Finding the perfect card can be a challenge, but not for Lisa Thompson, executive staff assistant in CAFNR’s Office of Advancement. Instead, Thompson creates and sells her own beautiful cards.

Her passion for card making can be traced back to a scrapbooking hobby that began about 12 years ago.

“I laugh when I think about how I got into it… a friend asked me to go to a Creative Memories party, and I said I would ‘never scrapbook,’” Thompson said. “But, I went to the party anyway and took a few pictures to make a scrapbook page out of, and bam, I was hooked. Moving the pictures around to find the perfect layout and then adding embellishments was the perfect creative outlet for me.”

Her passion for scrapbooking is what sparked her card-making and stamping hobbies.

“About halfway through one of my first scrapbook albums, I realized I needed to do something with the scraps, so I made a card for an upcoming birthday,” Thompson said. “Well, that was like instant gratification because it only took about 10 minutes to complete whereas scrapbook pages would take more like 30 minutes to an hour to complete. It wasn’t until 2005 that I started rubber stamping. I laugh now because the first rubber stamp I purchased was a Holstein cow out of a $1 bin at Michael’s.”

Her passion for card making grew from there. She now tries to carve out half a day on Saturdays to stamp and create cards for various occasions.

“I love to give my cards as gifts and enjoy knowing that they made someone smile,” Thompson said.

It was thanks to one such happy card receiver that she began selling her cards.

“About 7 years ago I sent a card to a friend congratulating her on her new home,” Thompson said. “She showed it to her realtor who contacted me to purchase a bunch of them to send to her clients. I sold them at Poppy for several years, and now I sell them through my Gabby’s Greetings Facebook page and by word of mouth.”

Depending on the technique used, it takes her anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to make a card. She describes her cards as clean and simple.

“Almost every one of my cards will have a ribbon tied on it… it’s even hard not to tie one on the masculine cards!” she said. “I am also addicted to using map scrapbook paper and pages out of atlases as backgrounds on my cards. Vintage buttons are also fun to use.”

The themes of Thompson’s cards range from various holidays to animals to seaside landscapes.

“People and places are my biggest inspiration,” she said. “If I know someone who likes a certain thing, then I’m going to make them a card, or set of cards, with that theme. I love doing landscapes as backgrounds for my card layouts.”

Lisa also enjoys teaching her craft through a monthly stamp club and three to four stamp classes per year. Outside of card making Thompson enjoys traveling, riding her ATV in Colorado and cooking.

Thompson has been with the University for 23 years. She has been working in the Office of Advancement for the past nine months.