Taking things up a notch

The ladies of the senior center and I have been busy assembling cards and this has been keeping me very busy. Here you see the cards we have assembled in the past two weeks. The green tree is specially made to commemorate Earth Day which this year falls on April 21, 2010.

Because many of them have physical limitations that prevent them from completing many of the tasks required to create a card from scratch, I create card kits at home that do not require anything more difficult than gluing down the card elements or removing the protective liner from double sided tape. Essentially I'm doing all the work that I would normally have more able bodied individuals do themselves and leaving them to put together the pieces. However I have overdone it a bit with these last two cards. Because I am doing so much work assembling the card kits, I tend to forget that the seniors themselves are left with very little to do. These two cards were so simple for them to assemble that they were done in under 15 minutes. The younger seniors in the group were done in 10 minutes. Worse than that, they were left wanting more of a challenge. One thing about seniors...they let you know what's on their mind. It's a good thing because it's just what I needed to step up my game. I promised them that this week they would have something a little meatier to sink their teeth into and I think this little gift/favor bag should do the trick.

I had found the tutorial for this favor/gift bag, created by Diana Gibbs for the Splitcoast Stampers website last summer and knew immediately that I had to make it at some point. I finally got my chance this week and on Thursday I'll be leading a group of seniors in assembling the bags for themselves. The front of the bag has a medallion and I added a coordinated gift tag on the back. Inside the bag there is a little candyholder/card (not shown) sized perfectly to hold one square of Ghirardelli chocolate or some folded currency. This project was designed by Theresa Momber for Splitcoast Stampers and I thought it would be a great add-on to the gift bag. (Go here to see that tutorial.) I haven't created the kits for those yet but I'm hoping to complete them before Thursday. The seniors should find these two projects enough to keep them interested.

Now what do I do next week? If you've got an idea, throw it my way. Just leave me a comment below. Thank you.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva