It's been a loooooonnng time...not a lot to report but I hope I am back with a few pics of cards made in the interim. No promises for the future but fingers crossed :)

Silver wedding card for my niece and her husband, Background is silver mirri card, die by Sue Wilson, flowers made with a hand punch, matte silver leaves made with a Britannia die and numbers from  Hippy Chick Cuttlebug alphabet .

 I have several like this saved on my Pinterest board but had to play around to get the effect I wanted. At first I embossed the design (rubber stamp by Hero Arts) with clear powder then coloured with Adirondack Color Wash sprayed directly over and wiped with cottonwool, but although it was acceptible the design absorbed some of the colour so the contrast was lessened. In the one above I used white EP, sprayed the wash into a container and wiped it on with a cotton ball which gave  more control. I tinted the punched butterflies with a pale pink / fawn Promarker because the white was too stark.

An easy card for our neighbour aged 9  using a borrowed acrylic stamp, maker unknown because I forgot to keep a note! The red Promarker was a better match for the background paper than appears here.

Another resist design but I've forgotten the details....I think I used a special resist pad then coloured the whole thing with ink taken from a Versacolor stamp pad and applied with cottonwool, then polished over with a clean piece. Silver peel offs to finish the edges compliment the vertical peel off greeting.....I should remember this next time I need a card in a hurry!

Been at the magic mushroom again!

OK, so this is the card I made in March just before the death of my laptop: I had scanned and saved it then shared on Pinterest but the computer file disappeared in a black hole and I have this only by doing a C&P from Pinterest. Sorry it is so big, I don't know how to make it smaller but just for the sake of completeness I will leave it as is. I can't now remember who made the stamps - it was an American selling on eBay complete sheets of red rubber uncut stamps and I bought them several years ago. I love the Tenniel drawings and a big advantage for me is that they don't need any added colour! This was for our 86 year old friend and the wording inside said "The best way to stay young is to lie about your age".

A forgotten springtime card

Still having problems but hopefully getting sorted slowly! This is a card I made for a friend's birthday - she showed it on a craft bulletin board and I was able to copy since I hadn't scanned before sending.. The fact that it saved where I wanted it was a minor miracle, now I'm trying to see if it is still there and I can show it.

Yay - it worked! Another 3D decoupage picture and this time I added a simple stitched border. The birthday was in April so the primroses and bluebells were very apt, and the yellow card was a pretty spring yellow not quite as acidic as it appears here.

I remembered another card I made in March which I certainly scanned because it's on Pinterest, but it isn't in the same file so it may have disappeared with the dying laptop. If I find it I'll add it to this post; I've already tried lifting it from Pinterest but haven't got it right yet.

You wait for ages then 3 come at once...

Well my good intentions to blog more often were set at naught by a combination of events, triggered by the death of my laptop! A new laptop was the first step on the road to recovery, but a forced change from Windows XP to Windows 7 and the loss of most of my files from 2011 onwards has left me with another steep learning curve to conquer, coupled with new problems discovered this evening related to uploading photos from camera to computer. I hope I have managed to save the pics I took of 3 cards I made this month so here goes...

 This was for our exDDIL,  a 3D decoupage motif on a die cut background by Marianne Dies.

 Back to the stitched and beaded initials by Emilie's Designs that I did such a lot last year. The colours have not reproduced well - they were turquoise, coffee and apricot.The letter has got a little lost: it's T for Teresa.

Our neighbour's elder girl was 8 last week: I don't make many cards for children and was stuck for something suitable until I remembered the Art Impressions rubber stamps I bought years ago called Fronts 'n' Backs. A pair of stamps, one being the full length back view and the other the front view of just head and shoulders, coloured and cut out then stuck together and mounted carefully to look over the fence. The top picture  shows the card closed and the lower one, open.  I chalked round the words to add a bit of interest; if I had had more time I could have added some stamped flowers or a cat to the garden. I really enjoyed fiddling with these and plan to use the other stamps I have of children dressed for snow to make a few Christmas cards,


Next time I hope I will have the cards edited properly with less background and definitely the right way up!

It's Official: Spring has arrived.....

....and hibernation is over! Yes, once again the gloom and depression have lifted and depite the icy wind straight from the Arctic there is sunshine and patches of blue sky; the snowdrops which were very late to flower are putting on a lovely show and mixing it with early crocuses and miniature daffodils, and the weeds are flourishing like.....weeds!

