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!

Pansies made with punches

I mentioned earlier this week that I'd been making pansies with a paper punch; these are the later versions which are rather better than my first efforts. It must be one of the easiest flowers to make - since the real flowers are very flat the card versions don't need much moulding to look quite realistic. I went to Google Images for help with the markings and found every colour version imaginable, but I kept to shades of yellow and purple because I know the recipient loves purple. The stamp is a very old favourite by PSX and the punch is Pansy Border by Martha Stewart.

More cards from scraps

I have two crafter friends whose birthdays are 23 December. I always try to make 'summery' cards for them because I know how easy it is for such birthdays to get lost in the midst of Christmas preparations and I want them to feel special. This one for Carol isn't really as plain as it appears: the cream pearlised paper is patterned all over with swirls of roses which have a fuzzy feel - not as soft as velvet paper but there's definitely texture there. The shiny dark purple also has a textured pattern, while the matte mauve provides a contrast. The words are by Clarity Stamps cut with a die from Labels #9, and the edge punch is 'Modern Garland'.

This is for Liz. The daisy paper came free in Making Cards magazine some years ago, the daisy stamp is from JustRite Stampers. I stamped the border in deep pink on green and cut it with a Nestie classic circle, then stamped the flower on white and cut it with a smaller die.. I stamped it again and cut the flower closely to shape so as to make a mask, superimposed it on the circle and was then able to colour the surround with pink chalk. The 'Celebrate' is by Stampin' Up. And the daisy strip was a serendipitous find in my bulging drawer of ribbons, trims and other embellishments - I didn't know it was there but it was exactly the right length to cross the card and tuck round each edge!

So several more scraps have been put to good use and the remains thrown away.

There are birthdays in December too!

And I have to make 6 birthday cards for the month, although one has already gone for a friend's birthday on the 2nd. This new one is for my brother-in-law who was a Christmas Day baby; he and my sister will be in the States visiting their daughter and her family so I had to make the card in good time - no good leaving it until the day before as I sometimes do! I was tidying my craft room after the Christmas card marathon and sorted out a pile of scraps. Three pieces landed together and I liked the effect so much I decided that would be the base for the card - the plain brown Bazzill, the gorgeous copper coloured paper (which is far more brown/gold IRL than the pink it appears to be here) with embossed ovals, and a piece I had coloured myself with Distress Inks in light yellows and oranges. The latter made the edge strip under the trellis and also the background for the sentiment. And all the little scraps which were created from the old ones have gone into the waste paper bin!!!

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we are off to the German Christmas markets.....if I don't post in the next couple of days, you may assume we have managed it this week.

More of the Same

Not being one to waste a good idea (I don't have enough to be careless of them) I made another handful of cards using yesterday's design with different papers and colour schemes. The darker blue has random patches of purple hidden in its depths so I found purple mirri card for the circle and tag which goes quite well, especially being toned down by the silver ornament shape; I did make one with a purple ornament but decided it really was too much of a good thing and reversed the colours for the rest. The pale blue is yesterday's discard - I suddenly thought of the glitter papers I'd been using for iris folding and the dark blue goes quite well. I didn't bother to emboss those circles because when I tried to, the die cut through the soft paper completely! The ornament and tag are in silver mirri and on each card the sentiment is a silver peel off - I love using a self coloured background for these and being raised they stand out surprisingly well.The snowflakes were made using the large Martha Stewart punch, Glacial Snowflake.

Hummingbird

I've been busy making more Christmas cards but haven't posted them here because they are just variations on a previous theme. I can't attempt to make 120 completely different cards, so do about 10 or 12 'almost' the same before moving on to another batch. Today, though, I stopped to make a friend's birthday card for next week. I was determined to use one of JustRite's Backyard Birds because when it first came out J kept trying to insist that I really didn't need it - all for the good of my Credit Card I should add, because I was broke at the time but loved it so much that somehow I managed to find the necessary pennies! By using the hummingbird on her card I may be able to convince her 'See! I did need it!'

The bird's colouring may not be ornithologically perfect because we don't have hummingbirds in England but I did my best to copy the sample on the index sheet. Having cut out the centre with a small Nestie circle (which I raised on foam tape) I used Blossom #1 for the border and then a large plain circle for the blue layer. I chalked the backgrounds with pale blue for the bird and pale green for the border, and used the same green behind the morning glories on the long panel which was cut with the mega deckle Nestie. The trellis punch is used on pearlescent paper and the other background paper is from my stash.

