Spades, hearts and diamonds

These two cards were finished a few days ago but they both needed to be photographed rather than scanned and the weather has been a little chill, to put it mildly - I prefer to do it outside with natural lighting so waited until today when most of the snow has gone. Now I need to put the first card in the post to America and hope it arrives in time.

It isn't really anything to do with hearts, except that my niece's birthday is on Valentine's Day. Liz loves her garden so I had a bit of fun with this - yes, it's a side stepper just like the last card I made. I've said it before: I never claim to be imaginative and when I find something that works I'm likely to stick with it! The lady gardener is by Paper Nation, stamped and coloured with pencils then mounted on dark green using a Mega Deckle Rectangle Nestability die. The background stamp is by Hero Arts, the quotation and small images are by PSX. The little metal tulips I've had for years and cannot remember who made them, but they were just perfect to finish off the front.

I am entering this card in the Sir Stampalot challenge for February which, fortuitously, is entitled 'In the Garden'. Or more accurately, it was the challenge theme which gave me the idea for Liz's card! :)

In my last post I said I would be making a very special card for a very special lady....and here it is. I belong to the Women's Institute and our county federation has organised a competition for a card to be sent, on behalf of all Hampshire members, to congratulate Her Majesty the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee. I must say that left to myself I would not have made such a card as, although I am a monarchist and admire the Queen greatly, I just do not do things like that. However, I try to enter what competitions I can to show support for the organisers. There are over 7,000 WI members in Hampshire and maybe 100 will enter; I don't expect my card to be chosen (not everyone likes plain and simple but I'm no good at beautiful and elaborate) and if it isn't then I can change the insert and save the card for someone's diamond wedding instead!

The base card is bright white Bazzill card. The embossing folder is by Cuttlebug as are the die cut numbers; I matted the Nestie diamond and the top layer on the same silver mirri card as the numbers using the Perfect Layers Tool then raised the diamond on foam pads; there are tiny clear gems where the embossed lines intersect.

The wording inside was indicated by the Federation: I have printed it in the standard WI dark green on parchment and it is more legible than it appears here (also the tape doesn't show up as much IRL).

Where did January go?

I can't believe it's almost February, I had such plans for the start of the new year that came to naught because a bad cold laid me low for a good two weeks. But I haven't been completely idle: I've made 50lb marmalade, have four knitted jumpers (sweaters) in various stages of progress for orphans in Zimbabwe (I enjoy knitting them but hate sewing up), stitched four card bookmarks for a giveaway through FaceBook (and bought another set of six patterns...) and started to spring clean the kitchen cupboards. But what happened to my plans for making birthday cards two months in advance (I should have six made right now) and eight (reduced from 14 - whatever was I thinking?!) Christmas cards per month? I'll leave you to answer that one :(

But fear not, I produced this card yesterday :) The friend for whom I made the seaside card in my last post will be celebrating her Golden Wedding next week and I've been brooding over possible designs all month; finally everything fell into place and I'm very pleased with the result. I used a lovely pale gold pearlescent card for the base, cut to a side stepper using a template by Get in Shape Templates. The rose stamp, embossed in gold, is by PSX and I mounted it on matt gold using once again the Perfect Layers tool. Oh, that's such a wonderful invention!! I used it also for the panels on the steps where a rose patterned paper is mounted on the matt gold, which I also used to cut the numbers from the Cuttlebug Hippie Chick font. The 'Congratulations' and strip of tiny roses are gold peel offs, and I used the same roses down each side of the inner panel.

I am entering this card in the Joanna Sheen monthly challenge for January, the theme being 'Celebrations'.

There's another couple of friends celebrating their Golden Wedding in August: that will be my fifth GW card in 18 months! But next up is a very special card for a very special lady....watch this space and I hope to have something soon :)

December birthdays old and new

A very special friend will be 70 tomorrow and this is the card I've made for her: I always make a special point of making something as different from a Christmas card as I can, so this seaside theme fits the bill perfectly. I struggled with it but was finally happy - it was the inclusion of the bright yellow that tipped the balance even though it's among my least favourite colours. I love the quotation which is an old PSX stamp I managed to track down on eBay last year and it's cut with the beaded oval Nestability . The sketch of the woman is by Stampin' Up! cut with a small classic square Nestie and matted using my new, indispensible tool, the Perfect Layers ruler. Highly recommended, it's so simple to use and results in perfectly even mats without any measuring. And no, this isn't a sales advert: I have no axe to grind other than being one very happy crafter!