I haven't been idle on the craft front although there's not a lot to show for my endeavours. Having received my new die cutting machine at Christmas I soon discovered it wasn't quite as easy to use as I had assumed and there was a time of tears and tantrums before I admitted that what my husband was saying was right and I was doing it wrong! I still use my dear little green bug when I can but am much more confident with the X-Cut Xpress now. I had plenty of practice throughout January having decided that I needed a catalogue of all my dies, so I was kept busy cutting samples and sticking them onto big sheets of coloured paper(so I could quickly see what I had, section by section) and filing them in a shiny new binder with a neat printed label on the spine. This then led to more sub-divisions within the die storage box, and more magnetic sheets, and labels, and bags.....and I was a happy little bunny, remembering my days as a library junior filing catalogue cards over 50 years ago!

In the midst of it all I actually made a couple of cards. The first is just a variation on a much used theme - origami inkwell with a stamped script background and quill pen courtesy of a pigeon. This was for a WI competition "How creative can you be with feathers?" which caused a lot of amusement and my response was "Not very". The second was much more important being a Diamond Wedding anniversary for two very dear friends. Colour scheme was bright white and silver: as usual the matte silver card hasn't scanned well, nor have the clear diamond-like gems, and the bright white looks distinctly grey, but you can get the general idea. Dies by Spellbinder, numbers from a Cuttlebug alphabet set.

I went to a big craft show last weekend and came home with a bag full of new dies - why do I find them so irresistible? I'm always certain that these are the ones which will get me back into the full swing of producing cards for every possible occasion, with perfect designs.....but don't hold your breath while waiting for the great reveal.

I'll try to post again before everyone dies of boredom, but I'm away next week so it may be a little while.

Catching Up with Christmas

The deer design was copied  from one on Pinterest but with my own twist (the original was white with red, on a rectangular card). The snowflake was inspired by a friend but is sufficiently different for her to earmark it for some of her next year's cards. Finally,  the bottom one is well and truly my own original work! This stamp is one of a series by Barbara Gray of Clarity Stamps and I deliberately chose it to go with the Memory Box holly die which I've had for a few years. I also made a couple of cards using the companion  'Silent Night' stamp and nativity dies by Cottage Cutz but although they were supposed to be only experimental in the end I sent them without scanning first. Never mind, I have at least two more of these carol stamps and plan to make most of next year's cards with them so will be able to show them later.

All three designs lent themselves to production line assembly (I made 5 deer, 12 snowflake and 5 holly) but in the process decided that my beloved Cuttlebug is showing signs of the hard life it has led and maybe it would be nice to have one of the larger die cutting machines. I did some research, found what I thought I wanted was on special offer so mentioned to my husband that I intended to treat myself....only instead it was transferred to Santa's Grotto (a.k.a. the loft) when the courier delivered it and I still have to wait until next Friday before trying it out. You know - the Christmas present which I ordered but do not know anything about ;) So I can't tell you that it's the XCut Xpress which has a dial to adjust pressure instead of using plates and shims of differing thicknesses. A friends saw one in a craft shop and was very impressed....I hope I have made the right decision, but I shall hang on to my trusty little green Bug, just in case.

If there should be any readers out there still, I send greetings to you all and wish you a very happy, healthy and crafty new year.

Playing Catch Up

It's been a long time.....but no boring explanations or excuses, just some record shots to show what I've made in the past few months. Cards have been thin on the ground, until a couple of weeks ago when I pitched into making Christmas cards and the 6 birthday cards needed for December. There wasn't time to wait for the muse, or inspiration: if I couldn't produce something there and then it wouldn't be done! Not for the first time two friends missed out but I did more than I expected (there was another identical to the second one above as well) and I'll make another post with the designs for the Christmas cards.

Once more, with feeling!

Oh dear, I don't seem very successful at this blogging lark! Actually it's the loss of mojo for card making that's the problem - I have made 3 or 4 since the last entry but they have been done 'because I had to' rather than because I wanted to spend time creating and there's been nothing original to the designs. However, the black clouds of depression have lifted somewhat (since I found that certain mild tablets were only half strength and I doubled the dose!) so I will show just for the record what has been made up to now, and try to do better from now on. Where have I heard that before, I wonder?

So here we go...not a lot to say, except that the Memory Box semicircular die was bought in early July and already has been used far more than a good many older purchases which remain in their original sealed packages. Oh, and there was another very like the top one but it was made so late I didn't even stop to scan it.