Another Christmas card at last!

At this rate of progress I'll be able to send this year's cards in about five years' time! Here is number 6 (of around 120 needed.....)

I love this stamp (and regular readers, if there are any, know how much I love snowmen) which is from JustRite Stampers' Old Fashioned Christmas. The pretty blue background paper was free inside the new Making Cards special Christmas magazine and I wish I could buy lots more; sadly there was only half a sheet of the blue, but I'm sure I have other, similar papers I can use for more cards of similar design. The base card is dark blue and the mat for the background and the bottom panel, also the backing for the scalloped circle, is silver mirri card but unfortunately it has, as usual, scanned rather dark, however if you click on the picture and squint at the enlarged version you may be able to see that it's not all dark and gloomy! I used Promarkers to colour the head and the punch is Double Loops. All circles were cut with Nestabilities Classic Circles and the Eyelet Circles

This isn't really my design. I tried to provide a link to my inspiration but couldn't get it to work, so you'll have to go to the Stampers Dream blog (link is in my sidebar) and look at the entry for September 24. Not having the same punch or stamp (but both are on their way to me lol) and choosing a different colour scheme has changed the appearance quite a lot. I love Michelle's card - maybe my next one will be red and green.......

Woohoo - I've just realised I can enter the Bah! Humbug! challenge this week! The theme is 'Cuties' and in my book they don't come much cuter than this!

Made a card today!

My first card in three weeks - I think my mojo has been two timing but it was forced home today and I actually produced a couple of cards; the pics of one, however, are waiting to be uploaded from the camera so that will have to be a separate post.

This card is for an online friend in Scotland whose birthday is tomorrow so I have little hope it will arrive in time, but since she lives alone and is having a very bad time with her health maybe she will enjoy stretching her birthday a bit (and she certainly won't be expecting a card from me). I've had the verse for years but never used it, likewise the butterfly paper, and I felt quite virtuous for using up several scraps. Mind you, I seemed to have more scraps when I'd finished than when I started but isn't that always the way?

There isn't a lot to say about it: the stamp is by Clarity, the punch is Arched Lattice by Martha Stewart. Happy birthday Sarah...

One Out of Two: Must Try Harder!

It was our wedding anniversary yesterday and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't make my husband a card. I was full of good intentions on Saturday evening, having spent the day at a craft shop's demo day, but by Sunday morning all inspiration had flown and it didn't return on Monday. However DH totally forgot our anniversary, so honours were even.

It's his birthday tomorrow and I've just made this card kneeling on the floor of my workroom in the most ridiculous cramped conditions! The trouble is that I usually work on the dining table, but the dining room gives direct access to the garden and DH has been trimming the hedge and cutting the lawn so he's been in and out like a fiddler's elbow. My craft room is too small (OK, too untidy) for a table so rather than risk him seeing his card before The Day I worked behind a closed door. That didn't stop him coming into the living room via another door when I was using the scanner there, but then occasionally our house resembles a French farce with characters entering and leaving rooms with multiple doors and unintentionally pursuing each other while the cats look on in amazement. Their only concern is who will stop long enough in one place to feed them.

Anyway, the card is made in two shades of Bazzill card, with leaf paper by Nancy Watts from Making Cards magazine. The bird is by Stampin Up stamped in Versafine sepia and cut with a Nestie and the background sponged with Vintage Photo distress ink. The brown leaf was a button but I chopped the shank off so it lay flat. And the punch is my latest Martha Stewart acquisition, Iron Gate.

Frances's card - improved!

Although I showed the card I made for Frances yesterday I wasn't at all happy with it...it was one of those days when nothing gelled, nothing went quite right, and I ended up at the end of my patience thinking 'It will have to do!' I mentioned this on SplitCoastStampers and received some lovely feedback from Ruth, who made a constructive suggestion which I thought about then came up with a slightly different take. This is the result, and I'm a hundred times happier than I was just 24 hours ago! So thank you very much, Ruth - and I'll be in touch :)

Broke, but Happy

Yesterday I went with my DD and three friends to a big stamping and papercraft show about an hour's drive from home. I've been to every show except two since it started 14 years ago and always enjoy it; this was the biggest and the busiest I can remember. One stall in particular had some terrific bargains and I blew my budget in the first half hour, but I have no regrets and enjoyed watching demos for much of the remaining time. I didn't buy anything entirely new (do the words Nesties and Martha Stewart punches and stencil paste have a familiar ring?); in fact one of my purchases was an early Cuttlebug embossing folder which I've happily ignored for years but saw on someone's blog recently and realised I needed it immediately! I ought to keep my new toys out to play with and then show the results here before I put them away.......not being very tidy that shouldn't be too difficult, however today I just stroked them then pulled out some old favourites to create an anniversary card for friends.


