Our Grandbaby, Millie

Our very first grandchild was born on Saturday, June 19th. Millie arrived 5 weeks early and is very tiny and, currently, full of tubes and monitors and is living in the special baby care unit. Because it was a surprise, I was not ready with a card so had to make one in a hurry.

I had recently bought this cute embossed paper, pink and blue in a package, with lots of little feet all over it. This was going to be the base of the card. Inside I used another piece of pink card – this spiral pop-up technique really needs the extra support of the inner card. I have this lovely baby border stamp which I decided to use around all the edges of the inner card so, to help with placement, I got out my stamp positioner. The acrylic piece which comes with this wasn’t big enough for this border stamp so I used a bit of a plastic lid which I’d saved from the recycling bin.

Pretty feet card

Border stamp

Stamp positioner

Inside

I kept with the same ink colour throughout, an Adirondack pad in a colour which I thought toned nicely with all the pinkness. The stamp-positioner did help to space the border equally around the card and I considered colouring it in but decided it would be far too busy if I did (plus, I’m no good at colouring!).

I have been buying the odd ‘baby’ stamp for the past few months so had plenty to choose from. The letters which spell out BABY are from Elusive Images and the clothes and accessories I used are Non Sequitur stamps which I have actually had for several years but rarely get a chance to use.

Inside stamped

Choosing stamps

Stamped in Wild Plum

B*A*B*Y

I stamped all of these onto yet more pink card and then cut them out and embossed them using the Wizard and Scalloped Circle Nestabilities. I used that same Wild Plum ink to edge the circles using an ink applicator tool and then stuck them back-to-back.

Cut out images

Coloured with Wild Plum

This card was featured at Splitcoast Stampers but, if you Google the term ‘Spiral Pop-up’ you will find many other tutorials. I used a large plain Nestie to cut a circle of card and then made that into a spiral. 3M’s quick dry adhesive did a lovely job of sticking the ends of the spiral to the card though glue dots work very well too. I used the same glue to stick the double-sided letters to the spiral and then added a few random embellishments. I had already stuck the inner card to the outer but, on reflection, it might have been a good idea to attach the spiral with glue and a brad – the legs of which could then be hidden between these two layers.

Inside

Inside again

...and again

Front

For the front I used this pretty stamp which is actually a Christmas image but just epitomises a mother and child so nicely I couldn’t resist it. I stamped it a couple of times on watercolour paper, coloured it lightly and then masked the image whilst I air-brushed with two different colours and sprayed with gold glimmer mist to add a lovely shine. I cut it with a labels Nestie, layered on some burgundy foiled card which I also embossed with a floral pattern and then the last layer was self-adhesive glitter card. I glued the layers together and then added the brads to help reinforce this. There is a decoupaged layer on top of just the mum and baby and then I found this cute pram topper in my stash. I also added some beads on wire with Millie’s name spelled out.

Front image

Front

'Millie' beads

Our baby

Dad's first hold of his baby

Sooooo tiny

and so pretty!

She does have hair!

Star Book

My lovely next-door neighbour, Harry, recently celebrated his 80th birthday so I made him a special card.  He really does deserve something a bit special – he is the oldest paper-boy in the district . He always gets our weekend papers for us and we do appreciate that.

I’ve made several variations of star cards/books but this was quite the easiest so far. I am very happy with the end result but I think, if I do another, I’ll make the pieces a little smaller – the images seen through the openings are a bit too far away to be viewed easily.

I have a lot of trouble with ‘manly’ cards but enjoyed the challenge of making 8 different ones here!

I chose a lovely deep burgundy red for the inner part, soft grey for the middle and white for the 3rd layer and made openings in three of the white & grey units to peer through to the middle. I used my Spellbinder Nestabilities in the Wizard to make the decorative openings in the white card and just cut a rectangle in the grey ones with a craft knife.

