Yet another creative project completed this week ...

Am I the only person who gets in a creative mood for several days straight and then can't seem to do anything for another month? I've learned to take advantage of the mood. Otherwise, I end up with a lot of unfinished projects!

I've been working on this card set off and on during the week. It's finally finished, so I thought I'd share it.

I try to make all of our greeting cards. My husband has 10 siblings, I have 2, and that makes for a lot of card-sending occasions (especially when they have big families, too). Since I scrapbook and love all things paper, I have plenty of supplies on hand and it makes this even more economical than buying cards at the dollar store (which I still do in a pinch).

Speaking of the dollar store, the inspiration for this card set were these gorgeous sunflower stickers from Dollar Tree (everything $1). I picked them up once, knowing I could make some beautiful cards with them. There were over 30 stickers on the sheet (it's double-sided), so I knew I was getting a great deal.

... But that was several months ago, and inspiration had not struck since then. Fast forward to February when I'm needing quite a few cards. Suddenly I remembered those sunflower stickers and pulled them out, as well as cardstock and patterned paper that I had on hand and coordinated quite well.

I stared at it for awhile and then had a brilliant idea. Why not pull out those free card sketches from Page Maps? And then I had an even more brilliant idea. Why not number my stickers (see below) so I could plan out all the cards at once and then sit down and make them all, making the best use of the stickers as possible?
So that's what I did! I started with the big stickers and looked for card designs that would highlight them. Then I planned the smaller stickers for the more "design-intensive" cards. I wrote down which sketch I planned to use and which sticker(s) I planned to use with it. (Yes, I'm a planner!!)
When I was done, I had 12 cards and just a few stickers left. Not bad for about $2.00 worth of materials!

I'm thinking about using the leftover stickers on a gift journal.
A note about card sizes:

• The smaller rectangular cards fit into invitation-sized envelopes.
• The larger rectangular cards fit into standard business-sized envelopes.
• The square cards are 6" and are part of a blank set I bought secondhand (with the envelopes) for this purpose. Since they cost extra to mail, I like to use these mainly for hand-delivered cards.

Obviously these are female-oriented birthday cards. I had the most pressing need for them at the moment, but I'm going to be needing some youth- and male-oriented cards soon, too, so I'm hoping to get a minute to stop in at the Dollar Tree again next week to look for some stickers ... And I'm hoping that my creativity holds out for a few more days!