Missed the boat with Christmas cards? Here's a unique opportunity for you!

Here is a chance for you to stand out.

Everyone sends Christmas cards it seems. And they end up either piled up, lined up, or magnetized to the fridge with the countless other cards. None of them stand out.

But New Year's cards...those are unique, like you.

So why not send out some personalized New Year's wishes soon after Christmas is over? The type of card that everyone remembers and compliments you on. The type of card that you can only get from Tiny Prints.

Tiny Prints has over 250 designs to choose from, so you are sure to find one that is perfect for you. Then you can customize them by adding pictures, changing the font and text, and adding special features like rounded edges and matching address labels.

If you want to get the cheapest delivery, you need to order them soon (like today) so that you get them just after Christmas. That gives you plenty of time to write in them, address them, and get them to your best buddies just after New Year's Day.

Trust me, these cards won't get piled up or lined up. They'll be in a class all by themselves.

Ordering couldn't be easier.  I've even created a video to show you how to do it!

1. Visit Tiny Prints and choose from their 250+ New Year's card designs.
2. Once you have selected your favorite design, customize the card by adding pictures and changing the font and text to your liking.
3. Place your order (if you order today, be sure to use promo code DEC20SW to get 15+% off and code HOLFS to get free shipping off orders of $49 or more).

Your cards will arrive in 7-10 business days in the US (faster with their speedier shipping options).

That's it. Ring in the New Year in a wonderful way and stand out!

Melissa

*affliliate links where possible- please use them to support my blog*

Card-a-palooza

Taking a break from December Daily to share a little card making.

This year I’ve loved following Kristina Werner and I love her style – hence the glittered dashed lines and rounded corners below.

Over the past couple of months I’ve made about 170 Christmas card kits (about 70 cards), 10 or so birthday cards and then at craft group I put together 6 baby congratulation cards.

I’m sharing this as part of Big Picture Classes Happy Mail campaign

Free Christmas Cards, Anyone? Coupon & Free Workshop Inside

I’ve got two awesome free offers for you today…

Want free Holiday cards?

My friend Matt over at TinyPrints has sent me an AWESOME coupon for 10 free Holiday cards.

Offer: 10 Free Holiday Cards ($24.00 value!)
Start date: Now
End Date: Tuesday, November 13 at 11:59pm PT
Promo Code: HOLIDAYCHEER
Limitations (Make sure to read this): Flat cards only - options charges will apply (rounded corners/paper options/envelopes options) and shipping charges will also apply. Regular shipping only costs $5.99 in the U.S.

You need to check out all their cool designs – you can pop your own family photo right in there!

Here’s a little eye candy! Love the doggy one! Pity we don’t have a pet!

 

If you’d rather fully customise your cards… here’s a free class for you!

 

Are you keen to create your own dazzling digi Christmas Cards?

Join the fabulous Lain Ehmann and Traci Reed from Sweet Shoppe Designs to learn how you can create your own Christmas cards.

Traci will walk us through the steps to:

• Downloading and opening a pre-made card template
• Placing your own photo
• Adding an overlay
• Personalizing with your own text

There's still plenty of time to order them before the silly season starts - so head over and join Lain, Traci and hundreds of scrapbookers for this free scrapinar on November 15.

Register today!

Handmade stationery from Ivory Leaf

Today I've got a special post for you. You all know how I love to make cards and crafty projects so I was excited to see a friend open her own stationery store on Etsy.
We met nearly 10 years ago when she was a cataloguer and I was a records manager in previous lives. Sally is a woman of many talents with cooking, writing and crafting to name a few.We are now both building our own creative businesses, and I am looking forward to seeing Ivory Leaf grow as the years go on.
I've invited my dear friend Sally to share a little about her Etsy store and small business.  - Melissa

 

Hi, I'm Sally and I own Ivory Leaf - a small Etsy store which sells wedding invitations, cards and
stationery sets.

As a child, I loved colour. I didn't have just one favourite colour, they were ALL my favourites!
Honestly, how can someone say they love red more than blue or white or yellow or purple! To
me, picking a favourite colour would have been like a mother picking which child she loves more.

So as a child, when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I didn't know -
I just knew that I wanted to work with colour. Somehow. But try telling a high school career
counsellor that you don't care what you do for a career, as long as you get to play with pretty colours all day. (Eventually, I opted for studying library and information services.)