Colour choices

Openings

First Page

You can see here the large scalloped oval I cut out of the white card and the rectangle cut from the grey. I used a ‘wordy’ stamp on a panel I’d cut out for one of the other pages and smudged some purple ink around it for interest (I used the same ink throughout to continue the look). The grey panel had a large music border stamped on it – a nod to Harry’s charming wife, Joan, who is very musical – and some more nautical-looking images on the white piece. I edged the white and grey card with the purple ink and the burgundy card with silver, all through the whole book.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

First Page

Second Page

I kept this really quite simple, the poppy stamp is one large square stamped image which I cut into the two panels. I coloured them with pens and a water brush and then mounted them on a layer of mulberry paper.

Poppies

Page 2 finished

Third Page

Dragonflies! What a lovely insect they are to stamp . To make sure that the inner image would be in the right place, I layered the grey on top of the burgundy and paper-clipped a scrap length of card to show where the top of the rectangular opening was. I then moved the grey out of the way, inked-up the large stamp and lined it up with the top of that piece of scrap. Hindsight – next time, I’ll stamp before folding!

Lining-up

Stamping

Silver embossing

Can it be seen?

Stamped layers

Ready to stick

Third Page

Fourth Page

This one wasn’t supposed to have a cut-out but I thought I’d try something. I used one of the Spellbinders pendants to cut an opening in the white panel and then just embossed the same design on the grey. Whilst it was still in the die, I coloured it with the purple ink and then covered it with the piece I’d cut out and air-brushed some colour round it with my Promarker Letrajet. I used a lovely decorative stamp from Joanna Sheen for the white page – trying to remember it was for a man!

Embossed pendant

Cut-out

Ready to stick

Fourth Page

Fifth Page

Pretty self-explanatory, I think . The main image was stamped and then dusted with mica powders – it’ll get no handling in the centre where it is so there was no need to seal it.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Fifth Page

Sixth Page

I added a different colour to this page for a change. Didn’t really like it whilst in progress but, after I added the ribbon to the left side (it’s a lovely blue/purple iridescent) and the starfish bubbles, I liked it better. The ship is cut out and raised on 3D foam pads. My neighbours love to go abroad so this is the travel page.

In progress

Sixth Page

Seventh Page

Whew! Nearly finished. Just in case Harry forgot how old he was I made sure to remind him . What a pity my handwriting is so scruffy – hard to believe I won calligraphy competitions. I think that the advent of computers has just made me lazy – I almost never hand-write letters now and it shows that I’m getting out of practise.

Nearly there

Seventh Page

Cover

I covered two pieces of heavy card, a little larger than the inside pages, with a dull gold paper and adhered some ribbon between to tie it closed (and open). The image was stamped onto glossy card which I coloured using alcohol inks and I layered that, and the sentiment, onto some of the same burgundy card I used inside. If you look closely you may spot a little paper piercing. The three square brads were added …….just because I’ve got stuff and I really should use it .

Front cover

Closer view

Kings & Queens

Further to the “Book Exchange 2008“, we did another Round-Robin at stamp club but this time we didn’t get to chose our own themes. The titles were drawn out of a ‘hat’ and allocated to the name which had just been drawn as well. My theme was Kings and Queens and I had four other stamp club members in my ‘group’ who got to work on the book.

We could purchase a ready-made book or make one – I used my Bind-it-All to make a book with heavy watercolour paper, each page slightly larger than the previous one with punched and coloured edges peeping out.

I made the cover from heavy card with stamped images decoupaged on with dilute PVA – these were a set of images from Lost Coast designs – and then coloured with alcohol inks. The large glittery letters were stuck on in front of the smaller gold letters cut out with some Sizzlet dies and spelling-out the title of the book.

Inside the front cover I stamped some crowns from Graphicus and decoupaged some further ‘regal’ images. The listing of participants made me get out my calligraphy pen and gold ink to try and stay in keeping with the theme……hmm, thinking about it now…….. maybe I should have used an old-English font!

