Bethie's Cards

May Projects

I have been working on more new projects, techniques and ideas for my cards this month.  It's been painfully slow in my Etsy shop, so I thought I'd keep busy creating new cards.  

It's kind of a shame that there aren't more customers shopping on Etsy these days and I have had very few sales.  At the beginning of the year, my card business took off.  I was so excited!  I thought...hmmm...guess the people that said it takes several years before you have lots of sales was true.  Jan and Feb were terrific months!  March showed a slow down for sure and April and May are even slower.  

I know the slowness has been blamed on everything under the sun, from the economy, tax time, the upcoming election and the weather.  It might be from the changes Etsy made or it might just be my shop.  I already know I'm not the best photographer and my new place isn't helping either as the lighting is just awful, even outside.  I do the best that I can.  That's all I can do.

So, without further ado, here are the projects I've been working on.  I hope you like them.  I had fun creating them :)

New Baby Cards

Cute little heart cut out card for baby girls.  The card features hand embossed front with a heart cut out of it, another heart die cut from pink, a pink bow die cut with a bunny button hanging from the bow and "Baby" die cut from pink.  The layers on the front are backed with foam, making the card dimensional.  The inside is blank and the card comes with an envelope.

A fun paper zebra with a turtle on it's back wishing a Happy 1st Birthday card.  

This card I used some new stitched square dies I bought and added foam under layers to make the card dimensional. I love the stitched edges because it gives the card a more finished look.  And, I love using these dimensional safari animal stickers!

The inside is blank and comes with a white envelope.

Well, what to do with all the little animals I had made?  I decided to use them on a baby card announcing the arrival of a baby using a gray koala with a fun turquoise little flower on it's right ear.

I hand embossed some swiss dots, tried my hand at a new stamp and was successful, so added that long the bottom of the card and added a bit of lacey ribbon to the front of the card. For the card base, I used white and added a soft blue piece of card stock on the front.  The inside is blank and it comes with an envelope.

For this Baby card, I used several different dies and some very shiny silver paper that reflects lots of different colors depending upon where the light is coming from.

The card base is white and is layered with purple.  I used my new stitched scalloped dies for the different layers of lavenders and silver, then a circle die and a dimensional paper elephant.  I die cut "Baby" from lavender and added that as well.  The inside is blank and it comes with an envelope.

This cute little first birthday card features a dimensional paper monkey, die cut Happy Birthday in pink and two different layers using my new stitched square dies.  

I had a left over Easter tag, used that and hand colored a foam #1 in pink, added it to the tag and glued it so it looks like the monkey is holding onto it.  I also added some foam under the top layer for dimension.  The inside is blank and comes with an envelope.

Birthday Cards

I originally made this zebra Happy Birthday shaker card without a number inside the window, but I decided to put whatever the child's birthday number was in.  These are not completely assembled until the customer tells me what year their child is celebrating, then I will add the number and finish the card up.  

Lots of fun "bling" inside the window for lots of "shaking" and it's done in pink for that special little girl's birthday.  

Since I was cutting a bunch of different numbers for the above shaker card, I had an idea to combine them in random order along with some hand punched butterflies, keeping it simple, doing it in white and stamping Happy Birthday in black in. 

In the listing, you also have the option to pick a number, for instance, the 2 next to the birthday, and do it in pink or blue.  That number depends upon the age of the child and will be changed accordingly.

This was way too much fun to create and to let my imagination run wild!  This is the first slider card I ever made and since I had all these fun safari animal stickers and paper, that's the theme I decided to use for this card.  

I didn't have the die to cut out the slider area, so I had to do it by hand.  It's not perfect, but it works and the orange puffy tiger slides from the left to the right and back again.  I added a puffy palm tree and two cute little puffy turtles and die cut Happy Birthday from black card stock.  The card has some foam under it for dimension.  The inside is blank.

This was the second slider card I made using a puffy toucan and did it using circle dies.  The front is dimensional and features multi colored stars with a circle area cut from it.  The greeting area is die cut using a smaller circle, hand stamped and added inside the larger circle.  I added the puffy colorful toucan that slides around the circle.

This card did sell and I made another one...just have to list it.

The inside is blank and it comes with an envelope.

I've had these cardboard painted owls for quite some time and decided to put them into little cut out windows.

The card front is a very colorful plaid paper with white card stock that I hand cut two little window areas and adhered an owl in each window.  I also die cut Happy Birthday from the same plaid card stock and added some tiny little stars around the front.  The inside is blank.

I bought a new happy birthday stamp I had had my eye on for months.  I used it three different ways to create three different looking birthday cards.

This will surely be my go to stamp for birthday card making.  I'd actually like to make sets just using the stamped greeting on a plain card.

I already make the fish bowl and the fish as separate cards, so, seeing how fun shaker cards are to make it seemed like the perfect marriage.

I put some die cut fish into a die cut fish bowl, added tons of bling and die cut Birthday Wishes and this fun fish bowl shaker card was born.  I sold one already, so I made another :)

 So, that's some of the fun things I've been keeping busy making during the month of May.

Thank you to all of my customers who visited my shop in the previous months as well as this month.  I appreciate your business and hope you'll stop in again!!

Thanks so much for stopping by and stay tuned....I'm already working on Christmas cards and more new cards for my shop!!