Well, there's a new birthday added to the calendar for December: Holly Louise was born on Wednesday 21st and this is the card for her proud parents. The teddies by PSX are my favourite go-to stamp for baby cards, coloured with chalks and mounted on pink which I promise you is not as lurid IRL as it appears here! And the piece at the bottom cut with a Nestie Fancy Tag die really did come from the same piece of card although it looks very different. The holly background is shaded green so I 'm not blaming the scanner for colour variation there, and although you can't see it the insert sheet has its edges decorated with a Fiskars holly border punch.

I should be back next week with the final card for this year - a friend's birthday is on New Year's Eve.

Golden weddings

No, not ours - though we're working on it! Friends are celebrating 50 years of marriage tomorrow and this is the card I made for them.

The base card is a deep cream, cut to the shape of a book and covered with handmade Indian paper. The stamped roses are from my well loved PSX collection, embossed in gold then layered on matt gold, and the whole trimmed with gold peel offs.

Other friends are also celebrating their Golden Wedding next Monday; their card is in the post heading for Spain. I showed it when I made it some time back but thought it would be nice to include it again, since it uses exactly the same materials but has quite a different look. There's another to be made for next month and one for next February, plus a Ruby wedding in September, so maybe it's time to find a different theme.


Oh, and a footnote to the card with 40 candles shown in my last post - it was very well received, and greatly admired!

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.

Bah! Humbug! Challenge #10

The theme for this week's Challenge is 'Apertures' which seems a perfect occasion to use a pair of stamps I bought at a big craft show in Toronto, Canada, about four years ago and, I'm ashamed to say, have inked only once to stamp them in my catalogue. The resulting card was much quicker and easier to make than I feared. The snowy village scene was stamped straight onto a white card blank and coloured with dry watercolour pencils. The windows were stamped on a piece of green card the same size, cut out and a sheet of acetate stuck on the back. One of the bottom corners was a bit ragged so I applied a little Polar White Flowersoft on the acetate to be snow on the window sills - I don't know how I would have disguised ragged corners at the top but I was lucky! I then cut a strip of card 4cm wide and scored 3 vertical lines, accordian folded them and cut the strip in half. I stuck a piece to each side of the front, attached them to the snow scene and there you are: a view through the windows! A silver peel off border and greeting completed the front....and I wondered why it had taken me so long to use those stamps. Although they are by a Canadian company and may not be readily available in the UK it would be easy enough to cut similar windows freehand to go with any scenic background. The folded strips between the front panel and the scene mean that the card will squash flat to go in an envelope, but when extracted the windows stand proud like the proscenium arch on a stage.

When buying peel offs you may have seen big white sheets of geometric shapes and wondered what they are for. This card was made by punching three square apertures and sticking matching peel off frames with clear centres on the front (I use waxed paper such as the carrier sheet from labels inside the card to protect the back surface). Inside I sprinkled ultrafine holographic glitter on the sticky surface of the centres; on the outside I added small peel off motifs and coloured with appropriate pens. I stuck the edges of the insert sheet all round on the lefthand side so the glitter wouldn't rub off.

It's many years since I used this wreath stamp by PSX and having made the card I remembered why! Nothing wrong with the stamp, it's all that cutting..... I stamped it on white card with Versamark, embossed with silver EP, coloured it with Promarkers and cut it out (memo to Self: new decoupage snips are needed urgently!) The card was covered with green paper embossed with the Cuttlebug folder 'Holly Ribbons', the aperture cut with a Nestabilities Classic Circle die and the wreath stuck down overlapping the edge. The sentiment was stamped on the inside - I traced lightly the inner edge of the wreath to position it properly - and the only minor problem is that the back of the leaves show on the inside of the aperture and, because the Promarkers bleed through, it looks a bit untidy. If I make another I shall cut the wreath out double and then stick the clean copy on the back after colouring and before assembly.