After my efforts with stencil paste last Sunday normal service is resumed, using an image from JustRite Stampers; Nesties; a Cuttlebug embossed background and a Martha Stewart punch. Not for the first time (and undoubtedly not the last) the finished card is quite different from the one I set out to make - plans have to be changed when you realise that the 'scrap' of card you have cheerfully cut up for a punched border was the piece that 5 minutes ago you had carefully measured,cut and trimmed to make the background. OK, so there's always Plan B...

It isn't obvious from the scan but the fold is at the top of the card. The centre motif from JRS's Breath of Spring set is stuck only at the top and holds the bottom flap in place - I used Promarkers to colour the flowers and tinted the background with light brown chalk. The pink background is embossed with Swiss Dots (another delayed purchase which rapidly proved its worth) layered on matt silver and the MS punch is Double Loops. Just an aside here: I realised that the MS punches I was most tempted to buy yesterday were so very similar in style to this one that I had to force myself to buy something quite different!

I almost forgot to say that yesterday afternoon concluded with a group meeting of members from one of my internet craft forums. I've 'borrowed' the screen name of one lady to use as the title for this post - I couldn't have put it any better myself.

Golden Wedding Anniversary card

I've made this style of card many times, because it's so versatile and always makes an impact. Sorry the colour of the scan is poor, it's much too pink for the real thing which is cream and gold! I started with a sheet of ivory pearlescent card, folded and trimmed to 7"x5". I then mixed measurements and marked 2cm (just under 1") from the folded edge for the line between front cover and spine, and the same below the top to trim the front and reveal the 'pages' which are rows of narrow peel offs stuck on the inside. The corners were trimmed to a slight curve instead of straight, the first time I've tried it but it's definitely an improvement (see my blog entry for 14 February for a comparison). The gold panel uses Martha Stewart's Punch Around the Page 'Double Loop' set, and the 3D flowers are from a decoupage sheet by Mireille. I only used 3 layers which I think is quite enough, although the sheet provides seven. I added a single sided insert sheet because it has to be quite small to avoid the cutaway sections, and somehow a tiny folded insert looks wrong IMHO. I used the same border punch along the bottom, and a gold peel off anniversary greeting to tie it all together. I hope our friends like it.

Goodness me - nothing from JRS, no Nesties and no Cuttlebug! No doubt they will all re-appear when I start on my next batch of birthday cards.

Two cards today

The first is for an online crafting friend who will, according to her birth certificate, be 90 next month, although none of her friends believes it! She's a lovely lady who looks at least 15 years younger and is a real live wire; whenever our craft group organises a get together in the south of England F decides it's time to make the journey by coach from her home in Yorkshire to visit her daughter in Kent so she can join us in exploring the local craft shops.

I know her favourite colour is blue and she loves flowers and butterflies so some of the paper I bought in New Zealand last year cried out to be used for her card. I love the verse I've put on the front (especially the last line, which I think we could all aspire to) but because the Nestie label covers most of the blue paper I used it for the insert as well. It's a reversible design so the upper half of the insert is loose to show the white-on-blue version. The scanner has made the blues look completely different, but I assure you they are the same - the picture of the card front is nearer to the true shade.

The other card is one of my trademark Clean and Simple designs, or is it really Plain and Boring?! For something that looks so very easy it took an inordinate amount of time to produce: I started with the punched edge, discarded my original colour scheme, tried pictures, stamped images, quotations, Nestie shapes, embellishments of all types....and ended up with the absolute minimum! But my DH, whose artistic eye is much better than mine, said firmly that I should leave well alone and he thought it was most elegant (yes, his very words ;) ) so here it is. The recipient is a friend of my sister's and together they make and sell cards for several charities in their village; DSis's style is akin to mine and she leaves G to do the more ornate stuff, so I hope G doesn't find this too lacking in decoration. I'm sure I don't need to enumerate all the bits and pieces I actually used, they're the same as in most of my recent cards LOL.