The first page is always done by the owner of the book so I used those same crowns as before for a centre image for the grid technique surrounded by all sorts of other relevant images. The facing page mainly used a stamp set from Rubbadubadoo which includes the Snow Queen and the Ice Palace.

Rhiannon was very inventive with her ‘Pearly King and Queen’ and the chess pieces while Janet went with the theme of the Lion King and Pharaohs. Joan chose to be ‘King for a Day’ and Gloria showed why she is the ‘Queen of Clubs’ with her playing card theme (you probably know that Gloria is the founder of our stamp club and lots and lots of others!).

The book currently has pride-of-place in the library, on view to everyone who comes to the house as they have to pass through there to get to the kitchen (which is where everyone always ends up!).

Inside cover

Participants

My page

Rhiannon

Janet

Joan

Gloria

Back cover

Spot the Mackintosh Crest

For a special friend

I’m awaiting a hospital appointment to have some hand surgery so I decided I’d better get my birthday cards done ready for the next few months. I hope to keep posting here every-time I complete a new one. I’d better not label them just in case the recipient sees it on here before receiving it .

For this I used some Tapestry Stamps to make the floral base which is high-lighted here and there with some glitter glue. The frame is a Joanna Sheen stamp which I embossed before cutting it out and again high-lighting a little with the glitter and using 3D foam pads to raise it above the stamped focal image. I used my Wizard to make the Spellbinders flowers, layered the whole thing onto a couple of different coloured pieces of card and then pierced around the edge using my Tim Holtz ruler (got to use all these tools ).

Closer view

The Dragonfly card is layered Nestabilities, dragonfly brads and Beadazzles around the main image.

Dragonfly Card

Alternate view

LaPashe

These decoupage sheets are cute and I used this one for a sister who owns her own horse – she isn’t anything like this shape though . I don’t like to use those huge cards which the manufacturer recommends so I took a 3-panel card which had an oval aperture and cut-out a matching oval in the second flap. A piece of acetate sandwiched between these and glued down gave me the base before I stamped around the oval with various Tapestry Stamps. As you can see through from the front to the inside I decorated in there and put the sentiment on the back instead. The fence is made with cream card and a Sizzix die, I then ran the pieces through the Wizard in a Cuttlebug folder which looks like wood. Lightly sponged with Distress Ink and they make a pretty good fence. I sponged the sun through a punched circle and then covered it again with the card circle before sponging the clouds around a card shape cut with a Spellbinder Nestability.

Front

Close up

Sunny skies

Inside

Mother's Day

We learned this card making technique at an all-day class (well, in one half of the day!) and I decided it was time to put the ideas into practice. My Mother-in-Law has a very green lounge so I decided to use green papers for this card. You can see in the photos below the 12×12 scrapbook papers I chose and also the card I used for the base and the letters cut out ready for drawing round. They are traced on the reverse of the card (mirror image) and then stuck onto the decorative paper before cutting round them. The more observant of you may notice that I actually cut the card before I’d stuck the papers on – a mistake while reading the instructions, just meant extra cutting! Paper was glued and trimmed on the reverse of all pieces too.

12x12 papers

Selected letters

Ready for glueing

Diluted PVA

Glue and trimmed

A bit dull!

Decorating

I’ve had a couple of sets of alphabet punches (upper- and lower-case) for ages – bought them at CostCo a long time ago – so I punched out the relevant letters to start each line of the poem I glued to the back of each page:

M-O-T-H-E-R

“M” is for the million things she gave me,
“O” means only that she’s growing old,
“T” is for the tears she shed to save me,
“H” is for her heart of purest gold,
“E” is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
“R” means right, and right she’ll always be,
Put them all together, they spell “MOTHER” – a word that means the world to me.

I ‘tidied-up’ the edges with a paint dauber but….. it wasn’t neat and looked rather ugly so I had to disguise with some glitter glue. It did brighten-up the pages though so it was a happy accident I guess. I then glued verses to the front of the card pieces and rummaged through my stash of embellishments to decorate the whole thing.

