I’ve posted a couple times now however I haven’t talked at all about the different crafty projects going on. So this post is dedicated to those things.

Awhile ago, at the suggestion/urging from a friend of mine, I joined a yahoo group called The World of Magenta Rubber Stamps. Magenta being the name of a rubber stamp company(they are based out of Canada). Each month there is a swap with a theme and you use their stamps, papers and embellishments to make cards. It is always for either artist trading cards and greeting cards. Of the 4 I’ve done this year only one has been for the cards. I decided to start with the ATC’s because of their smaller form. One of the reason I decided to join this group is because I love their stamps and papers. The images are original and unique, which is a fresh bit of air. Not to mention their stamps produce great impressions and are all made in Canada.

For my Four Seasons theme I decided to find an image of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons for the background. The stamp I used already has 4 trees and each was given a season.

This swap was dedicated to Girly stuff; purses, shoes, hair things, chocolate, etc! It was a fun swap to do and I loved the ones I got back for it. I kept mine simple with a shopping bag and some chocolate.

For this next one it was themed How Romantic. Which was also the first one I did. I tried to make each card different but quickly realized that it was really hard and ran out of idea after about four cards. The three pictured here were my favorite out of the 10 I did. I used a bunch of different ideas in order to change things for each card. Often they included using the ink pad for background shading or to create flower petal(such as the ones in two of these cards).

This last one is the most recent swap I’ve participated in. It’s also my first one for greeting cards. The theme was Butterflies and Dragonflies. I enjoyed doing this one. Overall I really like making cards for people so I suppose it’s not really surprising that I would enjoy these. Every card uses the same three colors and two stamps(the background diamond pattern and butterfly set) however each card was laid out slightly different. I didn’t have a dragonfly stamp(although I looked for one to buy) so I had to draw them out by hand. I guess it helps to give them that extra personal touch.