Inspired by Pinterest!

It's all my niece's fault....she introduced her mother to Pinterest, and it was she - my Big Sister - who got me involved, having resisted the siren's lure for months! However, I have some gorgeous cards on my 'Cards by other people' board , many of which are very different from my own style and it's fun to pick and choose between different elements. This is one I made which follows the prototype quite closely and I love the clean lines; it was quite quick to make, too, and I suspect I shall be using the same design quite a lot.

Golden Wedding #2

Although I started this card several weeks ago it was finally completed just a couple of days before the celebration - and turned out completely different from what I'd had in mind! I wanted to make something really special for my sister and brother-in-law using some of the newer Nestability dies which are far more intricate than previous sets (also the largest dies are *much* larger). I started to copy a beautiful card seen on YouTube but in the end gave up out of sheer frustration because the dies just would not cut properly...and by making many attempts I ended up running out of the special cream-flecked-with-gold card that I wanted to use as the base card with accents of matte gold on top.  I thought it might be the gold that was causing the problems - certainly in the past I've found that mirri card has a plastic film on top which doesn't always cut cleanly - but later I found a long thread on SplitCoastStampers with many complaints about the sort of trouble I had had. Also many suggested solutions, most of which I already did such as using a metal shim and also waxed paper for easy release; actually, it isn't releasing the die cut that's difficult, it's getting it to cut in the first place! My beloved Cuttlebug is about 6 years old but shows no signs of wear, cutting other dies without any problems; unfortunately the platform is too narrow to turn those largest dies through 90* for a second cut which some have found helpful. The final suggestion, which I have yet to try, was to spritz the card lightly with water before cutting, so I'll have to try that next play time. It's such a shame, because the dies are beautiful....

Anyway, having abandoned my ambitious plans I ended up with something much more akin to my regular 'plain and simple' style. The panel is indeed one of those cut with the Nesties; words are by Britannia dies (stuck down with micro dots by Letraset: so glad I found a mention of those on a forum because I've used them for years but forgotten them for a while). I remembered when we celebrated our Ruby Wedding 6 years ago that I was told ivy stood for constancy in the Victorian language of flowers so that was easy choice of border. The ivy corner is by Joanna Sheen, also the extra ivy spray along the bottom which is rather special as it's one of a pair of mirror image sprays as requested by members on Joanna's forum. So nice that she has the personal touch and actually takes note of what her supporters say - I haven't met her but she really is a lovely lady. Oh, and the numbers are from a Cuttlebug alphabet.

I did make a birthday card before this one but have yet to transfer the picture to my laptop - it had to be photographed rather than scanned and was uploaded to DH's desktop; he'll transfer it for me via a flash drive....when he can find it....

Not my best work...

...

...and I'm only putting it here as a reminder to myself! I have had an impossibly busy month, including being away for a week which meant organising a programme to keep 40 dancers and 2 musicians happy all day, and then after we returned home the car broke down just hours before I had 3 very full days scheduled. I'm sorry to say that my friend's card was sidelined until today - I'd had the basic idea early in the month but couldn't get it to work and had to put it aside; this morning, with just an hour to spare before the final postal collection to reach him on his birthday next Monday, I cannibalised my previous efforts and by using a lot of Nesties, scissors and glue stick was able to produce something to go in an envelope. The base card is deep cream, not pink, and you can guess for yourselves what the wording inside is. The stamp is by Little Claire, sentiment is computer generated.

I have 3 birthday cards and a Golden Wedding card needed for April: I hope I don't end up making them in as much of a hurry as this one was!

Another anniversary card...

...but this time it is 'only' a mere 22 years! The wife is a crafting friend and loves purple so that was the driving force behind the design: sorry, Bob, you'll just have to put up with it!!! (But I think he's used to it). All Memory Box dies with the addition of black bendy peel offs to add definition. It's difficult to find anniversary peel off sentiments in black (my local craft shop, a national favourite, only has them to order) so I had to make do with the only ones I had - a bit small, but my anniversary die was too big.

Golden Wedding

Just a brief blog today to show the Golden Wedding card I made for friends - based, fairly obviously, on the Silver Wedding card of the previous entry. The base card is cream with a subtle gold shimmer, sentiment on a matte gold then mirri gold panel. The lovely rose in matte gold is a Marianne die I bought at a craft show last Friday - I must have seen it before but this was the first time I was really aware of it and realised how beautiful it is. There's also a companion die of a rosebud and I mounted that inside, next to the greeting. The ribbon is cream organza with a gold stripe; in retrospect I think I should have added a bow on the right, but  at the time I only thought of centring it and decided that would look too linear. Oh well, the card is in the post now so it will have to stay as it is!

