Some Birthday Stuff, and a Thank You Card

What a busy time of year!  Though I have wanted to start working on some new stuff for my shop, I have not had time.  Instead, this week I have focused on some stuff for specific events taking place.  My daughter has 2 birthday parties in 2 weeks, so I made bookmarks for both birthday girls.  I have so far made one card, and will be doing the other one this week, because that party is coming up next weekend.  Here are the bookmarks:

I neglected to get photos of the reverse, which I need to remember to do more often!  Alisha's had a really neat blue and teal washi paper with white and red geometric flowers on the back.  Coral's has a pink and orange floral print on the reverse.

I have not made a card yet for Coral, as hers is the birthday party coming up next weekend, but here is the one I did for Alisha:

This is a slide card, similar to the one I did for the slide card swap last year.  The only difference is that I oriented the card so that it slides to the side instead of from the top and bottom.  I like how it turned out..however, I have to say that this type of card is a huge pain to make!  The slide mechanism is difficult to manage, and it really took a long time to assemble.  Besides that, I had to have my daughter show her friend how to open it without messing it all up, and that is just a bit more trouble than it is worth.  I was happy to do the card and glad that it worked out well, but am not anxious do to another on in this design again.

I also did a thank you card this weekend, for my husband to send to his best friend's parents, as they are going to lend us their beach house in a couple of weeks so that we can celebrate our 18th anniverary there.  I can't wait!  They are letting us stay at the house for incredibly cheap, so we wanted to send a nice card.  I had some washi paper I was dying to use, so here is what I did with it:

The colors are not looking great on my computer because I took these pics in the evening when the light was not very good, so I apologize for that.  The card base is actually a deep burgundy red, and the next layer is a deep olive green, though it looks more teal here.  I embossed the sentiment on an off-white piece of paper that I cut out with a Spellbinder die on my Big shot.

Next week I really hope to have more to show that is shop-ready.  There is a local craft fair coming up on the first weekend in May for my local Etsy team, and I would really love to participate!  I just have to make sure I have some good, fresh inventory, since it is the weekend before Mother's Day.  Guess I will have to get busy in the next couple of weeks!