Surprise Card Swap

This weekend at CKC-Portland a couple of gals showed up thinking there was a card swap happening only to discover that there was not. I felt so bad for them. And so I posted a sign saying we would hold a card swap on Saturday at noon and if anyone wanted to participate, bring 20 cards. I also stated we may not have many swappers, but we'll swap with whoever shows up. And of course, I would participate.

No biggie except I didn't have any cards to swap and no supplies to make cards (although I happened to have brought my tools with me, just no paper and other stuff). Luckily, there was a Vendor Faire full of supplies I could purchase. So off to shop I went.

We had green card bases for the Friday night crop - grabbed 20 of those.

Stopped at Technique Tuesday and found two stamp sets that I HAD to have. One was Thank You sentiments in Ali Edwards' handwriting:

The other was a stamp I saw earlier this year and fell in instantly in love with (the tree/swing image is one stamp and the words are two other stamps):

Next came the ribbon. I found this crinkly brown ribbon that was perfect. Not sure who makes it but I found several references on the Internet for making something similar (wrinkled rayon seam binding).

Then I was meandering down the aisles and spotted Flower Soft (their web site wasn't working when I wrote this so here's a link to their blog). I have wanted to play with this for quite awhile and this stamp seemed perfect for it. So I picked up two little jars of peach. In case you are wondering what Flower Soft is, it is little pieces of something that resembles flocking but seems more like little pieces of fabric. Not sure what it is, but it is used to add dimension to projects and is beautiful for flowers, trees, bushes, and more.

More wandering and Boxer Scrapbooks suggested some paper, which was perfect with the brown ink I had planned and the peach Flower Soft.

Then adhesive. I had brought a little with me, but not enough to make 20 cards. A friend suggested trying the Embellishment Glue Stick from Pioneer Photo Albums. I was quite skeptical as I have used glue sticks in the past and they typically don't stick after a few hours. But Roger with Pioneer said I would really like it, so I gave it a try. It was AMAZING!!!! I used it to adhere the ribbon to the paper and it is still stuck (even after being smashed into my suitcase). I have a couple of their regular glue sticks to try too so we'll see how that goes as well.

Supplies in hand I was off to create. I think that creating late at night and under pressure were a pretty good combination. I didn't agonize over the design too much and opted to not include a sentiment. Here's the final card:

It's a simple card, but I like it! It was fun to create and fun to swap with the ladies in Portland.