Feb: Gettin' Crafty Update

While I probably haven't succeeded with getting crafty every single day this month, I've actually done pretty darn well so far! It helps that I had two Valentine card clubs this week, so I had a ton of design and prep to keep me busy! Here's some evidence that I've been enjoying some creative time...

Valentine's Day Card Club Designs 

(I also recreated all 4 of last year's designs for one of my groups who wanted to make 8 cards!)

And a bonus mini 3x3:

Belly Blankies
One sent to a friend, one sold to a friend of a friend of a friend. (Yay for sales to people I don't know!)

Miscellaneous Cards
For birthdays and hellos.

Digital Crafting!
I created my very first digital design for Chinese New Year, then printed these cards on photo paper at home and sent them out to the fam.

I was SUPER excited to put something together on my own, rather than having to purchase a design from Etsy or buying photo cards from a retailer. I used Picnik, following these super easy instructions from the Tatum Tales blog.

A few quick lessons learned:

• You must register for Picnik (free) before you're able to see the functionality to build a collage. 
• Finalize your background colors, photo positioning, and layout before moving on to the text edits. Once you save that first part, there's no going back (that I can tell) without starting all over (which I had to do because I accidentally created an odd sized image, which then wouldn't print properly on 4x6 paper). 
• Speaking of printing on 4x6 paper, even with (what I think was) proper proportions, it still bled off a little (or showed some white space) when I printed at home, so I had to print with white borders to make it look good. Not a problem, but good to know that I'll need to expect an extra white border in the future. 
• Using Picnik is great because it's free and easy, but it sure makes me wish I knew how to use all the wonderful CS software I have. It would be nice to be able to make further, and much more detailed edits (I'm anal that way). But, for now, I'll enjoy the ability to do some simple digital design work during naptime!

And finally, a glance at the Bitty entertaining herself while mom was getting her craft on!