Easel cards

I attended a workshop on making easel cards last Friday while visiting a craft show in Somerset. The tutor was Nancy Watts, who designs the papers for Making Cards magazine; I've met her before and she is a delightful, bubbly lady. We produced a square Art Deco style card and today I adapted my newfound knowledge to make two birthday cards.


The pink one has an A4 sheet cut in half vertically for the base/support, so as the top is a little narrower it will fit a standard C6 envelope.The stamps are all by Judikins and the background is (I have just noticed) a 13th century poem called Beneath a Plum Tree, a translation of which is given on the edge of the wooden block. Now that's what I call service! The geisha lady is cut out and mounted on foam pads. The kanji inside the card read 'Congratulations' and 'Long life'. The plum blossom is mounted on an extra layer of card, making it just thick enough to support the card front when it is lodged behind. All stamping (on both cards) was done using Memento ink 'Rich cocoa'.




The second card is 'almost' square - I think I trimmed the same edge twice instead of adjoining sides, so I added the quote and punched daisies and hoped no one would guess :) The picture is from my favourite Stampin' Up! set, and 'Celebrate', which this time I mounted on foam tape, is from another. The birthday greeting is by Hobby Art, and the border punch by Woodware.

Spring has finally sprung!

It's been a long winter and spring was slow in making an appearance, but it's here at last and I thought it was time to change the autumn leaves for some greenery. Nothing special, but I found it an attractive mix of shades and shapes.

Today's card is my entry for the JustRite Stampers weekly challenge 'Double Vision'. The given requirements were to use at least two differently shaped Nestabilities and two JRS sets. Unfortunately the colours don't show very well in the scan: the base card is lavender with a panel on the back of deep purple overlaid with vellum patterned in silver, held in place by square purple brads. The bottom is folded up and a piece of deeper lavender card edged with a Martha Stewart punch 'Arched lattice' layered on top, then wrapped with narrow white ribbon edged with silver. The Nesties Label #4 is cut from purple vellum onto which is mounted one of the JR 'Beautiful Blossoms' coloured with Promarkers. I stamped it in black Memento ink, then stamped it again in Adirondack bottle green ink and cut it out with two of the Nesties Classic Oval shapes to give a green frame. The 'Friends are flowers' quote is from the JR 'Joyful Hearts' set, also cut with one of the Classic Ovals.

The label shape is adhered only at the top so it can be placed over the lower flap and tucked under the small oval, which is similarly attached only on the left side, to keep the card closed.

Not waving but drowning

I went to a big craft show in London yesterday and bought this template by Anna Marie Designs. Our neighbour's daughter (Florence's big sister) will be 3 next month and I hope she will like the card as much as I enjoyed making it. Not only was it fun and quick to do, it also used up several scraps of card! I feel I'm drowning in paper and card at present; I spent an evening last week sorting and storing all the full size sheets, but it's the smaller bits which are the problem - you know, the ones that are too small to make a card but too big to throw away. All papercrafters have them! I do try to look through them before cutting into a new sheet, but they too need properly sorting and storing where I can more easily do it than at present. Most of them are in two small drawers so tightly packed that it takes more effort and time to find something useable than I want to expend, to say nothing of the recently created scraps which don't have a home because the drawers are too full. Well, I've recently acquired some more empty drawers (by transferring all my inkpads to a wonderful, custom built shelf rack) so this is my opportunity. And let's be honest, if I don't do it right now those empty drawers are likely to accumulate other odds and ends in them and my scraps still won't have a proper home!

I'm back!

Just a quick message to say I haven't deserted my blog; we had a major computer crash last week and it's amazing I'm back so soon! Fingers crossed that we can maintain our internet connection since it's still not entirely reliable. I hope to have something to show here very soon, I've been ill as well and not done any crafting since making the egg card (what a waste of all that spare time not spent on the computer.....)