L7 Designs

BLACK FRIDAY SALE!

Carrie — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:31:45 +0000

Shop from home in your jammies today – and through the weekend – for my Black Friday Sale going on in my etsy shop. Go to L7Designs Etsy Shop to find all of my listed items for sale! To make it easy for everyone, the sale price is the listed price – no discount codes or coupons necessary!

Take advantage of my sale and stock up on cards and gift tags for the holiday season, birthdays and thank yous for the new year!

Thanks for creating with me!

My Favorite Handmade Holiday Tradition

Carrie — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:00:46 +0000

One of the things I love most about being part of Etsy’s EtsyGreetings Team is not only how much of a community our team is, but the efforts everyone strives to put into doing team activities. Right now our team has two events going on – A fantastic Holiday Boutique event – see details on the EtsyGreetings.blogspot.com site and a fun Blog Hop.

This blog hop isn’t centered around any particular giveaway or sale; there are no hoops for you to jump through to get what you want. Some of the blogs are featuring downloadable templates and instructions for some of their own holiday traditions (I hear one of them even has a handmade advent calendar!). Keep reading through the hop to find more of these great handmade holiday treasures and traditions!

One of my favorite, or most memorable, holiday handmade traditions isn’t I guess technically “tradition”, but it’s something my Grammie (my grandmother on my Mom’s side) did almost every year for Christmas. Grammie always went all-out for the Holidays. She made Thanksgiving and Christmas memorable for the whole family just from the attention and care she put into everything. Honestly, she could have made Costco lasagne look like an amazing feast just from the presentation. I’m not going to write about her culinary skills, though.

Every Christmas, Grammie made opening gifts that much more special by hand-stamping her gift wrap. Her gift wrap was hand-stamped by her on Kraft or butcher paper. The gift wrap was always beautiful and since it was hand-stamped, no package was the same. She sometimes used different colors, green or red; and the hand stamped decorations on the packages somehow made it more special. Growing up I wasn’t as into papercrafts like I am now, and I wish that I could have her rubber stamps in my collection.

Hand-stamping gift wrap isn’t difficult, or very time consuming to do. It doesn’t have to have a specific design, although you can do that if you have the time or desire to. Use whatever images, sentiments or shapes that you want – Christmas trees, nativity scenes, Christmas stars, mittens, snowmen, angels, etc. Get some plain white or Kraft paper – you can buy HUGE rolls for around $20-25 online (check out Discount School Supply for multiple colors of butcher paper rolls!)- and a lot of companies will ship free (Side Note: I’ve never bought from the Discount School Supply yet, so I don’t know what their products or service is like, but they do have an awesome variety of butcher paper rolls)! Use a variety of ink colors to make your stamps pop more – Cranberry Red, Green, Gold and decorate more with glitter dots, buttons and ribbon to make your packages extra special!

Sorry, I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping this year so I don’t have any pictures of handmade wrapping paper yet, but I will post some before Christmas!

Thank you for creating with me!

Changing Seasons

Carrie — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:25:00 +0000

Life has gotten in the way of my motivation to update my blog and website more often! As I have become more and more busy with life things (moving to a new “home”, still unpacking, family gatherings, weddings, etc) and crafty things (lots of new listings in my etsy shop, playing with wood letters and shapes and learning how to carve wood!) I have less time to maintain my blog as it is currently set up. Thankfully, I am married to an incredibly talented man who happens to be an interactive designer! I have no ETA yet, but we are working on re-vamping my blog and site to make it easier for me to keep up to date with my blog and pictures so it is not quite so time consuming and complicated. I will try to keep an update on our progress!

In other news, though, I have been hard at work keeping my etsy shop up to date with new cards and designs. I have expanded my shop to include gift tags and mini cards as well. Mini cards are 3″x3″ cards – folded just like a regular card, and make great gift tags and gift cards. I am working on keeping a stock of gift tags and mini cards for birthdays and the Christmas holiday season coming up! They have been selling fast so check my etsy shop often for new product!

Here is a quick peek at some of the cards and gift tags I have listed in my shop right now!

Papercrafting with Wood

Carrie — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:05:01 +0000

Last fall my mother-in-law discovered a wonderful lady here in Boise that designs and cuts shapes and words/letters from MDF (medium-density fiberboard). I think she found her through a local scrapbooking store who was featuring some of her work. Anyway, Nicole of Sweet Pickle Designs cuts out these adorable shapes and words from wood and then decorates them with paint, paper and other sorts of decorating embellishments (i.e. ribbon, buttons, etc). She has an etsy shop called Sweet Pickle Designs Co where she sells a select few of her creations pre-decorated, but my MIL and I have been ordering just the wood for a while now – and doing custom shapes and words! (Nicole even featured some of Connie’s (MIL) creations in her blog this month!)

