Card-In-A-Box

Happy Victoria Day!  Kind of a crazy reason to have a day off but we'll take it, yes??

I know I've been MIA lately … have you noticed?  Yes - I've been recovering from the last few months of being stupidly busy, stressed out and fighting fires day after day.  Last week was a lot of catch-up, more field trips and a bit of shopping (both for something called VEGETABLES as well as sandals and a few other things for the upcoming vacation!!)

I've also been taking some time to enjoy the family!  I feel I've been really snippy with them all lately due to the stress and lack of sleep … and am making up for it now.  Last night I also spent a lot of time going through my craft roomed switching out retiring items for NEW items.  I can't believe how many stamp sets leave me every year :(  I struggle to let go of my favourite retiring In Color items but if I DON"T one day I'll be buried alive under all my stuff … I have a LOT of stuff!  (That's great news for my local customers who are going to have tonnes of items to buy at my next garage sale!!)

I've also spent time this week thinking about how I can worker smarter, not harder. One thing I realized was that his blog takes a LOT of time and energy to maintain.  Oh don't worry, I don't plan to stop posting … I LOVE sharing my "crazy" and my projects … I just can't do it every day. What I CAN do faster and more often is post to FaceBook.  The process is SO much faster and easier.  I don't have to take pictures with my camera, upload them to my main computer, edit them and so on, I can just snap a quick pic with my iPad and post it to FB.  If people have questions about the project they can just enter a comment - I don't feel I have to give detailed instructions and products used like I do with my blog posts.  SO!  You need to head over to my "Tamara's Paper Trail" Facebook page - just do a search for it and hit "Like" and stay in the loop of promotions, classes and projects.  I know many of my blog followers and customers aren't ON Facebook.  You can be on Facebook without providing detailed information about yourself (which is why most people chose not to be on FB) - you can set up an anonymous account and just follow me … and others. That will be the site that I update MUCH more frequently than my blog … just for speed and convenience.

Right!  Enough rambling ... let's see a project!  If you ARE already on my Facebook page you all have seen these already … last week!  They are the oh-so-popular Card-in-a-Box … or Pop-up-Card as they are also called.  Here they are:

LOVE how they turned out … but I must say I would only ever make a few of these a year … and only for a VERY special occasion … Like my FIL's 80th birthday or Mother's Day!  Making the box itself is VERY easy … and while the embellishing is supposed to be the fun part I found it about as enjoyable as having my bikini line waxed!  yes - the end result is great but the process is time consuming and painful! lol!  Rather than explain in detail how I made them I'll just direct you to the Splitcoast Stampers tutorial that I used to make them.  This particular layout yields a larger-than-normal card that requires larger envelope (good thing we can make our own with our envelope punch board!) but there ARE tutorials out there with dimensions to make one that fits a standard envelope when closed (cheaper for mailing).  To make this larger size you need 8 1/2" x 12" card stock.  The tutorial can be found here:

http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/popupboxcard/

So that's it for today … we're off to see Rio 2 at the theatre in a few hours so I should walk Doodles and get cleaned up.  Speaking of Doodles, here's a cute pic of him and Alicia … the big suck!  lol … Pop in again - until then, have a stampy Monday!

Tam