My First Giveaway!

I am holding a little contest on my 19Eighty Expressions Facebook page.  Here are the details!

1.  Become a fan of 19Eighty Expressions on Facebook

2.  Guess the theme of my latest project and leave a comment on 19Eighty Expressions' Facebook page with your guess.

3.  Share the giveaway with friends and family via Facebook or any other social media outlet.

That's all!  Super easy.

The first person to guess the theme correctly will receive a set (that's a clue) of my newest creation.
 
The winner will be announced on Monday, May 30th.

Good luck and have a great day!!


19Eighty Expressions Facebook Fan Page

New Adventure...Invitations!

I know I said my other blog would be for my cards but I HAD to show you this.  I am so in love with them.

I never planned on making invitations for others.  I know how stressful a large order can be for someone like me who works fulltime so I never considered it.  That has changed though.   A few months ago I was contacted by a friend to make invites for her son's birthday and I agreed to make them.  Since then people have been telling me they plan on ordering invites from me for various occasions, mostly birthdays, so I guess now I am doing invitations.  I don't mind one bit.  In fact I completed my first invite order this weekend.

These invitations are for a birthday party that will take place at a movie theater.  I put my creative mind to work and came up with an idea but once I started working on it the entire invitation changed from what I had originally planned.  Instead of a one-sided invitation I ended up with a two-sided invitation and much more detail than I imagined.  I love how they turned out.

Movie theater-themed birthday invite

Front: The *stars* name is 3D

Back: info side

A bucket of popcorn spills across the card

I shipped these out yesterday and I cannot wait for the client to receive them.  I wish I could be there to see her daughter's face when she sees them.  I am looking forward to the next invite order now!

First card order = COMPLETE!

The title tells all!  I am finally done.  It was fun making the cards and it seems I may have gotten another order...a custom order this time.  Yippee.

Today's card, the one that has completed my first card order, is so adorable!  I had to get some inspiration for this one so I used the site www.pinterest.com and consulted my "board" for ideas.  I'll get into detail about Pinterest in another post.  OK, and here is the unveiling....dun dun dun!

Just Because sentiment card

Adorned with a purple ribbon and pink flower

I made a second card (this is the one that I made for the order).

Heat embossed with sparkle powder

Isn't it cute?  It is simple yet beautiful and I probably used some of the paper I bought a Joann's yesterday.  I actually made two cards, one for the order and one for etsy.

Oh did I mention I went to Michael's today.  Oh gosh did I go crazy there too!  I bought the stamp I used for this card out of the dollar bin.  Awesome deal!

Paper Galore!

Oh my goodness did I go crazy at Joann's today.  I walked in there intent on raiding the open stock paper.  It is on sale for 6 for $.96.  This is the best sale I've seen on open stock paper anywhere so of course when I saw it in an ad a few weeks ago I was excited and impatient.  They don't have their paper this cheap too often so now is the time to buy and buy I did.

I walked in a few minutes after they opened and walked straight to the paper.  I was like a madwoman and by the time I had raided just two sections I was overloaded.  I had to take a step back and reassess my game plan.  How is it that I already had over 100 sheets of cardstock and I had only gone through two of the rows?  I know how...madness!  I put it all the paper back in their proper slots, left the store and went to my car for a moment to breathe.  "OK, there's no way I can buy 4 of each color paper, that's insane" is pretty much what I told myself while standing at my car trying to figure out how to go about calmly buying paper.

After a few minutes I was ready to go back in.  This time around I slowly grabbed one of each color cardstock and a few of some of the colors I already have plans for.  I went to the decorative paper next and did the same, well kind of.  I grabbed two of some that I really liked.  I counted the paper after I was done and had about 250 sheets.  OH GOSH...still way too many!  I went through each piece and put back some of the duplicates I had grabbed of the decorative paper and whittled down the amount of paper I had by a little but not much at all.

Next it was off to embossing powders and embossing folders.  I found a jar of sparkle powder for $1.97 on clearance.  Not too bad.  I also bought two sets of two embossing folders that were originally $15.99 but on clearance for $6!!  Woohoo!  Two are obviously Christmas folders but the other two can be used for any occasion.  I still had a 50% off one item coupon so I bought a ribbon I can us for Valentine cards and my adventure was over.  I made sure it was over.  I had to.  I knew the total was going to come out to way more than I had planned on spending.  Oops!

I apologized as I walked to the cash register.  The nice customer I was, I set up the paper for the cashier so all the barcodes were on the same side as she was scanning.  She chatted with me as she rang up my massive amount of paper and we joked about how long the receipt was.  What if I needed to return something?!  Hahaha.  The damage wasn't too bad but still a nice chunk of change.  But guess what?  I  have plenty of paper to last me forever!  Now all I need is more storage!  

The longest receipt ever

Get Well card

I have two more cards left to make for my first order!  Yay!  Tomorrow Joann's is having their 6/$.96 sale on open stock paper.  I am so excited for that.  I have to stock up on a ton of paper so I can recreate some of the cards I've already made.

Here is today's card.  "Get Well".

