A Quick Iris Fold Birthday Card

I am on a break from school and work this week and have been catching up on all the house and yard work that has been neglected over the past quarter.  One of the things I was determined to do today was clean out my craft area.  For some reason, my craft table is the repository for every piece of paper that comes into my house.  I spent the morning filing, shredding and recycling and finally accomplished my goal.

As I sat down to my empty desktop, I discovered that I just couldn't come up with any good ideas.  Just great, after struggling with writers block most of the quarter, now I have card maker's block.  Maybe this is a sign that I'm too stressed out. 

I decided to rummage through my supplies in search of inspiration and I found some iris folding card blanks I cut out last fall.  I am short on birthday cards, so I chose one with a birthday theme.  This was a good start.  Now to find some paper to go with it.  After rummaging a bit more, I found a book of iris folding papers I forgot I had.  Here is the result...

The book of iris folding papers is from Search Press and is simply called "Iris Folding." (ISBN 1-84448-114-X) It contains a total of 24 sheets. The colors are green, red, yellow, orange, purple and blue.

You can find iris folding instructions and patterns at http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/irisfoldinst.php.

A Sunny Afternoon at the Park

I have been collecting cilp art from PCCrafter for about three years now with the intent to use it in something some day.  Every once in a while I will make a card with it, but mostly I just look at it, which is fun but it doesn't seem particularly practical to me.

This week, however, I decided to DO something.  Last Sunday afternoon my youngest son and I took my granddaughter, Allie to the park near our house.  This of course, provided "Oma" (that's me) with the perfect opportunity to take pictures. 

Of course, pictures MUST be scrap booked, so I put together these two pages.  They will go in an "Allie" album I am making in Picaboo (You can download Picaboo for free from www.picaboo.com).  I made a Picaboo Christmas album at the beginning of the year and was really pleased with the way it turned out so I decided to start working on one for Allie.  At the rate I'm going, I might have it done by the time she's 18! :)

Here is what I used...

The clip art collections I used for my background and graphics are all from PCCrafter.  The collection names are as follows:

• Debbie Mumm's Everyday Angels (cloud and side bar)
• Debbie Mumm's Green Garden (backgrounds and border)
• Friends Forever (butterflies and bunny)
• PC Autumn Harvest Font set (on side bars)
• LD Audrey font (journaling)

I used Printmaster Gold 18 to put the pages together.  I started to make my pages in Paint Shop Pro, but I quickly got frustrated with it because I haven't had time to learn to use it.  Printmaster was much easier!