So, my girlfriend's sister Jenny just had a baby. And far be it from me to send an appropriate card.

Backstory: Jenny enjoys/fears aliens and cryptids. She loved the Monster Spotter's Guide to North America, by Scott Francis. That book had excellent illustrations by a fella named Ben Patrick, but Jenny was curious to see my rendition of El Chupacabra, since it's my personal favorite.

So I drew the little goat-sucker on the front of a card, then pasted that card inside ANOTHER card. I cut the front of the outer card so that it looks like El Chupacabra is leering in the bedroom window. The inner card, once you get past the scary monster, flips up to a more normal "congratulations" kind of thing.

In hindsight, I wish I'd done more to dress up the front of the outer card, to make it look more like a bedroom (or at least be more interesting). And it would have been fun to reveal El Chupacabra holding a balloon or something to welcome the baby, but I didn't come up with that in time.

But I did think to add "this card may be too intense for young children" as a disclaimer on the envelope, in case Jenny's four-year-old son opens the mail that day.

Well, I promised a look at one of my card-making projects, so here it is:

It's a garden-variety blank card covered with scrapbook paper. I added a belly-band of more paper to give it some extra visual interest. The little lizard-guy is a drawing of a felt gift my girlfriend made for me (I think he appears elsewhere on this site). I drew him on green cardstock, then cut him out with an X-Acto knife. He's pasted on, but I left his arms free so they're reaching out with affection.

Or, since I want to sound more manly, he's hungry and reaching out to grab a bug.

I know ninjas are supposed to be more laconic than this, but here goes:

By way of introduction, I'm Greg. As you can see from my profile, I need to expand my Crafting horizons a bit (fashioning booby-traps out of office-supplies doesn't count as a craft, does it?).

I used to draw a lot, but that dwindled over the last several years. However, I've been trying to get back into it, and card-making has been a great way to do that. For the past two Winter Holiday seasons, I've made 30+ cards (mainly for co-workers), but that was, by necessity, a pretty low-tech affair. I loathe the greeting cards I find in stores, so I'm getting more and more into making cards for birthdays, etc. I put a little more effort into these, and I'll post some of those in my gallery from now on.

I've also been meaning to make a cool steno-pad cover out of plexi provided by the one-and-only Tonia Davenport, so you'll be seeing that ASAP.