I used my usual techniques on this card: inking, dry embossing, and powder embossing.  This card is similar to the one I sent to my grandparents but I loved the color combo so much that I had to make another using the same paper.  There are some differences to this one.

Well, I'm off.  It's date night with the hubby!

Adorable cards!

Oh do I have some cute cards to show you tonight!  I think they are ADORABLE!

First, some news though.  I decided it was time to open an etsy shop.  It was actually kind of scary.  All these questions kept going through my mind like will any of my cards sell?  Will people like them?  Are they good enough quality, etc.  I guess that's normal when starting a new adventure.  I'm totally fine now though.

For those that don't know, etsy is an online forum for people to sell their handmade items along with other types of products.  I got my first order the other day and that's what prompted me to open an etsy shop.  I don't have many items to sell quite yet but I'm working on it.   

I have been working daily on stocking my shop and here are the 3 cards I have completed so far:

New Baby Congrats Card

Onsies make up the banner

Cupcake bday card

Isn't the cupcake adorable?

Can't forget the little boys!

Boy bday card

So there are my prides and joys for this week.  Not sure what else I will come up with in the next few days but I'll be adding pictures here and posting to my etsy shop as I go.  My etsy shop link is as follows:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/19Eighty

Enjoy!

Seeing Spots

I have two cards to post but I'll just post one for now.  This one came from SVG Cuts' A2 Cards for all Occasions.  I didn't have to do any embossing or inking with the exception of on the tag because there's already so much going on with it.  It's a cute card.

 

Smile!

The other day I decided to try and cheer someone up by making them a card.  This person is going through a rough time and I thought she needed a smile.  Here is the card I came up with.

Oh so pretty

Stamped & embossed

Embossed w/Cuttlebug and inked

 I don't think this person received the card as of yet.  They don't live within the state I live in so it may take a few days.  I sure do hope I sent it to the correct address!  It would be a shame for it to float around in mail space for too long.

The flower is from the 3D Flower Collection II from www.svgcuts.com.

I used the Cuttlebug to emboss the flower petals and also the background on the card.

Hope this card made someone smile. 

Valentine's Day Card

My friend had a great idea the other day while I was at her house.  She said we should make Valentine's Day cards for our husbands.  Ahh, how I loved that idea seeing that I keep trying to find reasons to make cards!

I wanted to make one that wasn't too girlie yet not too manly so I kind of combined the two.

I think the grey strip makes it less girlie.

Caption

Blinged out with hearts

I love the silhouette of the children.  I searched images for children kissing and this came up.  I had to work some magic in Photoshop to make it show up correctly in my program (Make the Cut) but I was so happy when I made it happen.  I am easily pleased.

The grey strip down the side reminds me of a mechanic shop or something.  The the tearing made it more rough and not so "put together".  I was a little iffy about it but I stuck it on there and added some ribbon to dress it up a little.

For the "I Love You" caption I used a rotary cutter my mother-in-law bought me for Christmas then inked the edges.  I also stamped the "I Love You" then embossed it with clear embossing powder.  I LOVE that rotary cutter and my heating tool!  The heating tool I got from my sister as a Christmas present.  As for the cutter, I used to use the scissors for cutting but trying to make your cuts straight was a pain so the rotary cutter has made life much easier.  It came with a few different blade options, one of them being a scouring blade which I have been using to make a bend in the pop up card captions. 

Speaking of pop-up card captions, I did a pop-up "I Love You" in the inside and attempted to glitter it but it came out terrible.  Sorry, no pictures of that will be posted but Andrew gets to see it when he gets the card.  Haha, yes I plan to give it to him with the ugly "I Love You" glitter words.  Hey, I tried.

Pretty in Blue

This Thank You card is for my grandparents who sent me a very generous graduation gift.

Double layer flower

Embossed handwriting

I love ink.  Can you tell?

Inside: Pop up "Thank You"

Added a silver outline right before I mailed it out.

I purchased the Premium Pop-up card set from www.svgcuts.com to make this card.

Colorful Hawaiian Delight

I think this blog has turned into a showcase for my creations rather than what it originally was intended for...everyday life.  Oops!

Today I finished another Hawaii honeymoon page.  It started out as a big mess but I made it work somehow.  Andrew has actually been giving me input from time to time on my projects and he had the idea to make the flowers stick up to give the page dimension.  Great idea!  He is seriously amazingly creative.  I can't even imagine what he would come up with if he did this.

Well, on to the fun stuff!  Here are the pictures.  It's really hard to just pic one or two pictures to post so here are a ton.

Full page shot.  For some reason I can't rotate it.

Embossed with Cuttlebug and Swiss Dots folder then inked

Detail shot

Stamps & marker embossed then glittered

Embossed with Cuttlebug using various folders then inked

Raised flower

I like detail shots!

Hope you enjoyed!  It's not easy coming up with ideas out of nowhere and this is exactly what I did with this one.  I started off with doing it one way but that didn't look right so on it went until this happened.

I have no clue what my next page will be but I know it will be fun to make.  Actually I think my next project will be a Thank You card for my grandparents.  That sounds nice.  It will be a break from making a 12x12 page.  Cards are so much easier to make.