Punches

M-O-T-H-E-R

Brightening up

Other side view

1st page

Duty

2nd page

Eye-to-eye

3rd page

So true!

4th page

Irish proverb

5th page (1)

5th page (2)

Too sickly?!!

Finishing

The crop-o-dile bites through this thick card sooooo easily! I joined the whole card together with a couple of split rings and tied some ribbons and yarns to those. The tag was punched (Sizzix die with my Wizard) from some of the paper-covered card left-over from cutting down the ‘pages’ so that they’re all the same size. We wrote the personal message on the back of this.

Below are a couple of close-ups of the finished article – I do hope she likes it after all this effort!!

Finished

Tag & fibres

No stopping me now!

It is a special birthday for another friend of ours this week (actually the wife of the other 60th birthday card I blogged earlier) and so I made another of these cards. Her name, Barbara, is a bit too long for this technique so I used her nick-name instead. Same process as previously but this time I edged the pieces with peel-offs and, on the front, I made one of those cute little paper flowers that are popular just now.

BABS

Joined with ribbon

Front cover

Paper flower

1st page

2nd page

3rd page

This was for a special occasion so worthy of a bit of effort. It was a ‘milestone’ birthday for Amy’s mum (Amy is my future daughter-in-law and the carver of the pumpkin on a previous post) and we’d been invited out to celebrate with Hazel and a lot of friends and family.

I used a lovely metallic purple cardstock for the card (and for the box) and some ivory pearlescent cardstock for contrast. The stamped design is from Elusive Images and I embossed in silver both the lady’s head and the wording.

I attached a tag on the back with the greeting and a little mauve ribbon finished it nicely. I struggled to keep the corners of the box glued together, it’s a heavy cardstock and kept popping open so I attached square silver snaps from We R Memory Keepers.

Reverse

Main image

Cherish

Boxed

Hazel and I

Everybody should have a brooch!

It really is mandatory to wear a badge announcing your age on such an occasion and so – to make sure she did have at least one – I decided I’d make one for her.

I warmed an old CD and cut a wedge out of it (warming makes the CD soften slightly and is easier to cut just using regular scissors) and then used UTEE in clear at first and then a couple of colours to build up a nice thickness. I then inked-up an illuminated ‘H’ stamp and pressed that into the warm UTEE. I put some purple microbeads around the edges and then wound some wired beads along a couple of the edges. I made the danglies from shrink plastic which I cut out in the Wizard with Nestabilities  and hung them from a couple of holes in the bottom of the ‘wedge’. I made the holes with my trusty Crop-a-dile, easy-peasy with that! The danglies were clear embossed as well to add some nice shine.

I made the octagonal box in the same cardstock I’d used for the Bookatrix and then pinned it to Hazels top so she had no choice but to humour me!!

H is for Hazel

Boxed Brooch

She *did* wear it

Dangly bits

Main image

A very good friend of ours, one of our GoldWing buddies, was sixty in December so I decided to make him a special card. It took me hours just looking through all our photographs to find suitable ones to use on the Tri-Shutter Card – partly because I get sidetracked very easily and get involved in reminiscing rather than just researching!

So, I did find plenty of photos I could use and noticed a theme or two running through them – he’s either eating or has got his arms round someone.

I won’t go into details of how the card was made, it’s readily available on the net and I’ve posted another version myself once before (see here) with links in that post to where I got the instructions from originally.

They can be made any size really, I usually prefer a shorter card but this time, because I’d got a lot of piccies I couldn’t choose between, I went for almost a full A4 piece of card to begin with.

I matted all the photos onto paper rectangles which I had rounded the corners of using my Corner Chomper, the papers were mainly  from a coordinating paper stack in manly colours with some hand-made paper on the front which I coloured with complementary inks. The ’60′ on the front was cut out with a Nestie circle and then layered up onto a couple of larger ones, this hangs from some tartan ribbon threaded through the paper using my paper tagger. (It is true that she who dies with the most gadgets wins, isn’t it?)

