A to Z Blogging: C is for Creating Cards

I started scrapbooking in 1989.  My first album contained about a million photos all cropped to the most essential elements, hundreds of Mrs. Grossman's stickers and journaling in every color pen imaginable.  It was the beginning of an era for me that has morphed into all sorts of interesting side hobbies.

A few years later a scrapbook store opened in the shopping center where I went to Curves every morning, and I thought I had arrived at the portal of heaven on earth.  Eventually I got a job there, more to offset the expense of my enormous appetite for printed papers, three dimensional stickers, and a multitude of tools and embellishments I had never even imagined existed, much less could be used for paper crafting.

Eventually, my kids grew up and left home and my best friend and scrapbooking buddy died of cancer and I lost interest in putting photos in albums. Since I had accumulated obscene amounts of materials, I had to figure out a use for them.  Enter my second favorite thing--greeting cards.

Is there anything as splendid as getting a card in the mail?  It doesn't matter to me if there is a reason (birthday, anniversary, holiday) or not, I love sending and receiving mail in an envelope.  So, I started with the copious piles of scraps I had leftover from all my albums and began making birthday cards for the family.  Eventually I made them to sell, opened an Etsy shop, and have continued to create them through the years.  According to many recipients, they are nice enough to horde as keepsakes.

Here are a few of the cards I have made that rank among my personal favorites, although to be fair, I have only made a few I didn't really like. :)

I have a separate blog for my creative pursuits, although I admit I haven't updated it in a while, but if you are interested in scrolling through some of my other artistic endeavors, I invite you to browse here.