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!

I shall be absent for a while

We have visitors at the moment who leave on Thursday. That is the same day that we go to Scotland for 10 days, so I shan't be crafting for at least a couple of weeks. I hope you'll check in again before the end of the month!

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.

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 waving but drowning

I went to a big craft show in London yesterday and bought this template by Anna Marie Designs. Our neighbour's daughter (Florence's big sister) will be 3 next month and I hope she will like the card as much as I enjoyed making it. Not only was it fun and quick to do, it also used up several scraps of card! I feel I'm drowning in paper and card at present; I spent an evening last week sorting and storing all the full size sheets, but it's the smaller bits which are the problem - you know, the ones that are too small to make a card but too big to throw away. All papercrafters have them! I do try to look through them before cutting into a new sheet, but they too need properly sorting and storing where I can more easily do it than at present. Most of them are in two small drawers so tightly packed that it takes more effort and time to find something useable than I want to expend, to say nothing of the recently created scraps which don't have a home because the drawers are too full. Well, I've recently acquired some more empty drawers (by transferring all my inkpads to a wonderful, custom built shelf rack) so this is my opportunity. And let's be honest, if I don't do it right now those empty drawers are likely to accumulate other odds and ends in them and my scraps still won't have a proper home!

I'm back!

Just a quick message to say I haven't deserted my blog; we had a major computer crash last week and it's amazing I'm back so soon! Fingers crossed that we can maintain our internet connection since it's still not entirely reliable. I hope to have something to show here very soon, I've been ill as well and not done any crafting since making the egg card (what a waste of all that spare time not spent on the computer.....)