Christmas Cards/Thank You Cards--25 for $10

Get charming original Christmas Cards for a great price. I am currently offering my Christmas and Thank You cards for 10 for $5 or 25 for $10. You can choose any combination of the three cards to make your set of 10 or 25. All the designs are my designs and they have been professionally printed on an offset printing press. The outside has a shiny gloss coating. The cards are 5.5"x4.25" and include envelopes.

Advent Calendars--$10

These cute advent calendars are made with sheet metal and vinyl lettering. A NeoGem designer magnet is moved along the numbers of the tree to count down to Christmas day. There are two options for bow colors.

Large Magnet Boards--$25

These magnet boards are approximately 9 1/4" x 19" and come with three NeoGem designer magnets. Perfect for displaying photos, artwork and other mementos, these would make a great gift for a mother or grandmother.

Small Magnet Boards--$20

These magnet boards are approximately 9 1/4" square. They come with two NeoGem designer magnets and provide a great place to display pictures, artwork, certificates or anything else. The lettering is done with vinyl and can be custom ordered to any saying. The boards are finished with an interior matte varnish. As a natural feature of wood, these boards have some distressed marks.

Magnet Sets Currently for Sale--$5

Pictured are the magnet sets I currently have for sale. The finished magnets are just over 1/2" wide and have a strong rare earth magnet.

New Products and Somerville Craft Fair

Saturday is the Somerville Craft Fair and I've been busy getting ready. Here are some pictures of some of my new products.

This magnet board is for my in-laws for Christmas. The magnets are pictures of all the grandkids. I liked how it turned out.

I made a bunch of magnet sets with new designs. I also finally made a make-shift light box in order to get some decent pictures of them. Here is one set.

These advent calenders were still hard to photograph, even in the light box. The sheet metal reflects everything so much. But, you can see most of the details in this photo. The magnet is an ornament with gold bells that I designed in Photoshop.

I made Christmas block sets in two styles. One says "Season's Greetings," the other says "Merry Christmas." I really liked the gold vinyl I used for the pictures. It was a nice addition to the red, green and white Christmas colors.

Here is a large magnet board. I made a few of these with different sayings.

Christmas cards are ordered!

I finally finished my Christmas cards and sent them off to be printed. I made two designs--one a little whimsical and the other more formal. I will be selling them as a 10 pack for $5 and the 10 can be all of one kind, half and half, or any other combination.

As I was designing the whimsical card, I started with the tree. It needed something more, but I wasn't sure what to put. As my mind wandered, I thought of one of my husband's former colleagues who is obsessed with anything to do with penguins and suddenly I had my inspiration for how to finish the card. I started with one penguin, but it soon evolved to three penguins caroling. Hopefully it inspires a few holiday smiles.


The formal card has a very "paper-crafted" look. I designed the layers to have a rough linen paper texture and used a rustic color palette. The combination hints to me of wood smoke and thick blankets.

New Items!

I have a new line of magnets called "NeoGems." These are made with clear glass flat marbles and neodymium magnets. I hope to get some festive sets put together this week. I just need to find a better way to get pictures of them.

Here are a few new wood and vinyl creations. First, a 6"x24" wall plaque just in time for Halloween. The blue vinyl is actually purple--it didn't photograph well either.

Next are a couple of 10"x10" magnet boards for hanging photos. My daughter is begging me to make her one to hang her artwork on.

Holiday Decorations

These four block sets make cute holiday decorations. I will be designing more over the next few weeks for the October Farmers Markets as well as for the First Friday/Art Step event at the St. Andrews Episcopal Church on October 2nd from 5PM to 9PM.

Word Art 6" Tiles

I made a couple 6" tiles with sayings on them. I plan to make a bunch more of these with different sayings. The pictures aren't the best because I was taking them at night with no natural light. Hopefully future ones will have better pictures.

New Vinyl Word Art Products!

I recently added vinyl word art home decor items to my line of products. Here are my first designs. More to come soon! Special requests are also taken. Be sure to look for me at the Farmers Market in Bryan on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays.

Beautiful Baby Girl Birth Announcement

Here is a great announcement I just finished for a friend (info changed for privacy). Her little girl is so darling and the colors of the announcement turned out beautiful.

Best Wishes Card

Here's my next card. While making this card, I finally figured out how to make a realistic bow in Photoshop. I had made some grosgrain ribbon for my family blog and had tried making a bow with it, but the first two attempts were very flat and not so great. The third finally looked like a nice bow. Maybe I'll revise the family blog now to incorporate the bow. Anyway, here is the front and a simple inside for a "Best Wishes" card. I intended it to be generic enough that it could be used for all sorts of occasions where "best wishes" would be appropriate. Also, I was playing with a glitter style. Not sure if it works or not. If anyone has an opinion, leave a comment on whether the glitter on the flowers should stay or go. Enjoy!

Thank You Card

I decided a thank you card was a good stock card that is useful to a lot of people. For this one, I started with making the background paper. This was actually created using my first seamlessly tiling pattern. I started with drawing the flower and swirl pattern in Illustrator and then colored them in Photoshop and created the tile. For the words, I had originally envisioned them as hung on a clothes line with clothes pins holding them on, but that idea quickly changed to being machine sewn to the card. I enjoyed working with all the fun, bright colors of the letter papers.

For this one, I took the plunge and sent it off to a offset printer to print a gazillion rather than just a few at the local copy store. I think they turned out really nice. They are printed on a high quality cover paper with a glossy finish on the front. The printing is very sharp. I had nightmares about having uploaded files wrong so that the inside was turned the wrong way, but they came back looking perfect. Another nice part of the offset printer was the inside could be full color. So, if anyone needs Thank You cards, message me with how many you need and I can give you a price quote. They will be about 50 cents a piece. If you need a whole bunch, we can work out a lower price.

Feminine Birthday Card

After completing my rainbow trout birthday card, I decided to make one that was more feminine. I struggled with inspiration on this one. I started with a picture of the first rose that bloomed on a rose bush my husband planted at our new house. The picture had turned out beautiful, but the rose just didn't fit with the paper. I'm not sure why not, but it looked out of place. I tried blending it in with various artistic filters and framing it, but nothing really helped enough. So, the rose got cut--hopefully you'll see it on a future project.

While still working with the rose, I started playing around with the pressed tin action from atomiccupcake.com. I love this action. It creates the most fun elements. It was such a fun element that I decided to make it the main focus of the card instead of the rose. Here is the result.

Birthday Card for Men

I tried to design a birthday card for a man that had both a scrapbook style, but masculine. My father loves to fish and he taught me to enjoy it as well, so I was inspired by a picture of a trout. I first started by drawing just a picture of a trout like you'd see in a textbook--inanimate and boring. I didn't like the result. Then, I got the idea of a trout jumping out of the frame to bite a dry fly. My new trout was so much more animated and alive. Here is the end result. Thanks to my sister Carrie for her great feedback! I hope you like it.

Pressed Tin Birth Announcements

I created two new birth announcements. This time, I decided to do them with a scrapbook style. They feature torn paper edges and pressed tin embellishments. Colors can be easily customized and the photos feature an almost black and white photo and a sepia photo. Photos can be altered to be full color, black and white, sepia, or anything in between.

Pinstripe Birth Announcement

This announcement can be customized for a boy or girl. I designed it for my etsy.com shop, so I just put photos of my children in it for now. The background elements could be changed to any color.