Bah! Humbug! Challenge #9

Embossing: a technique to make a design stand out from the surface

I'm very excited to be making my Challenge cards this week as a member of the Design Team (thank you, Ann and Max). I tried to think of something a bit different without being too way out and hope that, if necessary, you will find my work gives you ideas for your own cards.

Having been a stamper for about 20 years my first thought when I read 'Embossing' involved powders and a heat gun! I made two complimentary panels using a very old, traditional wood mounted stamp by PSX, and a fairly new, clear unmounted one by Dimension Fourth, each stamped with Versamark and embossed with silver EP. They were too big for my original card idea so I made a Z fold card which embraces both and an insert, yet still fits into a standard C6 envelope. The sentiment is by Funstamps and was stamped in Brilliance ink; snowflake border punch by Fiskars.

Next is a 'crossover technique' card (aka, what do you mean by embossing?); the ornament is another PSX stamp embossed with Red Razzle Dazzle EP, cut out and mounted on a panel made with a Cuttlebug embossing folder from the 'Holiday' set.

Third card design goes way, way back. I once bought some ready made blanks printed with a grid of different size boxes into which you could stamp various images: very useful for incorporating those little stamps which often seem too small to have any use. I used to copy the idea and painstakingly draw out my own grids with ruler, pen and a few curses, but now the job is made so much easier with a score board! It's best to choose the images and plan your grid to fit them on paper first. Oh, and I had to cheat: thin embossed lines do not show up when scanned, so for illustration purposes only I went over them with ruler and pencil!

The red and gold card looks impressive (I hope) but was the quickest of the four to make, using a Dreamweaver stencil and gold embossing paste. It really couldn't be easier: tape stencil over card, apply paste, remove stencil and leave card to dry! For the background I used self adhesive red velvet paper on top of thin card, and stuck the finished panel to an A6 card - I did try layering it onto a 7" x 5" but decided the simple approach was the best. If you would like to try this technique I can recommend a DVD by Carol Cockbain of The Craft Barn, or watch a demonstration by (another) Carol from The Craft Station if you catch her at a show (please note, I have no affiliation with either shop).

Now, what am I going to do for next week's Challenge???

It's All About Love

That's the theme for Rainbow Lady's challenge for this week....perhaps she expected lots of Valentine cards but since my poor DH didn't get one this year (come to think of it, neither did I!) I'm offering something different. We have four couples among our friends who are celebrating their Golden Wedding in the next 12 months so this was a good opportunity to start the special cards. First came the choice of a cream card base rather than white. Then I went through my folders and pulled out all the suitable cream & gold background papers, deciding to use another of the handmade Indian sheets which I have in abundance. The hybrid rose is a PSX stamop I've had for years and used many times, even painting it with watercolours on one occasion (and for me that was a huge adventure). This time I embossed it with Versamark ink and gold detail powder but was very disappointed with the result: no raised lines at all, and no shine.....if asked I think a viewer would decide it was a gold picture because it couldn't be anything else, but it certainly wasn't what I wanted. So I did it again using my very old ordinary gold EP and got the right effect this time. The matte gold card was a couple of bits from my scraps box, the gold peel offs added the finishing touch and that was it: an hour's work, one GW card down and an entry for Cynthia's challenge :)

A golden oldie in silver: Bah! Humbug! #4

The challenge at Bah! Humbug! this week is to use something that hasn't seen the light of day for quite a while but used to be a favourite - what they are calling 'An oldie that's a goldie'. I used this stamp by PSX several years ago for many of my Christmas cards because it gave beautiful results without too much work and I could produce quantities fairly quickly. All it needed was heat embossing in gold or silver; sometimes I coloured the flowers lightly but more often left them plain. I'm now thinking of trying it in white or copper EP on dark card, rather like the thistle from my Burns Night card, but for this challenge I just mounted it on a panel of red mirri with a length of silver ribbon. The dies were the two largest from the mega deckle long rectangles. And the green border is purely background - I found that a plain white card on the white blog page left more than a little to the imagination!

And I still love the stamp and wonder why I haven't used it for the past few years.

Not a Snowman To Be Seen!