The sentiment was printed onto the photo paper alongside all the pictures, as were the ’60′ digits, and cut out with Nestability scalloped ovals before being stacked-up with 3d foam between for a bit of depth. I used a flourish on the back to wind between some photos, and a few brads and other embellishments here and there.

I’ve mentioned before that these hairy biker types do love to dress up! You can see that in some of these photos – if it’s not fancy dress (e.g. Halloween and Burns Night) then it’s proper fancy dress in the kilt! I’ve added a couple of extra photos showing that they really were in focus! When I crop the pictures and then blow-up the photos again they lose a lot of definition, the actual ones on the card were all sharp and clear, honest!

Front of Card

Back of card

Burns Night

Hair for once!

With his wife

More eating!

Back panel

Nesties for sentiment

With Barbara again

Derek & Barbara

With other Girls

Walker Tartan

Kilted

Dressed to cook?

Holly Wreath

Many years ago a lovely lady called Pauline started to run a Holly Wreath Class in the community hall of Llanasa. She advertised it through the W.I. and it was incredibly popular. Obviously, being near Christmas, the weather was cold, and the hall was equally cold and totally charmless! We huddled near the wall heaters, sat on hard benches etc.. but came home with some beautiful wreaths.

Pauline ran these for many years and then took the odd holiday (from the UK and from the classes!) and so, when she phoned me to say she was doing another one last December I jumped at the chance of going again. Although I know how to do the assembly myself, and certainly could manage without her tuition, the very act of sitting in a nicely decorated and warm room (same hall having had some money spent on it) with a bunch of other ladies making holly wreaths is a great start to the ‘Season’ and sooooooo much fun!

So, on December 18th Jan and I drove along to Llanasa, met up with Denise and Sue and sat in our ‘naughty corner’ ( I don’t know why Polly – she’s changed her name – thinks we deserve to sit at the back of the room on our own, we’re not really disruptive ) and were met with the usual strange collection of items.

Necessary items!

Garbage bag?

Are we all confused?

The base ring

Closer view

The bin-bag

………is used to wrap around the hoop as a base for the greenery. It was cut into strips, tied on at one end, wrapped and then tied off again when completely covered. Once that was done then the fun starts. A huge mound of ‘green’, foliage which smelt wonderful but which I can’t remember the name of!!! was added in smallish bits around the whole of the plastic-wrapped wreath.

I almost forgot! Before we started anything we had to have a cuppa and a warm, handmade mince pie and Mum, sorry – Polly – insisted we drank the bottle of water she’d provided too!

So, after the base layer of green was firmly attached then we got to add some holly. The variegated leaves and the lovely red berries made a super contrast to the plain greens of the base.

Denise and her holly

Always in threes

Holly added

The Holly and the Ivy, now they are……

sorry, must remember that it’s January and I shouldn’t be singing Carols any more Obviously, the next step was adding some ivy, Polly and her family managed to find some lovely pieces with the berries (seeds? not sure what you call them really) and although they didn’t look awfully exciting at first we knew that with a few squirts of paint later on they would really stand out proudly.

Adding Ivy

Sue + holly & ivy

Pretty already

The ladies

………did look very serious but it was purely concentration, there was a lot of laughter and chatter. There were far fewer ‘students’ this year than previously and it was lovely – so much more intimate and it gave Polly time to visit all who needed her.

Lunch Time

The first year or two we took a packed lunch, then Polly started providing soup and rolls for our lunches. We used to have to clear a space in front of us and eat there but now…. how upmarket is Llanasa? A separate room, tablecloths, tureens and posh soup bowls! The soup was every bit as delicious and it looks on the photos and there was masses of it. We had to follow this with a cuppa and mince pies.

