‘Owl’ be forever grateful

November 17, 2014: In November I was transitioning out of my current technology consulting work site – one that I’ve worked with full time for over five years. The people at this site were wonderful, and besides throwing me a going away party, they presenting me with many heartfelt thank you cards and gifts to let me know how much they appreciated me and the support that I and my team provided.
So, naturally, I wanted to present thank you cards of my own to express my appreciation for the opportunity, the experience, and the wonderful well-wishes.

In the midst of switching between different sites, I scrambled to come up with an easy Thank You card theme and layout that is eye-catching and memorable. I didn’t have the time to take on a personalized, hand-made, card creation project. But I did find these cute blank card sets from Papyrus – one with a butterfly theme and an Owl theme.

Owl Theme Cards

The inspiration for these thank you card embellishments was the card box design. I really liked the use of rhinestones that were used as the eyes and wings for each owl. I also liked the graphic design of the flower wheels and the leaves in the background of the box and cards.

For card embellishments, I made my own paper owl, flower wheels and leaves by using my various hole punches, then adding self-stick rhinestones.

Medium size circle punch: Owl body. (About the size of a quarter.)
Large size teardrop punch: Owl wings.
Heart shaped punch: Owl hooters. (Used heart-shaped punch as a “double-punch” on opposite ends of the paper to create a solid figure 8 shape).
Miniature size circle punch: Owl eyeballs.
Small size teardrop punch: Owl ears (Tips showing above the hooters). Or owl hooter lash points (Placed over white figure 8 shapes).
Miniature size diamond punch: Owl noses. (Tips showing below the hooters).
Scalloped scissors: Owl feet.
Daisy hole punch: Flower color wheels.
Leaf punch: Color leaf owl perches.
Rhinestones: Owl eyes.

I created bigger owls (with hooter lash points) to place on card envelopes.

And used smaller owls (with pointy ears and branch perches) as card embellishments.

When writing the note to Nancy, I decided to use this well-known owl pun (and wrote the phrase “Owl be forever grateful.” I thought it was really clever and cute, so I decided to add that as a banner for the card envelopes.

I printed out a sheet of paper with several lines of the phrase (using the Special Elite font type), and cut them into strips using the scalloped scissors. Added a large owl and color leaf to the banner, and then added a flower on top. Of course, both embellished with rhinestones.

When handing out the cards, people marveled at how cute and crafty they are. Who knew?!!! Yes, my penchant for crafts was a very well-kept secret…

…until now. V-