Here are a few of the projects I’ve been working on – some of them are for our house and some I am giving away to family and friends. (and as always I’ll do custom work!) It’s difficult to see in some of these pictures, but the edges of all the wood pieces are painted with a coordinating acrylic paint. On my facebook fan page are additional pictures as well as pictures of a recent chipboard accordion album I made!

I apologize in advance for the quality of some of these pictures! Our apartment doesn’t have good lighting at all!

Thanks for creating with me!

Long Overdue

Carrie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:50:08 +0000

It has been a few months since I have updated my website and I apologize. I have been updating my facebook fan page much more regularly since it’s a little easier to just pop a couple pictures on there.

Please check out my Etsy Shop for all my new cards!

Card of the Month Clubs

In my etsy shop (and I take orders and requests outside of etsy! Just email me!) I offer two Card Clubs – a Card Kit and Card Club. I make and design the same card for both clubs, but if you sign up for the Kit you get to put the whole thing together yourself! Today I decided to lower the price for my clubs from $48 to $40!

Here is the description for my Card Clubs:

L7Designs Card of the Month Club includes 12 cards (a full year) as well as 2 FREE cards for signing up! Your card will be mailed around the 15th of each month.

Each month features a different card genre (birthday, thank you, thinking of you, etc) using different design layouts, paper and embellishments so you are sure to get something new, different and unique each month! Every once in a while I will throw in a surprise bonus card or gift tag for fun!

If you would like a specific genre or special request please send me an email at least one week before to give me time to make your card (by the 8th) – there will be no extra charge for special requests.

Price includes shipping for all 12 months of your Card of the Month Subscription. The $40 is all you will pay for the entire year with your Card of the Month Club subscription – a total of 14 cards!

Feel free to send me a message, email (carrie@L7-Designs.com) or comment with any questions!

Below is a sample of some of the cards I have made for my clubs the past year …

Thanks for creating with me!

Yellow and Blue Christmas Card

Carrie — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:15:12 +0000

This non-traditional Christmas card is one I finished a couple days ago for a friend who wanted to give a Christmas/Thank You card to her yoga instructor. My friend gave me the URL address for the yoga studio (which also has a little bio of the instructor) and said she wanted the colors to reflect the colors of the company logo - blue and yellow, but also wanted it to be sort of winter-ish since it's a Christmas card. In preparation for this card, I did a little bit of research on the instructor and the background of Bikram yoga (the branch of yoga she teaches) and wanted the paper and feel of the card to sort of reflect Indian (Indian as in India) culture. I have this beautiful paper that, I think, supposed to be more Moroccan, but fits really well with some of the ornate patterns seen in a lot of Indian culture. So I used that for my background and also wanted to to add a natural aspect to it, so I used some handmade paper over the top stamped with an ornate snowflake and "merry christmas" at the bottom. The center of the snowflake and the dot above the 'i' in "christmas" have little clear rhinestones. Because this card has two functions as a Christmas and Thank You card, I left the inside blank so she could write her own message!

Nativity Christmas Cards

Carrie — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:18:27 +0000

Sailboat Decorated Frame

Carrie — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:38:19 +0000

This adorable decorated frame is the second of a two frame custom order done this fall. The only request I had for this frame was that she wanted sailboats. The face of the frame is covered with two different patterned papers. A blue pattern with typographic words (for the sky) and a wave pattern. Around the entire frame is a piece of knotted hemp twine. I had originally planned to use this twine for the rigging in the sailboat, but the boat turned out too small and my fingers too fat. :) The sailboat is made from a die-cut on my SilhouetteSD machine. I took all the pieces apart and put everything back together using different patterned papers. The boat itself has an extra piece of chipboard behind it to make it stand up more from the frame. Behind and in front of the boat are waves cut out by hand then glued on using pieces of foam adhesive. I'm not sure if you can tell in these pictures, but I hand cut different lengths of waves and adhered them with foam adhesive to help make the waves stand out and "roll" a bit more.

Lil’ Man Decorated Frame

Carrie — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:06:59 +0000

This decorated picture frame was a custom order I did in November 2009. This particular order was for someone who wanted to give a picture frame to their mother-in-law as they were expecting their first child (and first grandchild!) after Christmas. She wanted a "grandson" theme, but everything in stores was generic and ugly and so wanted something custom and heartfelt. I was given complete creative license for this project aside from her mother-in-law's personal decorating tastes and styles. The paper and style I did this frame in felt fitting for a little boy! The line is called "Lil' Man" and features beautiful plaids, stripes, bouncing balls, airplanes and polka dots in beautiful masculine colors like orange, red, blue and green. The picture of the back of the frame shows that it can be hung on the wall or propped up on a table top!

HOPE Album in Orange

Carrie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:24:29 +0000