Hey, I'm on a roll!

Third card in a week, after so little in the past four months: I hope it isn't overkill! After all, I still have a lot of Christmas cards to make as well as more birthday and anniversary cards, but they will have to wait for a few days as we shall be having our last lot of visitors this weekend, arriving tomorrow.

This card is for a friend who is a keen gardener. Both the design and the words are from Joanna Sheen and the embossing is a Cuttlebug folder.

Ruby Wedding

Friends are celebrating their Ruby Wedding tomorrow and this is the card I've made for them. Nothing original, it's a pattern I've used several times for ruby, sapphire(45) emerald (55) and diamond(60) anniversaries and it always makes an impact. The design is by a Dutch lady on the World of Crafters forum and is an advanced form of iris folding: it doesn't spiral inwards and finish with an iris like the basic designs I made last Christmas (and showed in detail here ), and it has exposed corners which can be tricky to get neat, but although it took quite a time to complete I'm pleased with the final result.

Wedgwood Style Birthday Card

It's been a long time since I did any card making; I'm ashamed to say I've missed at least three birthdays in that time, however my excuse is that it's been a busy month with visitors and attending two folk dance festivals. Now the weather has decided that summer is over, autumn draws near and settling down in the craft room is a very good idea, so here's the first of my offerings using a stamp I bought when my sister was staying with me and needed to be taken to a big craft shop.....well, that's my story!

The image is by Hero Arts, stamped using Versamark with detail white embossing powder. I swear the plain blue squares had straight edges and right angled corners when I cut them - can't think how they got themselves so crooked! (and they really don't look as bad on the real thing.)

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!

Back with a Big One

The past month has been a mix of highs and lows, hence the absence of any creative efforts from me. I think I'm now over the low spots so without further ado let me show off my latest effort: an e-NOR-mous card for my daughter's forthcoming 40th birthday. I take no credit for originality - my crafty friend Joy made one like this a couple of years ago for her son-in-law, and not only did she encourage me to consider making one like it for Claire but she gave me a template and picures plus periodic nudges to get on with it!

The template was actually a card blank from Craftwork Cards in the shape of 4 candles. I merely opened it out so there were 8 candles, traced round it on a large A3 sheet, cut it out, stuck on bits of foil paper and repeated four more times, then joined them together to make a 5 panel accordian folded card. The two problems were the flimsy nature of the foil, which creases if you so much as look at it, and the sheer size....when extended the card is 70", or 1.75 metres. The inner part of the flame is made with an X-Cut leaf punch exactly the same shape; the decorative circles are all by JustRite Stampers cut with Nestabilities Classic Circles and mounted on purple pearlised card cut with scalloped Nesties. The figures are from the Cuttlebug Hippie Chick alphabet dies.

Here are some more pics to show detail from left to right, the dark patches are shadow/reflections of me as I stood on a chair to take the photos:

It has taken many hours of work over the past eight days to make the card, and not for the first time I'm glad Claire wasn't twins :)

Down the Rabbit Hole

At last we are back to normal following our disastrous holiday: not only have we replaced the car but two large boxes of our possessions were delivered this afternoon and I feel complete once more! The things I have missed most were all my dance instruction cards - fortunately stored on the computer so I've been reprinting as required when I've been teaching over the past three weeks - and my beloved SLR digicamera. It was a wrench leaving it behind, but those two boxes weighed 36 kilogrammes, or 75 lb....very nearly the maximum allowed for two air passengers! I don't know the weight of the suitcases we brought home by train but it was more than enough to persuade me that I could manage without my camera for a short time.

And in anticipation of its arrival I made this birthday card yesterday for my niece.

She produces her work's annual pantomime each December and this year it is to be based on Alice in Wonderland (I have been asked to choreograph the Lobster Quadrille which will open Act 2 - a considerable challenge compared to my usual dancers). I've always loved the book with its classic illustrations by Sir John Tenniel and have quite a lot of rubber stamps so decided to make a card incorporating as many as possible. I first thought of doing a neverending card like this one but the largest stamps were a bit too big for use on an 8" square card, and increasing the overall size would have made it unwieldly. I went for a 3 panel card instead, using as the base two 7"x5" blanks stuck together.

All the stamps were from whole plate sheets bought from an American eBay seller called Red Eowyn about 5 years ago and are the best reproductions I've come across - I'd like to get some more in the same series but she doesn't seem to be selling at present (ETA: Not on eBay, but she has a website). Because they look just like the book illustrations they didn't need colouring after being stamped with Versafine Black Onyx but I then added the quotes using red Versafine. It was fun using words out of context - I was particularly pleased with the 'No room!' for the Dormouse being stuffed head first into the teapot :) The brads on the greetings page were newly purchased just a couple of weeks back.

The page with the greetings panel opens to reveal two more illustrations.

And the back has a back view of Alice as well as my logo. Now I just have to hope that D doesn't read my blog.

Catching up

Soon after my last posting we went to the Isle of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland, for our annual week's holiday doing English country dancing. We arrived on Friday and spent the first 3 days renewing friendships, visiting favourite places and dancing each evening. The weather was bad with very heavy rain; the roads on Mull - almost everywhere they are single track width with passing places - are notorious for the potholes and unfortunately on Monday afternoon we hit a huge one pretending to be just a shallow puddle. Long story short: the car was written off by the insurers as being uneconomic to repair, governed by the logistical problems of remoteness rather than the intrinsic value of the car, so having been loaned transport by the dear people with whom we stay so that we could still go dancing each evening, we travelled the 600 miles back home at the end of the week by public transport (bus, ferry, 4 trains, 2 taxis and the London Underground).

The two weeks since our return, punctuated by last weekend dancing at a folk festival while using our campervan as a base, have been spent trying to pick up the pieces involving insurance, replacement car and courier service to get the rest of our goods and chattels back home, having abandoned them in our friends' spare wardrobe. What a pity it wasn't the sort that leads to Narnia: we might have had everything done so much more quickly! This weekend has been very productive and suddenly everything seems to be falling into place - with luck I might even manage to make a card or two this coming week.......