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 :)

Another card for Frances

At the beginning of June I showed a card for a friend who celebrated her 90th birthday a couple of weeks back. Sadly I'm now showing a 'get well soon' card for her: Frances broke her leg a few days ago and has had to choose between being in traction for ten weeks or having surgery to pin the bone. Typically she has decided on an operation which should mean a shorter period of inaction. The hospital staff were taken aback when they asked if she normally preferred to walk with a frame or a stick and she replied indignantly 'Neither! I belong to a rambling group, and only have a slight problem with hills sometimes!' Bless her, she has an artificial hip and osteoarthritis but doesn't let anything hinder her...especially when a visit to a craft shop is in her sights!

The card is very simple, just a small JustRite greeting with wide border mounted on silver and blue mirror card layers cut with Blossom #1 by Spellbinders. The background paper has been in my stash for years and knowing that Frances loves blue and butterflies I couldn't have found anything more appropriate.

Birthday Cakes

This is the card I made at the weekend but couldn't scan. It's the first stepper I've tried, using a template by 'Get in Shape' (isn't that a great name?!). I couldn't make sense of the instructions at first so did a dummy run with a piece of scrap paper and it worked perfectly, so making the real card was child's play. The cake stand image is by Impression Obsession, sentiment by Stampendous and the individual cakes are from Hero Arts, coloured with Promarkers. The main image and sentiment are cut and layered with Nesties. I used Dewdrops as cherries; next time I'll use Tippex to get rid of the line behind them as they are so very transparent. The card is for my DD - I've told her not to look at my blog until after her birthday on Friday :)

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........

And now for something completely different...

I'm home alone this weekend, DH having gone to France for five days with friends from the motor club to watch the 24 hour classic car race at Le Mans. It isn't the 'BIG' 24 hours contested by professionals which takes place each June: this one is held biennially for cars over 30 years old driven by amateurs. DH is lovingly restoring a 1953 baby MG saloon which he bought to be his retirement project; so far it's taken 15 years to strip, restore and rebuild, but at last it's looking like a car again with 4 wheels, doors, a roof...even the headlights are installed and working! But don't ask when it will be on the road - it won't be this year, that's for sure. And no, he doesn't intend to race it :)

Anyway, with the house to myself (apart from two large ginger cats) I've spent the day playing. First up was a birthday card which I can't show because it won't scan and DH has borrowed my camera, so that will have to wait for a few days. I started the second one by making 4 background sheets using Distress Inks in various colour combinations, applying them with Cut 'n' dry foam. The selected one is a mixture of Faded Jeans, Dusty Concord and Milled Lavender. The plants were stamped in Versamark and embossed with white detail embossing powder and the verse was stamped in blue Versafine. I first saw these words in a magazine project about 18 months ago and have wanted them ever since, but it's part of a set (together with the bottom two plants, and others) by Darkroom Door and I always felt I couldn't afford it. Yesterday I caved in and ordered it on line when I found it reduced and with free postage, and justified its purchase by thinking that the ferry to France plus 4 nights in a hotel will be costing DH considerably more! It was a shock to receive the set this morning just 20 hours after I placed the order but I'm really delighted to have it and foresee that it will get plenty of use. Over the past year I've collected quite a lot of stamps with weeds/wild grasses - quirky, maybe, but I do like to be different! Oh, and the stamp in the top corner is from a wild flower set by Elusive Images.

When it came to turning the panel into a card I spent a long time trying to find a suitable background. It looked good on the dark blue as seen in the top left corner, but that is literally the only piece I had - plenty of other blues, but they just didn't look right. The purple in the bottom right corner looked good, but it wasn't big enough for the whole card front and all I have left is a piece about 3 inches square! Finally I decided on the checkerboard effect....very unusual for me and I'm not sure what DH will think about it, but at least it's a finished card.

CPS Challenge 174

It's ages since I've looked at any of the challenge sites listed in my side bar: it's almost as much as I can do to make a card when required for birthdays etc. However, today I spent some time tidying up minor details on my blog and clicked on the link to CPS almost at random. As soon as I saw the sketch for this week I picured this card; although I have made it specially it's a design I've used several times in the past. The origami inkwell is very easy to make using tissue paper and instructions in the HOTP booklet #2176 Tea bag folding and More; the letter is embossed with the (old) Cuttlebug folder Script (there's a newer, less chunky one now); the sentiment is by Inca and of course the ovals were cut with Nesties.The gorgeous shimmery, copper coloured background paper came from a supplier at one of the craft shows I frequent but I have no idea of its origin. Oh, and the feather probably came from a pigeon!

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.