Oh My, Did I Really Make Those?

The more you craft, the better your projects get.  Back in 2010, I made my first cards. i had been scrapbooking since the late 90s, but never ventured into card making. Unless I did some when I was a Girl Scout. We did so many art projects that I don't remember everything.

So I decided I was going to make some cards for my Gramma as a gift. This was right before I became a Close To My Heart consultant, so I didn't have many materials. Most where from free in magazines. And materials from scrapbooking in the 90's. Like mulberry paper, and eyelets. Shudder. I had a lot of paper I would have never purchased myself because it was free. Although, try to remember the paper that was available back in the 90's. It was horrible. Like this bone paper.

Lets sit and ponder this paper for a second. Bright, colorful bone shaped treats on paper. I bought it for dog layouts but thankfully I never used it. It was so horrible, the only way to use it was to make this hat for my Bonnie's 3rd birthday. 

But lets look at some of these wonderful cards I made.

The damask is actually a Christmas gift tag. Some marbled paper and organza ribbon held down by brads. This is actually one of the better cards. 

Oh, the horror of the eyelet border. This is one of those free papers. I really didn't add any sentiments to these cards. Mainly because I didn't have many stamps to do so.

Ripped paper. I don't even know what shape that is suppose to be.  Stamping and embossing "stitching" on the chipboard ampersand. I used cross stitch canvas for the background. The tag was part of a scrapbook kit and did not work with the pattern of the ampersand.  

This one is awesome. As in, I am in awe that I would even call this a card. Again, free pattern paper. For some reason I decided to use it as a whole piece of paper. The embossed frame just hanging all willy nilly on the card. It's not even highlighting a sentiment. It's just hanging there. 

Old school Cricut use here. That is some bad photography. I am ashamed. I am going to be a photographer and this looks like a 3 year old took it with their barbie camera.  Here is some major 90's style going on.  Mulberry paper people. This is the stuff you had to wet to rip. Then you got those awesome frayed edges. Eyelets in the corner, organza ribbon. At the color scheme is good. I even think the Cricut cut is vellum. 

What I don't understand is that I had these magazine where I got the free paper. Why did I not use the, for inspiration. When I first started blogging, my projects were a little better than this, unless I copied a card in a magazine. Then they were beautiful. That's because they were total case's. But you have to start somewhere.

Now lets come back to now.

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So much better. The more we craft, the better we get. 

I still use inspirations, but not as many total case's. 

So how has your crafting changed over the years?