I worked in a library for a little while, but I never loved it. I found the work dull and tedious so I
quit and began to look for ways to work with colour that didn't involve painting every room of
my house. Again.

My aunty was the one who introduced me to paper crafts. She's always been an avid card-
maker and I loved to spend time with her in her little craft room at the top of her house. I would
look around and see colour everywhere - deep blues, rich reds, minty greens, soft pinks, vivid
yellows - colour!

It took a few years to get up the courage to launch an online store, but now it's up I have no idea what took me so long.

The style of my products is clean, contemporary and classic - I try to keep things simple for two reasons. Firstly because I think the design of an invitation or card or stationery set shouldn't
distract the recipient from the written word and message. Secondly, overly fussy designs just
aren't me in the same way that molecular gastronomy isn't me - I believe you shouldn't fiddle
with amazing ingredients and you shouldn't fiddle with beautiful papers which all come with
their own amazing texture and character.

In keeping my designs simple, I also keep the costs of my products down, which is something
very important to me. I don't believe that a cute little stationery set should cost $35 or that a
wedding invitation should cost $12. Beautiful things should be affordable.

As I said before, I don't know why it took me so long to open an online store. Getting a sale is a huge thrill and I hope the people who buy my products get a similar thrill when their package
arrives in the post. What's also thrilling is waking up each day knowing that my little home
studio is full of amazing papers and stamps and inks and COLOURS!

Sally has gorgeous designs and attention to detail so head over now to see Ivory Leaf on the web:

• Etsy Store
• FaceBook
• Twitter
• Pinterest

Cute and simple baby card

 A quick baby card I put together with Emily for our cousins.

I just popped some handmade paper over a gingham background, found a matching ribbon from my stash and mounted an epoxy sticker on some white high gloss card.
Rounded the corners and popped in the mail!

Simple and fun for Mumm and Emily to do together!
*affliliate links where possible- please use them to support my blog*

New Card Company from Shutterfly and Tiny Prints

I used Shutterfly to create these gorgeous Christmas cards in 2010, so I was excited to hear that Shutterfly and Tiny Prints  have joined forces to bring us even more stylish, affordable greeting cards with the launch of Treat.

Have you heard about the new personalized greeting card company, Treat? Treat is a new brand from the folks at Shutterfly and Tiny Prints that lets you create unique, personalized greeting cards. With more than 4,500 customized card designs at launch, the Treat service offers one of the industry’s largest selections from the best designers, including Hallmark. To ensure that you never miss an important date like a birthday or anniversary, Treat also offers an integrated service that will remind you of all those important events. A Treat calendar can be set up with reminders for anniversaries, events, family holidays and more. Plus, users can use Facebook Connect to link their Facebook and Treat accounts to import friends’ birthdays.
Treat is an easy and revolutionary new way to make personalized greetings in your own style and personality just in time for Mother's Day! Here is how it works:

Choose your card from their thousands of designs, including the Mother’s Day Collection. Personalize it with photos, nicknames, inside jokes, whatever you want to add. This is your chance to make it YOUR card. Be creative. Be funny. Be sappy. Make them laugh, cry, or just smile. You can also add an embedded gift card from stores such as Amazon, Target, Pottery Barn and more.

When you checkout, get unlimited cards for $0.99 each through Mother’s Day. Use the code AFFTREAT to get this special deal. Or, you can also choose to get just one card for free. Use code FREETREAT for that. (Note: These offers are good for first time Treat customers only, so you have to pick one or the other. The good news is that this includes previous Tiny Prints customers). If you are ordering more than one card, the $.99 cent offer will save you the most as each card is normally $2.99.

Treat will truly brighten your day…and the day of the recipients of your new cards! So check them out now and take advantage of their two awesome promotions. They have cards for all kinds of occasions including Birthdays, Friendship Cards, Thank You Cards, Thinking of You and more.

So why not check them out today?

If you decide to sign up or purchase, you’ll be supporting my blog – thanks so much!

