Mother's Day Weekend Cardmaking

Our Kid #2, Matt, has had a very frustrating and disappointing track season.  He started off great--set several personal records in his first two meets, in the cold. snow, rain.  They were brutal meets.  I knew that he had a really good season coming up, especially given that he had worked so hard all winter with a local track club.  He was in the best physical shape of his life and poised in his junior year spring to have the track season of his life.  Then something happened.  In his third meet, he ran in the distance medley relay and after running the 800m leg, he was walking around the next day like he was a crippled old man.  We ruled out an inguinal hernia.  After X-Rays, and two rounds of MRIs, we found out last week that he has a stress fracture of his right femur.  It's no wonder he was in pain.  Now he's on crutches and is to put no weight on that leg for 6-8 weeks.

Since Matt has not been running, I have been able to take the time when I would normally be at his meets and use that time to stay caught up at the office.  I also used the time yesterday to work on some cards.  I have been wanting to make some sympathy cards for patients who have recently passed away at the office. You will have to wait til my next post to see those.  (TEASER!!)  I still need to put some wording on the fronts of those cards.

After I completed the greeting cards, I decided to work on the stack of leftover pages that I had mis-cut for my Gelli Print book, and work with those to make note cards.

The top photo is of the cards, closed.  I put in a white sheet of light weight card stock in the inside for writing and the bottom sheet shows the cards, opened.  The bottom center card was printed on an old dictionary page that I had used as a "roll-off" page to clean my brayer!

The middle left card is another dictionary brayer clean-off page. 

The dictionary page cards are really fragile (bottom left).  It is an old science dictionary made of sections that were bought weekly at Krogers when I was in primary school.  Who would ever have thought that it would be torn up and printed on 45 years later?!  

See that card on the bottom right?  That card was printed on a Crate and Barrel bag!

 Bottom left card was printed on brown paper used from a bag from the store!

Look at how different these cards are on the inside compared to what they look like on the outside.  Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but I like the element of surprise.  

I was debating putting a block with a greeting on the front but these have so many layers of pattern and color so I think it would detract from the card design to put something else on the top.  So these will have to be for short notes only.

While the stamp on my cards has changed over the years, I'm now using a little devil by Daniel Torrente/Stampotique.  Then I add my signature with the month/year.

So, my boy who is most like me in his personality is working through his injury.  Taking the time to heal well now will get him running again in time for cross country in the fall.  In the meantime, while I love watching the kids at the meets, I used this unexpected free time to do my very favorite thing in the world.  Happy Mother's Day to me.

Late last night, around 1 am, I went downstairs to show the boys what I had been doing at my art table. Andrew was there, home from Ohio State after his first week of summer work, and chilling with Netflix.  He's learned to pause and look at my cards for my "show and tell".  And he looked with interest and "hmmm"'d where appropriate.  Turning to go back upstairs for bed, I saw the most gorgeous Mother's Day bouquet of cream roses and alstroemeria that he thought to get for me, all on his own.  Life is good.