I wish I were craftier

I have this idea in my head that I can make our referral announcements. I bought some yuzen paper (and probably need some more since I now think that I should line my envelopes) and some Chinese knots and have sort of a mental image of these cool Asian-inspired cards using b&w copies of Nora's referral photo and some of these items I've collected.

The problem is, of course, that I have a proven lack of talent for paper crafts. Truthfully, I think it's probably more a lack of patience than anything else. I've tried scrapbooking - for Nora's One Hundred Good Wishes Quilt project - and the first few pages came out really nice, but the quality eventually declined to the point of just sticking notes on a piece of plain black card stock.

The cards, though, are a smaller project and will be repetitive once I get a design that I like. I think I can do this ... and for a little inspiration (and help with technique) I enrolled in a two-hour card making class at Archiver's.

My class was tonight after work and I got to make the four cards shown at the left (there was no choice in the matter - we had to make them exactly the way the instructor said without deviation, anything else was "wrong"). Aside from the rigidity in the projects, It was a pretty good class and I got to use lots of new products that I didn't even know existed -- clear stamps, watermark ink, precut card parts.

The pre-cut card parts were actually the best part of the evening. Archiver's has a new line of card-making supplies called "Yours Truly" that has a huge assortment of pre-cut, pre-scored cards, envelopes and stickers in really great colors (including chocolate brown and 3 shades of pink!). I'm going to need to go back with one of my Chinese knots and a swatch of yuzen paper and spend a little bit of time experimenting with the different colors and card parts. I think that there's a lot that you can do with just the precut stuff and some adhesive. Imagine the time and frustration you could save without having to cut everything yourself! This is my kind of craft!

Hopefully someday soon I'll have a referral announcement to show you!