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.

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.

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.

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.