by adhering ribbon and adding an embellished fabric flower.



These are all quick ways you can make a store bought bag into something more without taking much of your time.

Another Graduation Card for Cupcake Challenge

It's been a crafty couple of weeks. This makes three in a row where I've been able to participate in Taylor's Cupcake Challenge. My submission is another graduation card. Not only because graduation cards can be useful this time of year, but also because the circles from this card are the ones I originally stamped and cut for last week's challenge, only to find that they were far to large to fit three across on the 4 1/4 side of a card. So it worked out well for me that Taylor's challenge this week also included three images and I was able to utilize these images so quickly.



This card uses the same Keep Smilin' stamp set as last week's graduation card paired with The Angel Company's Trendy Greetings set. I also used the Traffic Jam Cuttlebug embossing plate and some Platinum Stickles to add a little extra detail.

Congrats Grad - Cupcake Challenge Card

Lucky me! I've had two weeks in a row to that I'm able to participate in Taylor's Cupcake Challenge. Here is the card I made tonight using The Angel Company's Keep Smilin', Circle Sampler and Tag Tidbits stamp sets. I particularly like this card because it didn't take much time at all, and I really had no idea what it was going to be when I went into it.