Mad panic

Hello there

.....Oops! Only just realised that I never published this, so you're getting this post today instead of the one I promised you yesterday. If you didn't read yesterday's, then you're not disappointed :-)

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Last weekend I was given a short sharp awakening; I was told that it was my step-dad's birthday on November 17th. I know this of course but I had forgotten and therefore hadn't made a card at all. Having two days in which to think of a design and actually make a card, isn't normally enough time for me, what with the rest of life still going on as busy as ever. But was I beaten?! Oh no, not this little madam!

He loves all sorts of sports and car racing is one of them. With that knowledge, years ago, I bought a decoupage set of black and white images of male related stuff. This set has proved valuable many times and although I don't particularly like it, it certainly does the job for male cards, who, let's face it, really aren't that bothered by them. After saying that, they would get upset if they didn't get one. 

George appreciated the design but I think he preferred the duck meal which Chris made for him on Sunday. Truth be told, I rather liked the meal more too :-)

I went to town decorating the envelope too










There were two more cars on the same sheet, so I decided to go for it and make them into cards too. My dad's birthday is on December 4th and he loves cars too.

I got the chequered flags and background from some images online, as my computer was dead for most of the weekend (grrrrr, don't remind me!) I had to use my daughter's; much to her disgust.

Take care out there

Forever young

Hello there

I love the big floppy flowery hat on the envelope

Here's a card I made for a surprise 40th party for a friend who does a lot of work for our local community and is just a lovely lady. There was a 70's theme to the party, so a pair of flared stripey trousers was a must and some large flowers. The song 'forever young' came to my mind after seeing a card called 'Forever 40' when I was looking for inspiration. 

I've got the words of the song printed off and put inside the card.

I used the Forever young Cricut cartridge to get the woman's image from too and the flowers. The font for the words on the front of the card and the 'Happy Birthday' on the inside of the card, come from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge. The paper was a lucky find in my stash from K&Co.

And before you ask, yes, that hat was worn at the party. It had to be done.

Take care out there - peace and love to you sisters!

Harlequin

Hello there

Here's some cards I've done recently. I did the first one and enjoyed it so much, that I did a similar second one. I knew I wanted to do black and white for the first recipient and I went straight to Sue Wilson's Particraft blog and sure enough, there I found a fab card. She does the most brilliant elegant cards and monochrome colours are a signature style of hers, in my opinion. 

I used that as my inspiration and then got to cutting a pile of diamonds out, to attempt to make some sort of harlequin pattern, as I don't have any stencils or stamps with that style on.

It's so easy using Cricut craftroom

That created the top, which I had to colour black and place a white background behind it and voila; une harlequin pattern ready to be cut up into 'tails' for the cards.

Colouring these dies wasn't great fun but a necessary evil this time

I don't actually own the Sizzix Venetian accents dies, so instead I ordered them pre-cut from ebay - 24 cuts from the Venetian motifs and accents sets for only £1.80. Job done! I am now very tempted to get the dies though, as they're gorgeous - I LURRRRVVE that mask! I'll put it on my Christmas list and drive my mum mad, as she always says " but why don't you get something nice for yourself?".... which part of 'these dies are amazing' doesn't she get?!!! :-)  Only joking, I love my mum to the moon and back but she doesn't get my crafting side at all.

I was so happy to find a sentiment stamp which fitted perfectly onto another one of the Venetian accent dies. I also had the feather in my stash and the embossing folder. I finished it off with some drops of Cosmic shimmer glossy black pva, in the form of drops along the top of each tail. 

The second one I made in almost exactly the same way, other than I used some black ribbon to tie two pieces of card together to make the card base instead. I also coloured the mask in a different shade and placed the border strip in front of the tails instead of behind. 

I love these cards and I hope Sue likes the fact that I used her cards as inspiration. If they inspire you to make your own take on this, please send me photos and I'll post them on here for you too.

Take care out there. 

One of my favourite people

Hello there

My baby is 15 today, although I'm writing this on October 12th whilst she's out at a friend's house; I've scheduled this post for October 15th. We had a fab trip to Harry Potter World at the beginning of October and she's getting a big present, so she's going to have yet another good birthday hopefully.






Unusually enough, I don't normally make her a card but I have this year. 

I've used the Juliet stamp by Indigo Blu for the first time, despite having owned the stamp for a very long time. I looked online for inspiration but found only three examples of cards using that stamp, which is surprising. I love the flowing hair behind her and the birds and swirls; very liberating and pretty. I used a tag project as the inspiration but mine looks nothing like that. 

I first inked the tag by putting three distress inks on the craft mat and spritzed them with water and ran the tag through them - very technical; that's me! I did the same for the second layer but only using the wild honey and worn lipstick. The base layer, I only used the broken china. I then used the swirly stamp from the Indigo Blu 'music hall' stamp in matching colours on the edges of each of those two layers and used the musical score stamp, from that set, on the main tag. I stamped Juliet with SU's tempting turqoise. 

The flower is a washi tape one, which I really like. It has musical score on it, so very fitting for this card.The lace is a SU lace which I dyed with some spray ink. The sentiment was created some leftover musical score practise stamping I did. I had to do a couple of tags before I got to this one, which I was happy with.

The flower meant that I had to make a box, as it is quite raised - oh goody!
 I mean that, as they're easy to make with my Ultimate Pro.

 Decorating the side of the box with the musical score and the lid with more of those swirls was fun too. The sentiment comes from the musical score Indigo blu kit again.

I did the insert the same way. 

I really enjoyed this experience. 

Let's hope my baby likes it too.

