Easy-Peasy Handmade Cards

I have 2 friends retiring from long careers in teaching, 

and wanted to make them each a card, but had very little time to do so.  

 Graphics Fairy to the rescue!  What would we all do without that amazing, generous site??

Someone else was clever enough to come up with that cute phrase, so I just borrowed it and printed the image in simple black and white on matte photo paper.  A little pink Prismacolor pencil gives her cheeks some color.  Kim had sent a bunch of paper cut-out flowers a while back, and I added smaller flowers I punched from some aqua foil paper I had in my stash.  Light aqua stick-on pearls from the $1 bins at Michaels (all that stuff tempts me so!!) add a little pizzazz, along with folding the petals upward for dimension.  Kraft paper card stock frames everything and is a nice contrast to the white and aqua.

How easy was that?!

I much prefer giving handmade cards instead of store-bought.  So much more economical, plus I just really enjoy making and personalizing them.

I decorated the envelopes with another flower and pearl, plus some white gel pen lettering and flourishes.  I love using white pens or pencils on brown kraft paper....I think it looks so snappy!

(Remember my little Etsy gift boxes from a long-ago post??):

White pencil on the left, white gel pen on the right.  The white adds so much extra 'oomph' to the brown paper.

Here's the other decorated envelope (the card was identical):

Easy Peasy!