Card Swap – January 2012

I know we’ve mentioned a few times about our fun group who all get together and have a cardswap once a month.  I decided that this year I am going to share our cards from each month and also tell you a bit about how to start your own card swapping group.

There are of course a million different ways that you can start a group and you can set your own types of rules.  I am going to share what we’ve done and that will at least maybe give you a jumping off point.  We are going into our 3rd successful year of card swapping and I know I still love it!

The first thing you need to do is decide how big of a group you want to have.  We didn’t have a specific number in mind and did our best to not exclude people who might be interested, we did say that if the group ended up getting large enough we may have to split in 2 so that we weren’t all having to make 20 cards each month but so far we’ve been consistently between 10 and 12.  This year we have a group of 12 and I am so excited to have a couple new people in the group.

Once you have your number you need to decide how often you want to meet.  Since we have 12 we are going to be meeting monthly taking December off (so 2 of our girls are hosting together) for the holidays.

This past year life had a habit of getting in the way and we sadly had a bit of “I didn’t get my cards done I’ll bring them next month” going on and so we tried to help with that this year by encouraging everyone to always come and bring their cards but if there DOES happen to be a month when the stars are just not aligning and you cannot get your cards done (we have 3 of our members expecting new babies in March) we’re giving everyone 1 “get out of jail free” card.  That is a card that they can bring one month when they just couldn’t get them done.  They can still come and hang out and collect the other cards but they don’t have to stress about not having theirs done.  We’re greatly hoping that this cuts way back on the not coming and bringing cards the next month since a lot of our themes are for the upcoming holiday.

We do have a few *rules* that we try to follow.  We’re all friends so the rules are a guideline and because we all love each other we follow them!

Rule 1.  If you can’t make it to cardswap please get your cards to someone who is coming so they can pass yours out and collect the others for you.

Rule 2.  Please bring an envelope for each of your cards that your card fits into!

Rule 3.  Come and have fun with us, it’s not just about cards! We all love the opportunity to have a night out having fun with the girls.

That is pretty much it!  A different person hosts each month and it is up to them what they want to do as far as decorating, refreshments, etc.

We have a theme each month (typically 1 or 2) to follow and you make your card to match that theme.  Some examples are:

Child birthday (obviously a birthday card targeted to a child)

Adult birthday (again, obviously a birthday card targeted to an adult)

Christmas/Winter

Thanksgiving/Thank You/Gratitude

Mother’s Day/Father’s Day

Wedding (can be bridal shower or wedding)

Baby (can be baby shower, new baby, baby blessing, etc..)

Friendship

Easter

Thinking of You

You Pick (you can choose any of the above or something different)

The options are pretty much endless.  Since we’re into our 3rd year we decided along with setting a theme we’ve also chosen to say that you can instead of going with the theme make a generic card that can be used for anything (basically you’d try to avoid any type of wording that would make it occasion specific).  Since some of us are better than others at actually giving out our cards and some of us have more use for some kind than another we thought this might help us all keep getting ones we’ll need and use.

For January the theme was Love/Valentine’s Day/Romance.  Everyone chose to go with the theme this month and I have to tell you they are BEAUTIFUL.

I love how Lisa used so many different elements to make this card gorgeous!

You can see my step by step tutorial here.

I love how Amy’s heart really stands out after she ran it through her paper crinkler!

Marianne used the darling Valentine’s subway art and put it on her card.  I love how she used different zig zag stitching to add texture to her card.

I love how Shelly’s card pulls in blues and purples that aren’t the 1st colors you think of when you think *love*.

Amanda’s card has a beautiful embossed flower on the plum paper, I love how feminine her card is.

Kristin found her card base with the heart already cut out and just added to it.  I love the little image and how she gave it some dimension by adding glitter to some of the leaves on the tree.  So cute!

Nikki (who tries to convince us she’s not creative at making cards) made this darling zebra card.  I love how making it long makes it stand out so much!  I also of course love the colors (you’ve seen the babies room, you understand where I’m coming from there 🙂  I also love the music note paper!

This cute card belongs to Miz Gena, I had to post 2 pictures so you can see how it opens up.  She said she made this one because she didn’t have enough kid friendly cards for Valentine’s day.  Wouldn’t your little one love to get this cute card!

 You can see how to make Paula’s beautiful card here. 

I love Kelly’s card!  I love all the elements and the definition paper!

Angela found a cute round card and used different Love papers to make it theme specific and then added every one’s favorite candy hearts for some dimension.  Gonna have to try to keep the kids from eating that one 😀

Aren’t these so cute?!  Wouldn’t you just love to have these on hand to give or even better to be on the receiving end!

I seriously love our group and the fun we have, getting the cards is just an added bonus to hanging out all night!

I hope you enjoyed looking at all our cute cards and that you’ll look forward to more card making tutorials and to see what we come up with next month (it’s *baby* month in cardswap land!)

© The REAL Housewives of Riverton, 2011-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s authors and/or owners is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to The REAL Housewives of Riverton with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.