I have seen a few craft projects online that involve layering with a single color (mostly on canvas), and I thought that would be the perfect technique to try with this card. The cloud and sunshine shapes are from the Silhouette Design Store, and the sentiment is from a retired Stampin Up set called, “Friendly Phrases”. I don’t see it on the Stampin up website anymore, but there are a few people who still sell it online. And what could possibly make this card any cuter more than 2 mini staples?! Nothing!

One of my favorite sentiment stamp sets is Pretty Phrases by Paper Smooches, which I used for this thank you card. If you haven’t noticed by now, I tend to make cards that are more simple than busy. This is an example of how less is more…you don’t need to add tons and tons of layers and different papers to achieve a sharp looking card. For the flowers I cut out two different sized ones with my Silhouette (although you could use any die cut machine or even cut them out free hand if you prefer), and added a button to top it off. My white ink is on it’s way out, so I ended up writing over the stamped sentiment with a white gel pen, but with fresh white ink it would look sharp right away.

My second semester in the ELED program we were assigned to create either a “book box” or a “book binder” as one of our final projects in my Literacy Methods class. I like the idea of a binder better, because it’s easier to store, so I went with that. And since one of my favorite children’s books is “The Day the Crayons Quit”, I based my phonics (and other) games off of that. (You could also use, “The Day the Crayons Came Home”). I got an A on the assignment, and was able to use it a few times in the classroom during my internship this past school year. The book was a favorite of my students, and they absolutely LOVED the games and activities that I made to go along with it. There is a picture of each game/activity plus a picture of the directions (except for the last picture, which are Crayon “puppets” used to retell the story…a great comprehension activity!). The “Color by Sight Word” activity I found on Teachers Pay Teachers (link here), as well as the game board (link here), and clip art (links here and here). The long vowel and short vowel boxes were cut using my Silhouette Cameo, but you could really use old crayon boxes with a label over them to make it easier.

I loved the paper/color combination from the last card that I also made a birthday card with it as well. I found a simple bunting cut file from Silhouette, poked holes in the top to thread some baker’s twine through, and used dimensional foam tabs to raise them up. I used the Happy Birthday stamp from Lawn Fawn’s So Much to Say set, but there are so many other different stamps and/or phrases that could be used, making this another versatile card!