Silver Weddings

Yesterday I made two Silver Wedding cards - fortunately the recipients live 4,000 miles apart and don't know each other so the cards are almost identical. I used Cuttlebug EF called 'Jules' Jewels' and a Memory Box die butterfly (silver mirri card) to compliment it; the label is a Nestie long deckel edge rectangle also cut in silver mirri card with a plain white centre. With a white organza ribbon with a silver stripe, and simple silver peel offs the card looks far plainer than the actual time taken would imply. The second version (smaller numbers, because I didn't have any more of the others) took far less time, of course, having done all my dithering already. Today what should have been a five minute job making both inserts took an hour, which included searching for a non-existent anniversary stamp, and struggling with self-adhesive labels that weren't and removable tape which also removed the surface of the paper. My next major task will be two Golden Wedding cards, but as the couples are best friends I shall have to come up with completely different designs.

Four more for February

I've been quite busy on the card making front but don't seem to have much to show for my endeavours....the stitched cards take a while to put together (and I can't show one yet because the intended recipient does occasionally read my blog!) but here's a couple of Christmas cards using the same pattern but embellished and mounted slightly differently.

The one on the left is as shown on the original pattern: I wanted to use a die cut greeting but because the flower motif intrudes on the space there wasn't room for a longer second line. A straight peel off looked too skinny and the angled version was definitely an improvement. When I did the pattern again I turned it through 180* and was able to use my Britannia Die and achieved (I think) a better relationship between space and lettering. I have another ready stitched but not mounted - I may turn it through 90* from the original and see which looks best.

Our young neighbour was 4 last Monday and this is what I made for her. Originally it was coloured with pencils but looked rather dull so I went over it with Promarkers - it doesn't have the perfect finish that other people manage to get but I'm hoping that Florence wasn't too miffed :) The pink die cut was a lucky find in my scrap box - originally it hadn't cut cleanly and I'd discarded it, but by replacing it in the die and passing it through the Cuttlebug again it came out perfectly. Even more amazing was it being the perfect size for the picture! The balloons in the corner were made with a small punch.

My sister introduced me to Pinterest recently and like every other user I'm finding it quite addictive. Yesterday I decided my next make should be based on one of the many cards I have pinned and this is it - certainly unlike my usual style, and quite different enough from the original that I doubt anyone would recognise it as a derivative. The punched flowers usefully disposed of quite a lot of scraps; it was the first time I had used this particular embossing folder, and it's rare for me to use ribbon, so quite an adventurous card overall.

The Flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la!

...bring promise of merry sunshine according to WS Gilbert and we could certainly do with some! These two cards were made yesterday using papers from a special floral issue of Making Cards magazine published a couple of years ago. The poppies are for my niece in America who loves red; having covered the base card and made the tag with peel off sentiment (yes, I know it's not centred or straight but why change the habit of a lifetime?) I was stuck for what to do with it. I don't often use ribbon but thought this might be the right occasion, and the shaded green which I bought 3 years ago seemed just the thing. There was still something lacking.....and then I remembered that on one of my craft boards a member has been showing off several cards using the Memory Box die called 'Prim Poppies'. Eureka! I have that die too (and have actually used it a couple of times). Coloured with Promarkers and tucked under the ribbon with a couple of sticky spots to hold it in place, it finished the card off beautifully.

The second card is a bit of a cheat because I copied the design of one in the magazine, using the same papers and toppers but constructing it differently although the finished effect is very similar. The top layer of the base card is folded back on itself and the picture of the basket of flowers stuck on that side, overlapping the inside. It actually wasn't as crooked as it appears in the picture (Honest!) and is now on its way to Spain, where the need for a glimpse of spring may not be as urgently required as it is here in soggy England but may serve to remind our friend of  what she is missing in other ways.

Three cards

The past three weeks have been very busy and my crafting has been done in odd, snatched moments. I've also done a lot of sorting/tidying in my craft room, having bought a storage unit which fits on top of my desk and now holds my card stock sorted by colour on individual shelves. I bought a unit for just that purpose a year ago but found that because it was it low down in poor light I couldn't see the card; the advantage of the 'Best Craft Storage' system is that all fittings are interchangeable, so having moved the paper shelves to above eye level, and put drawers in the floor unit, it all works perfectly. I've even had enough clear space on my desk top to finish off the three cards shown here!

