Card Maker of the Year 2022

Every year, the Practical Publishing Company arranges a competition amongst crafters to choose 4 crafters who will get the title "Card Maker of the Year". In addition to huge prizes, the winners will be featured in the magazine "Simply Cards & Papercraft", and they will earn a spot on the Papercraft Magazines Design Team, meaning they’ll be commissioned to create projects for Simply Cards & Papercraft, Papercraft Essentials, Die-cutting Essentials and Creative Stamping! In other words, the winner´s papercrafting careers will change in the blink of an eye. Here are this years lucky winners.

I decided to try my luck, without having any expectations of being one of the lucky ones. So, a few weeks before the deadline, I created my entries, and sent them off in the mail. Two of the entries can be cards, while the third should be a different kind of papercrafted item.

For my two cards I made a Z Fold card, using papers from Graphic 45 - the three photos above, and a shaker card - below.

Then, for my third project, I decided to make a one page (12"x12") interactive mini-album. I called it "The Little Book of Samples". Since it has a many pages all holding some sort of sample, it takes a lot of photos to show everything! Please excuse all the photos below!🫣

Thanks for looking!😊

Bursts of Joy!🫧🐭🫧

Todays card is a Lawn Fawn Magic Iris card with the camera add-on. I have once again used some of the cute mice, this time with focus on the Bubbles of Joy stamp and die set.

I started out with a black card base, a metallic camera with black details, and then I built a scene with mice blowing and chasing bubbles on top of that.

I felt that the card would get too crowded if I put a sentiment on the front, so I stamped on the inside of the card instead. 🫧🐭🫧🐭🫧🐭🫧 It was a fun card to make!🫧🐭🫧 Thanks for looking!

A Trip Down Memory Lane!🥰

When I was 19, I spent a year as an AuPair on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I totally fell in love with the place, and I have many fond memories from my stay there!

When I took up card making I looked for interesting groups to follow on Facebook, and one of the groups I started following pretty early on was {creative chick} studio share. This group is run by Jenn Shurkus, or the {creative chick}, as she calls herself. Initially my main reason for asking for memebership in this group, was that she is based on Cape Cod, but she is also on Lawn Fawn´s creative team, a crafting brand that I like very much, AND she makes beautiful cards!🥰 The members in this group are mostly experienced card makers, so their posts are very beautiful and inspirational, and my makes definitely don´t match theirs in any way, so I never posted anything in the group. Not before now.

Earlier this week I received a messenger message from a friend of mine who wanted to show me what she had ordered from Lawn Fawn. We usually try to order our crafting supplies through stores based here in Norway, both because of shipping time and import taxes, however since our main Lawn Fawn supplier unfortunately closed her shop, my friend who is an avid Lawn Fawn fan has chosen to order directly from the States a couple of times now. We started to chat about a few of the items, and I mentioned that I had seen a video in which Jenn Shurkus, along with Kelly, the owner of Lawn Fawn, demonstrate making a couple of cards using the items in question. When talking about Jenn Shurkus, I happened to mention that I had bought a set of stamps form her a few years back, and that I hadn´t used them yet. My friend wanted me to send her a photo of the stamps, and then she challenged me to use them making a card, setting the deadline for the challenge to a week from when she gave me the challenge.

I immediately thought the stamps would go perfectly with Lawn Fawn´s Platform Pop-Up and the add-on dies.

I did the card in stages, as I didn´t have the time to sit down and finish it in one go. However, with a few trial and errors and some adjusting, I got it finished way before the deadline! I know a few changes I would have done if I were to do it again, but all in all I am pretty happy with it!

Thanks for looking!🥰