Saturday snail mail...

This week I have been trying to cut up a lot of my cardstock and papers into frequently-used sizes for card making, to better organize my desk and make it quicker and easier to create.  Of course, cutting up all that paper left me with a few scraps, mostly of a usable size, which I saved in a designated place of their own.  But with almost every sheet I was left with about a 1" x 1" square, which I considered too small to save...and yet I kept pushing them off to the side of my work space rather than throwing them away.

After all that cutting, my desk needed a good tidying up, and a day or so later I went in to clean up.  When I got to that pile of little squares, I challenged myself to make a card with them...because...you know...creating is more fun than cleaning.  :)  The stamped flower was actually a scrap too, from a previous project, and was also still lying on the desk.  I kind of like the bold color blocking contrasted with the delicate flower.

The sunset-like panel on this one was an experiment.  Again, it has been lying on my desk for a few weeks.  It occurred to me recently that I should create some cards that are more masculine, and I thought this one could be used toward that end.

Here's a little back story.  Carey got a card from his mom for his birthday, and the card she sent was one that I had sent to her recently.  (When I send her a card, I leave it blank and just tuck a note inside.  I also enclose it inside two envelopes, so that I address the outer envelope and then she is left with a blank card/envelope set ready to use for her own correspondence.)  

My mistake has been in sending her only cards that she would think are pretty, because I realized that the card she sent Carey was decidedly 'girly.'  LOL  My dear mother-in-law has FOUR sons and lots of grandsons.  Why have I not thought about making her some more masculine-themed cards to have on hand?!

Another one that was made to use up scraps and be more manly.  :)

And another.  The tweed-print paper was in the dregs leftovers of a pad of assorted papers.  It doesn't look like dregs anymore; I kind of wish I had some more of it.

I moved away from scraps for this one above as well as the one below.  They were CASED from cards I saw on Pinterest made by Carolyn King. 

Back to scraps.  Not completely masculine, but not overtly feminine.  

In the coming week or so, I will send her all of the cards above as a set for her use.

This was one I dropped in the mail for a birthday a couple of weeks ago.  See the similarity to the sunset-like second card at the top of this post?  This one definitely has more soothing colors however.

This one was also mailed a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't want to post either of them to the blog before I was pretty sure they were received.  This one was so fun to make.

And I loved the way it looked so bright and cheerful in that yellow envelope.

Okay, back to chores.  I've got a ton of things to get done yet this weekend.