I promised to do something different, and snowmen don't come much more different than this!

The challenge on the JustRite blog this week is 'Colors of Autumn'. Despite being a JRS junkie I never manage to take part in the weekly challenge - most of my crafting is done at the weekend which in theory is perfect since the challenge is posted on Friday, but I need time to think about a possible design and by the time I've thought it's always too late :( But not this week! Being an autumn nut I was determined to take part and have been chewing over ideas. I thought of a rainbow done in red-orange-yellow-brown wth the basket of apples as the crock of gold at the bottom...unfortunately enthusiasm outran ability and it turned out rather differently but I'm still quite pleased with it. IRL it's quite a lot brighter than it appears in the scan, with a band of yellow that 'lifts' the background. I'm going to put it in a frame and hang it in my workroom - I'm slowly gathering various autumnal bits and having plain white walls gives me plenty of scope to play with touches of colour.

The background was sponged with Distress Inks in about ten shades. I used the largest size Trompe Script font by JR for the heading and stamped it in Memento Rich Cocoa ink. The apple basket is from Autumn Blessings - despite being an oval set it fits nicely with only a small trim into the large border from Backyard Birds.I coloured them with Promarkers and used a couple of pale chalks on the background to reduce the glaring white (with hindsight I could have used a slightly deeper shade). I mounted the circle on a layer of brown (both circles cut with Nesties) to define the edge and was going to mount the whole piece on the same brown until I discovered it looked much better on red. Oh, and the outline leaf is by PSX.

Now it's back to Christmas cards.....

Christopher and Christmas

An online stitching friend gave birth to Christopher John last Thursday. I made this little card for the family today, using once again my favourite teddy bear stamp by PSX which I chalked, cut out and popped on foam tape. The letters are silver peel offs; I assembled the name on a piece of waxed paper and then transferred it to the card with low tack tape. I even managed to get it more-or-less central and almost straight! It's very simple and was quick to make but I'm quietly pleased with it; since there are no babies in our family and I really don't do 'cute' I don't have a lot of suitable stamps for such occasions, but teddies are always good :).


The snowman card is for the Bah! Humbug! challenge which this week is to make a Christmas card for a special friend. It's the first time I've managed to do the challenge, despite all my good intentions to make my Christmas cards regularly throughout the year - I started off making 4 in March and today's effort brings my total to.....five! Oh dear. I found the tag card while looking for something else this morning and thought it would make an interesting layout. All the stamps are by JustRite Stampers from various Christmas sets, cut with Nesties and coloured with Promarkers. I've seen previews of the new Christmas sets coming out in the next couple of months and think I'll have to hide my credit card in a tub of water in the freezer........

Easter Egg

I don't usually make Easter cards but I found the template (origin unknown) for this one while sorting through some papers in my craft room last week. Being a prototype it isn't perfect, but my daughter is also a crafter and will, I hope, overlook its imperfections when she receives it! The simple mechanism is a strip of card folded in four; I added another strip as a brace to stop the card falling over when stood up, having omitted the ribbon I should have applied before sticking on the daffodil picture (from JustRite Stampers' Breath of Spring set), not realising that it was functional as well as decorative.

Daffodils on the egg are an um acrylic stamp, greeting is by PSX.

A giant step for me in Blogland!

I feel somewhat overwhelmed. Today I mentioned my blog on a couple of craft forums I frequent and have been amazed at the number of kind comments received! It has led to the re-discovery of blogs I've read occasionally but not kept tabs on, and others completely new to me, so that the next step on my blogging journey was to set up a list of blogs I read - or intend to. No doubt there will be further additions in the coming days and weeks and I am rapidly becoming aware that this could develop into a monster with a life of its own. OK, maybe not a monster.....more like a demanding cat.......and having been owned by cats for the past 42 years I'm not sure if that's an improvement or not.

One of the blogs I discovered (see Just Cute Bears Challenge in my blog list) is starting brand new challenges for designs with teddy bears: I made this card for twin boy and girl quite recently and couldn't resist entering. The big bears are by PSX, the smaller ones by Penny Black, punch by Fiskars. I used chalks to colour the bears and popped the large ones on foam pads.