There isn't much to say about the first two -: more of Emy's lovely beaded alphabet, the first being mounted with the addition of a Martha Stewart 'Punch Around the Page' punch. The turquoise base and the brown mat are both in pearlised card. K is for Karen, our dear ex-DIL, who loves purple.....

This was supposed to be the same as the card shown in my previous post - I knew I had another blue card blank and when I started to make it one evening I was a little surprised that the electric light drained the colour out so much. It was only next day that I found I had mistakenly been working on a dull grey blank instead! Rather than scrap it I covered the snowflake with a previously made poinsettia to brighten it up and added a lot more silver flecks plus the red greeting, I was pleased with the final effect and will no doubt be getting rid of several more subdued blanks in similar fashion.

I have added another post back dated to 31 December to show cards made but not scanned previously. I'm missing about 10 more but some are very similar to others I made last year, and several I cannot borrow back for various reasons so will have to remain unseen. No doubt I shall repeat them at some later date!

M is for Mary

A couple more stitched cards today, made together for convenience which for once puts me ahead of the game! These will not be rushed to the post box at the last minute, these will be stamped, addressed and stored in a prominent place with a sticky note bearing the necessary posting dates in late February and March(!) so they can be sent in good time! The purple version is for  Mary, aged 101, while the green is for Mel (Melanie) on one of my crafting boards.

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I also made a couple more Christmas cards to achieve my set target of 5 for the month - they are of the same basic design with slightly differing holographic snowflakes. The spots are silver waste from sheets of peel off stickers and the sentiment is cut with a Cheery Lynn die in silver mirri card. Silver never scans satisfactorily so squint a little, ignore the dark lines, lighten the blue a couple of shades, imagine the whole card a little more delicate and you'll have a better idea of what it is really like.

Posting Early For Christmas!

Well, here are my first cards of 2014! I have joined a challenge on SplitCoast Stampers and said I will aim to make 5 every month; last year my target was 8 and I managed it in only two months - January and December! Having had two poor years of crafting (and blogging) I really hope to do much better this year and despite being unwell since Christmas I'm happy to have made a good start. Actually, I've eased into it with a bit of cheating: the candle panel was stitched in November but then got forgotten until I mounted it yesterday. The purple card was the last-but-one made just a few days before Christmas. I was in a hurry to make 10 for my craft group meeting on the 20th - too much of a hurry, because I was using a lovely 'Merry Christmas' die by Cheery Lynn and managed to stick it on upside down on card number 9! In removing the diecut I damaged the backing paper in the middle so had to make the card again from scratch (since they were all the same except for colour I couldn't have an odd one) then I decided to salvage the damaged card with a solid centre using a fancy Nestie, a classic oval and a rubber stamp I've had for about 20 years. It turned out so well that I used the design for a birthday card for a member of the same group on the 30th, subbing butterflies for holly leaves.

The poinsettia card won't be duplicated too much - it took several hours to stitch but is, I think, very pretty. I have another pricked ready but may use a different colour for the flower and turn it into a birthday card. The decoupage motif came from a recent issue of Making Cards magazine and was cut out several weeks ago and then forgotten, until it emerged when moving stuff around to make room for the Christmas tree.

Since yesterday I've almost finished stitching two of the initial birthday cards that I enjoyed making last year. I'll make them up and show them ASAP even though one is for a crafting friend's birthday in February and the other our friend Mary's 101st in March. I don't have any to make for January (our son's was made to go with the birthday cake I sent to Canada last month - he was away over Christmas so had it a couple of days late on his return, but as I pointed out, he kept us waiting from 23 December to 2 January when he was born, so I was just getting my own back! )  I wish I had scanned the cards I made from September to the end of the year but my heart wasn't in it so I can't show them. Never mind, here's to a fresh start with renewed enthusiasm. 

Happy New Year!

Just to say I shall be back with a proper post very soon - I have 3 cards waiting to be scanned so it should be in the next day or two. During the last quarter of 2013 I made a few cards but didn't scan any, hence the lack of blog entries, but the break seems to have had the right effect of leaving me champing at the bit to get back to crafting. Thank you to those who have left kind comments in my absence: I hope 2014 is a happy and creative year for us all.