Take care out there

Choice of two

Hello there

Two days ago on Facebook, I put this as my status:
'A commission. Make a card for a 50 year old man, whom you've never met. Cues are model railways/trains and or physics. Wow! Why isn't my mojo kicking in I wonder?!!'

Well thankfully I did get some inspiration and have ended up making two cards, so 'him indoors' i.e commissioner Chris, can decide which card he wants to give to his friend.

I've gone for steampunk, as I tend to do when faced with such male recipients. I've done two 'different to usual' cards, as I figure men like to quickly work out how a card works.

The first one is a stepper card. 

I used the MyCraftStudio Tinkering with Steampunk cdrom again. I'm really quite happy with the result, other than the 'not particularly clear' Happy Birthday tag. 

This is a fancy fold card which I quite like. I do love doing the matching envelopes, although they are a bit of a faff to make with the cdrom if you need to adjust sizes.

I've still got some leftover bits on my desk but I'm not sure if they're enough to make another card out of and besides, I think I've done enough with this for now.

Take care out there

Superbamondo!

Hello there

I had yet another busy day the other day, trying hard to fit everything in from three dog walks, to taking dogs to groomers to doing household stuff and taking birthday presents to friend's house and very importantly, have tea outside as it was SUNNY! Yes, you read correctly, it was actually sunny and warm from about 8a.m onward. 

All day!

In between all that, I actually managed to complete the patchwork block below. I had cut the pieces for it the day prior but all the sewing was done fairly quickly on the one day.

I could definitely feel my learning curve slope upwards with
 the sewing of the half square triangles in this way. 

The video for this block; 'Birds in the air' was better than the Sherman's block video, as this one actually explained a little better how to sew the half square triangles together. You place the flat end of the cut triangles on top of each other, as shown below and then flip over to sew along the diagonal edge and put the pointed end towards the needle, as that flat end is the 1/4inch seam allowance. It sounds complicated just with words but in the video, it could've been done better in my opinion.

I'm really chuffed with how quickly I did this and the final block isn't too bad; it certainly doesn't stand up to close scrutiny but there's quite a few good seams in there.
I intend on using this block, along with the next three blocks I learn, all in one large cushion cover and it'll go in my spare room/craft room.

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One project which was definitely not done quickly was Chris's birthday card. It seemed to take ages, as it used paper I printed from a cd. When I'd created the K-card base, I then chose the papers and images I wanted to use and printed them off separately and then set to the tonnes of fussy cutting necessary - that might seem like an exaggeration when you look at the card but just take my word for it. 

What I should have done was print the design onto the card base first thing before creating it. 







Then when I went to make the envelope the stupid 'Spray and Slide' made a right royal mess over the front of it. So what does every good crafter do when a mistake or mess happens? We cover it over; hence the embossed and cut out shape on the front with his name on it and the feathers glued all over. I had wanted to use those spare feathers anyway (yet another printing error), so that wasn't the end of the world for me but I just had to be quite careful where I put them.

My rather old Spray and Slide can is now in the bin

He seemed to like it, so "job's a good 'un" I suppose but I'm not happy with it due to the final product and the time and faff, it took me to make it.

You can't win them all.

Take care out there

Being cheeky, works

Hello there

I am rather pleased with this card.

I've been cheeky, as I used a stamped image I got when I was on the Indigo Blu retreat in March. I did use some green on the leaves too but it's not that visible in this photo. I just wanted to add the slightest bit of colour to the image, to help maintain it's elegant pose. We were also given the pages from a copy of the Pride and Prejudice book at the retreat, as the image is of Elizabeth Bennett. I've yet to show you one of the projects we did with this book paper at the retreat, as I'm not happy with it yet; I still need to work on it to get it how I want it.

I cut the flower out of vellum using the Flower Shoppe cartridge- it's the scallop flower on page 13 of the booklet. The swirls in the background were created with a stamp I made from the lace 2 element on page 42 of the Ornamental Iron 2 cartridge. I used some leftover cuts I had of that element from a post I did last month - I put them behind the flower, as I've seen Sue Wilson do so many times and finally I get round to trying it out myself. 


Inside the card, I had a bit of a play and used vellum as the insert and stamped the swirl on it and the sentiment. What I quickly learnt is that vellum absorbs the ink and makes it swell out. I've got away with it on the swirls but the sentiment became illegible, so I had to stamp it again on the card and stick it over the old imprint. I'm not sure it's completely worked and be warned if you try it - be patient! Give it time to dry.

The box envelope was easy to create with my Ultimate Pro but the fun bit was stamping with white Stazon on acetate. I hadn't done this before. Ranger's Archival ink didn't seem to work i.e it didn't dry; which is odd as it did when I made the box for my Mother's Day present box  this year. I made the mistake though of asking Chris, who has a chemistry background, about what to use to clean my stamp with afterwards - therein followed a long speel about the various types of solvent inks and how they react and blah blah blah but he did help me realise that IPA was worth a shot and it worked!! I used the swirl stamp (which was created with Cricut cuttables) on an acrylic block and it cleaned them brilliantly without disintegrating them. One happy dance later and the box was complete.

Take care out there

Wouldn't it be cool if I really could have a swirl pattern
painted into the lawn with that stuff they use on
footall pitches :-)

Dogs

Hello there

Here's a little card I made for a dog loving friend of mine. It was made with the help of several things including the dog (terrier) from the Create a Critter Cricut cartridge and some paper from Pebbles. I did my usual little look around the internet for ideas/inspiration and found a couple of cards which got me thinking, including this one and another from the Cricut community site who used the same paper.

I couldn't believe my luck when I realised that I actually have some of the tiny little bells in my stash, as it really helps the card 'pop'.

The little bell is so cute

I put this on the inside for extra smiles from the recipient  :-)

Fun and games

Take care out there