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.

Winter friends

A quick posting today of a card made for the new Joanna Sheen blog challenge which is called Christmas Wishes :) The verse is a custom made stamp, the snowman is by Inkadinkado coloured with dry pencils and cut with Classic Oval Nestabilities. The background paper is from a large batch of handmade Indian paper I bought several years ago - this particular design has made wonderful snowflakes!

I'm also entering this card in the final Bah! Humbug! challenge for Cute Christmas Critters because it gives me a way of saying thanks to Max and Ann for all their hard work and apologies for having disappeared off their radar for most of the year. Ladies, you won't have seen my previous post explaining that I've been ill for the past 6 months (or at least not well) but I am now recovered and rarin' to go with next year's Bah! Humbug! challenges :)

I'm still alive!

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post. For the past six months, since our holiday in Scotland, I've not felt well and although I kept trying to pick myself up and get on with things it didn't work. Finally I went to the doctor and after several comprehensive blood tests I can now state categorically that there is nothing the matter with me; possibly I have had a virus which has gone, and apart from monitoring my blood pressure for a couple of weeks I shall not need to visit the doctor again (I hope). I certainly feel very much better than I have done for months and have been trying to make up for lost time, especially in the Christmas card department!

The card shown here is not the only one I've made in the past month but all the others are just copies of some shown earlier. I thought that would save time, but choosing to make a dozen of a particularly complex design was, perhaps, not my brightest idea... This is one I've had in mind for years and in fact I made it with a stamped background many years ago. If anyone knows where I can buy Christmas tree paper like this I'll be forever in your debt - this is half of a small sheet given free with Making Cards magazine Christmas special, and I was stupidly reluctant to make a second card and use it up! The bauble shape is from Spellbinder's Heirloom Ornaments 2011 cut from holographic card, and the stamped sentiment is from JustRite Stampers Merry Little Christmas set. The large greeting is a silver peel off and since scanning it I've added a line of tiny silver peel off stars at the bottom of the background paper which improves the overall look considerably.

I intend to return to my blog with a header photo of all my handmade cards when I finally call a halt. 2012 will see me blogging much more often, showing off birthday cards made two months before they're needed, and at least 14 new Christmas cards each month. I shall sail serenely through the cardmaking year.....and if I manage that it will only be because, like a swan, I'm paddling like h*ll out of sight!

On the first day of Christmas...

I'm a bit apprehensive about this card! I made it last week to give to a young friend who is supposed to be leaving for a holiday in Thailand tomorrow. She was very pleased with it, but in view of the terrible floods in that country I'm wondering if she will actually be able to go. She has made all her own arrangements so doesn't even have a travel agent to advise her, and although I know the trip has been over a year in the planning so she will be bitterly disappointed if she has to cancel, the important thing is her safety. My heart goes out to the Thai people trying to live in such conditions, too - I should think the last thing they need right now are tourists!

This is the first in a set from Pinbroidery and I think it's a great design! Much quicker to stitch than I expected, but if I continue with all 12 I don't think I shall want to send them.....maybe I could use them as part of our holiday decorations instead :) Stitched using Kreinik Cord, which is a single ply metallic thread.

More parchment

This Christmas card was made using a stencil designed by Alison Yeates, one of the tutors on last week's parchment course. I've always felt that the use of such stencils was sort of cheating but having discovered how versatile they are, with many design elements to use in different ways, I put my scruples aside and thought I'd try it. I love the result! And there's enough 'real' parching skills in the execution that my scruples have been banished entirely and I'm keen to try another design :)

Parchment craft

I spent last week on a parchment craft course with Alison Yeates and Christine Coleman. I haven't done very much before although I started many years ago, and the given projects really stretched me because they were largely geared to colouring with different media, whereas my preference is for whitework. Besides, I don't have an artistic bone in my body and rate my skill as on a level with a backward two year old! We started 5 projects but had only 4½ days so most will be completed at home; these two were the smallest and I finished  them today.

The pumpkin was coloured using polychromos pencils, which are excellent for blending. Quite a lot of what you see here was Christine's work - despite watching her demonstrations closely and thinking I was doing it just the same, she took an eraser to much of my efforts and with a deft touch showed me again what it ought to look like! :) I did enjoy perforating and cutting the border though: much more my style! The panel is mounted on copper mirri card which complements the orange pumpkin very well.

The second piece, apart from the border, isn't true parchment craft but it does make quite an attractive card: the motifs were cut from a paper serviette and stuck onto parchment. The pink colouring round the peacock was done with a polychromos pencil softened with a blending medium and the whole overlays a piece of shaded blue card.

I apologise for the crooked scans - I'm not sure if it's good or bad that they are tilted in opposite directions...

Now I plan to finish the largest project which shouldn't take me too long, so I hope to back blogging very soon.

Two cards

By Thursday of last week I was in a state of mild panic: it had been our wedding anniversary the previous day and I hadn't made a card for DH; his birthday was on Friday and I was completely out of inspiration, and I still had to make a Golden Wedding card for Saturday! This is what I produced in a short space of time - not the greatest card I've ever made, but nor was it too bad

On Friday I was so bugged about the GW card that I wandered round the house doing everything except make a card - things were so desperate that I almost did the ironing!!! Needless to say, once I sat down things were much better and although I didn't set out to make an easel card this is how it evolved....and I was actually pleased with it when finished

I've had a rather rough time over the past 5 months (culminating last week with our son emigrating to Canada) and my mojo has been on a long vacation but I'm hoping to be back on an even keel now. There's a lull in upcoming birthdays so I plan to go back to making Christmas cards and entering the Bah! Humbug! challenges, and the others I still have listed in my sidebar.