Yesterday's other card

My mojo may have returned after being AWOL but it didn't like being worked too hard! Sarah's card with the butterflies wasn't very elaborate and didn't take too long to make, so I thought I would continue the good work and make a card for a friend's birthday next Wednesday. Oh dear! It seems I'm unable to concentrate if I have time in hand....I was fairly satisfied with the final result, although it might have looked better with a symmetrical design, but I sweated gallons before I reached that point.

First I picked up the pad of autumn papers I bought recently. Anyone who reads this blog semi-regularly will know I'm an autumn nut and I tried hard to come up with a good idea, but it just wasn't right for this particular friend who is a dainty pink and blue person rather than a striking yellow and orange one. So the papers went back in the drawer. I suddenly thought of the willow pattern china stamps by Joanna Sheen which I've had for a couple of years and used only a few times on ATCs. There was my blue! And including the big plate gave me an excuse for using my new Eyelet Nesties as well - the largest was a perfect fit. So far so good.

Then it was downhill all the way, or do I mean uphill? Nothing was quite right. I tried a MS border punch with similar eyelets but got the spacing wrong the first time and couldn't make the second attempt fit anywhere. I then stamped more of the china as the background using Versamark ink, looked at the square mid blue card thus produced, added the strip of ribbon and felt it was all wrong, so I cut the front off and tried it as an easel card, sticking that same front onto dark blue. No, it needed a light edge - and besides, the end of the ribbon on the back showed - so I unstuck it (being thankful I'd only used a glue stick and not my tape gun), cut a white mat and remounted it all. Oh, and at some point I was trimming slivers off edges because I realised that the finished card was going to be a hair's breadth too big for the available envelope, which it was anyway so went into a much bigger one folded over. No, I didn't attempt to make one the right size...

Still with me? We now have an easel card with blank inside and no support for the front edge. I think it took another half an hour minimum before I fixed the final piece, with the jugs, like the plate, stamped in Brilliance Mediterranean Blue. It only took three attempts to add a small insert sheet with a punched border at the bottom (those MS punches really do not like single sheets of thin paper and it's high time I remembered) and the best happening of the day was not smudging the stamped greeting.

Now all I have to do is remember to post the thing in good time.

Summer? What summer?

Yes, summer is definitely on its way out and I'm marking the progress through the year with yet another change of photograph in the heading: this was taken at the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Wisley a couple of years ago. It was a gorgeous day in October when the autumn colours were at their best against a vivid blue sky, but I don't want to anticipate autumn too soon so I'll keep the red and gold maples for another day.

If I take May as the start of summer the season ended as it began, because once again the month was notable for visitors and dancing! I exaggerate a little, since only my sister came to visit and she stayed for less than 4 days, but we filled that precious time together with laughter and visiting old haunts from our childhood because she now lives in Somerset and I live just a few miles away from where we grew up. The month finished with a terrific long weekend spent folk dancing near Warwick, which is always a highlight of our year though tinged with sadness that it's the last of the festivals and a very long time to the next one in May 2011. I filled the rest of the month annotating my new book of dances and am now waiting for the proof reading to be completed......unfortunately I can't help tweaking and 'improving' the text each time I look at it so the marked copy I receive back from DD will bear little relation to what I have on the DTP!


Apart from the Get well card of my last post I made no cards at all during August. I need to get back into the habit, though, as it is a friend's birthday on Friday, our wedding anniversary next week (42 years) and DH's birthday 2 days later and I haven't given a thought to any cards yet. The easel card shown here was made at the weekend for friends Mark & Faye celebratng their Silver Wedding tomorrow; the base card is palest mauve pearlescent and the centre panel, mounted on the same mauve and matted on plain silver, is white and silver paper that looks like lace - a strip of the same paper backs the raised panel inside. Since I haven't shown it before I'm also showing the card I made for Mark's parents when they had their Golden Wedding 5 years ago.

More Stencil Paste

Here are the two other panels I made on Sunday. The ginger jar was made exactly like the wisteria vase; I was a bit dismayed when I saw how bright the blue ink was when sponged round the edges, but then I found the exact same shade in my stash of card stock and it made a very nice easel card! I found a blue chalk which toned in well to fill the gaps on the porcelain: it didn't look anything like the colour while in the box, but they merge well.The birthday greeting I had used for the wisteria was stamped in the same ink and the panel raised on the bottom inside edge to provide the support, then a single sheet with a punched edge added above it for the message. I haven't bothered to photograph it (as opposed to scanning) because A. it would be a week before I found the photo on the computer again (see my previous post on 8 June) and B. you can see my earlier easel cards at the post on 25 April.


The new home card didn't set out to be one, but having decided that I needed to mount the gold tree on something and then remembered that I need a new home card sooner rather than later - my friend moves 200 miles away next Monday - I thought I would kill two birds with one stone. It's perhaps 'unusual' for the topic, but the kanji translate as Blessing, Prosperity and Happiness and I think that's a very fitting sentiment for a single lady moving away from family and friends to a place that has been her dream for several years. L has had a very difficult time recently, with divorce and cancer and the death of both parents, and I wish her every happiness in her new life.

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.