Melissa

Christmas in July Crafting Fun! Day 7 #WeekintheLife

Another fun day with cleaning, prepping for Christmas in July and then crafting the day away.
After much planning we had an awesome crafty event to help us all get a head start on Christmas. We spend a few hours getting a head start on any Christmas Crafting projects (cards/decorations/etc) that usually get buried during the Christmas Season. We had festive food I'd been making all week - fruit mince pies, mini puddings, sausage and a few other goodies brought along by other crafters. Music was very festive thanks to the Shanhun’s collection of Christmas CDs.

Emily and Phill headed off to swimming lessons, leaving Sarah, Jodi, Mum, Lauren, Cait and I to craft. In between showers Phill worked on levelling the backyard, making a new top for his water damaged router table, and window shopping at Bunnings. Emily slept well and enjoyed seeing everyone too.

 

Dinner was prepared by Phill – chicke burgers and chips! Yum!

 

Quote of the Day

SWIMMING LESSONS!!! (Shouted loudly then…) Noisy!

Mummy’s ‘riends over

Favourite Photo

My stash of cards from the day.

My week in the life so far

See my flickr photos

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

See all my Week in the Life Posts here

Want to join in? It’s not too late – you can always  You can follow along on Ali’s blog, twitter or the Flickr group to see what others are doing. Be sure to link me up to your blog in the comments – I’d love to see what you are doing for Week in the Life Posts here!

I’ll be sharing the album that comes out of this week soon. I’ve still not chosen the templates

Melissa

*affliliate links where possible- please use them to support my blog*

10 things on the 10th: Cards

It seems like the 10th is a busy time of the month for me!
I’m going to share 10 cards I’ve made (and the blog posts for some of them).
I hope you find them inspiring! Click on the image for a tutorial post or larger image.
 Tutorial - First birthday card



 Two wedding card ideas


 Glitter and stamped card tutorial

 Masculine card ideas
Want more card inspiration? Let me know you like it in my blog poll.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Thanks to Shimelle for the meme!
What are you doing today?
Melissa

*affliliate links where possible- please use them to support my blog*

Fathers Day Card ideas

An idea for a simple and effective father’s day card.

	Dad Shanhun just celebrated his birthday, and I thought I’d share it here. This idea would be perfect for Father’s Day.
I started with my go-to A5 folded card. You could cut and scorethe following cardstock (or any in your stash that will tone in with the paper you are using.	Bazzill Basics - Bulk Cardstock Pack - Orange Peel Texture - 25 Sheets - 8.5x11 White Scrapbook.com
I chose a masculine stonework patterned paper you could try:
Fancy Pants Designs - Like Father Like Son Collection - 12 x 12 Double Sided Paper - Big Guy Scrapbook.com	This digital one would work if you want to print something right now! E-Paper Kit - Chore Day 1 Scrapbook.com
I then used some glue tap to stick on 2 pieces of black satin ribbon:	American Crafts - This to That - Dot Glue Runner Refill - Permanent - 32 feet Scrapbook.com
and stuck on some letter stickers.	Queen and Company - Cardstock Stickers - Letters - Black on White Scrapbook.com

 

All in all I think it turned out looking great! Simple and effective!

New52 Crafting out and about

 

Image via CrunchBase

A few months ago I found this Craft meetup group in Perth and I finally got to go to the May meetup.
I really enjoyed meeting up with four other crafty women, who were knitting, crocheting and smocking, and of course chatting. I managed to use my Martha Stewart train punch, a few felt stickers and card stock to create a few cards while I was there. Emily came along and had a great time playing with the other toddlers.
I’ve missed the occasional crafting group I used to host in Kalgoorlie, it was fun to meet some new faces. I'm going to host the Meetup with Scarborough Crafts at my place in July – want to come?
Do you meet up with fellow hobbyists on a regular basis? It can be fun to meet new people and expand your skills! I’ve just started hosting digital scrapbooking workshops in Perth, with another one coming up on the 13th of June.

20+ weeks into the year I’m still going strong with the New 52 challenge, thanks for running it Peppermint & Christine! I’m finding that looking out for new experiences is helping me appreciate that my life even more. Read more New 52 posts:

• Bye-bye Oven
• Souvenirs
• Bible 90 Days Complete
• Watching Playschool
• Not such a good new thing
• Battle of the Facial Cleansers (I must update you all on this one!)
• Housesitting Edition

Melissa

*affliliate links where possible- please use them to support my blog*