What happened to last month?!

I find it hard to believe I haven't blogged for a month! May was certainly busy, with visitors, a dance week on the Isle of Mull, decorating our bedroom, and a long weekend dancing at Chippenham Folk Festival. Hmmm, that probably answers the query in the title! But I have been creative, after a fashion: I composed two dances during and immediately after our trip to Mull, one to celebrate our friend Mary's 80 years of folk dancing which I expect to call at her celebratory dance in September. The other I shall dedicate to friends in the local dance club whose surname is England; it's called 'Green and Pleasant Land' (a quotation from Blake's Jerusalem which we sing at our Women's Institute meetings) and each of the four sections in the dance is named for a 'green and pleasant' part of this country. I tried it out last Wednesday and temporarily changed the title and just numbered the figures so it will come as a surprise for T & L when I announce it at a residential course I'm helping to lead at Halsway Manor, also in September. Having been asked particularly to run a workshop of my own 'new' (ie hitherto unpublished) dances I'm planning to launch my third book that weekend, so I have a lot of editing to do over the summer.



Back to cardmaking today, however. I heard on the grapevine that a fellow member of the WI has been seriously injured in a road accident, so I made this card for her using the embossing folder from the Cuttlebug 'With gratitude' set, the Martha Stewart 'Arched lattice' punch, words and border from JustRite Stampers 'Just a note' set cut with a Nestie circle, and my new Lotus pendant, also from Spellbinders. The gold dots are waste from a peel off border - it took a while to apply them using the tip of a scalpel, but I think they really lift the card and it was worth the effort. I still need to make two birthday cards and one for a golden wedding for June, plus cards for a 90th birthday and 3 family birthdays in July, so there will surely be more blogging this month than last!

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 what I expected!

This is a birthday card for a dear friend who will be 97 later this month. Mary is a wonderful person who lives alone and does most things herself; she has help with the garden maintenance but delights in her greenhouse and grows new varieties of fuchsias and tomatoes each year. Unfortunately she is having a bit of trouble with her balance and can't dance much at the moment, but she still goes to the folk dance club every week and takes a keen interest in what goes on - woe betide any upstart caller or dancer who goes wrong in one of the dances she learnt for exams back in the 1930s! Her memory is amazing. Later this year we are celebrating her 80 years' continuous involvement with folk dancing, as dancer, teacher, musician (she played the accordian until she broke her wrist when she was 80) and mentor to many.

I planned to make her a parchment card for her birthday, using a pretty pattern of daisies and butterfly by Pauline Loweth. However, I may run out of time for doing that so decided to make another, simpler, card first and have it ready 'just in case'. Yesterday I started it by pricking the front using an ornaré stencil with a pattern of ivy leaves surrounding a blank circle, into which I intended to stamp a flower by JustRite Stampers. Then I found the flowers were too big, so the pricked front has been put aside for another day and I'll probably add a teabag folded medallion instead. This gatefold card is the next, and final version - not what I expected to make but it's good to be surprised! I don't really 'do' fairies in general, but I have always loved the Flower Fairies by Cecily Mary Barker. This illustration was one of many in a diary of 2008 and I carefully saved the pictures when I threw away the rest. The geranium in the oval is from a new JR set, coloured with dry watercolour pencils and the background lightly chalked to tone with the picture opposite. The border was stamped a second time, cut with Nesties and applied flat.


Here's the inside, decorated with Martha Stewart's trellis punch, and I used a parchment panel for the greeting edged with two more strips cut from the trellis. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out....and yes, I will go back and finish the ornaré card, and the parchnment craft one!

Caardvark Challenge January 2010

This is the reason I started a blog, to be able to enter cardmaking challenges. I've made the card, started a blog, and now I have to put the two together and provide a link to this blog entry on the Caardvark site . The challenge was to make a card whose basic design elements were laid out in a sketch (shown at the top); there's a fair bit of leeway allowed in interpretation, but the design should be recognisable. This particular challenge is being sponsored by JustRite Stampers whose clever invention - stamps with mix and match centres and borders - is my latest obsession. Using them with Nestability die cuts, as I've done on this card, is a marriage made in Heaven.