Politely waiting

Thick, hot & hearty

Jan playing 'mum'

Back to work

……all refreshed and ready to go. Pine cones, cinnamon sticks, dried orange slices got wired and nestled in amongst the foliage. Again, these looked so very different when sprayed with paint but lovely in their natural state too.

Pine cones

Here? or here?

Closer view

A Bow

….is all that’s needed to finish the wreath. I am notoriously bad at making bows and have always had to have help but this year I arrived with mine all prepared! I have some glorious ribbon from CostCo and a bow-maker so mine came ready tied in my basket.

My Bow

How pleased am I?

Denise is happy

This one's lovely...

...so is this one

Sue's is pretty too

Jan is concentrating

Getting help with a bow?

Chaos versus Calm

…try as she might, Denise cannot be untidy or unruly with hers. I am the opposite – my wreath is always rather wild! It really doesn’t matter, each and every one of the wreaths was different and each beautiful. A quick blitz with some gold or silver spray paint and the cones and berries got a lovely highlight.

Then, we were forced to have another cuppa and eat more mince pies!

That was before making a table centrepiece using a candle which we had been told to bring with us and more foliage etc… unfortunately, I don’t have a single photo of any of them! Must have been too busy trying to get it right that I totally forgot to chronicle it.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Polly/Pauline, the day was fantastic. Also to her family; two daughters who helped us all out with everything and to her husband, Peter, who knows his place is in the kitchen and stays there brewing-up and washing-up with the odd foray out into the cold for more supplies when requested!

Comparing chaos & calm

Chaos!

Calm!

Xmas Card

A few years ago I decided to go green and not send Christmas Cards – instead I donated the money to charity. A couple of years later I decided that I really did enjoy making cards too much to carry on being green so I’ve gone back to old ways. This year, I had all my cards made by early November, only around 75 of them, and I’ve taken some snaps – mainly so that I can remember what I did for next year when I start again. I do keep promising myself that I’ll make a few cards each month rather than all at once – it’ll never happen!

I didn’t do too many of the same ‘cos I find that gets boring, the only ones I made many multiples of are for our GoldWing Club friends and I’ve tried to match the images with the bikes that each of them own. If you notice the one with a penguin riding – that’s for a friend who has just sold his Wing to buy a smaller bike!

The two blue cards labelled ‘Winter Wonderland’ were made for a competition at the Happy Stampers October Festival where the colours were limited to blue, white and silver – the table of entries looked so beautiful being all the same colours. It’s a little hard to see the card on the right but the image is a triple embossed tag stamped with a Tim Holtz stamp. The beads are hand-made using stamped paper and dipped in a melt-pot. The background of both of them uses kitchen foil wrapped around card and run through the Wizard in a Cuttlebug folder.

Inspiration

It was David’s birthday on the 30th and so we took the opportunity for a ‘family meal’ with his brother, Stuart, and his fiancée, Amy. We walked across to a local hotel – Plas Ifan, Northop Hall – and had a fabulous meal and whilst there Amy was compelled to buy one of their home-grown pumpkins and have a go at carving it – they had done some beauties!

On the way home, David managed to catch the moon and hold it for a moment, just the right sort of gift for him! Our food was very good, we all chose something totally different – Steak & Guiness Pie; Pork Steak; Peppered Chicken; Chicken Curry and a Mushroom Nut Roast.

David's lunar moment

Great carving

The meal

Preparation

I went online to find details of how to carve a pumpkin – neither Amy nor I had done one before – and all instructions said to start simply, usually with one of those gap-toothed faces you see everywhere.

I told Amy this and so she chose her extremely complicated company logo – Amy pole dancing – as the simple image! She attached it to the pumpkin with a pin and used another to pierce the skin around the design outline.

The Beginning

Simple!!!!

Outlining

Nearly there

1st stage done

Hollowing

For some reason, Amy thought I’d be a good person to cut the circular lid! As you can see – I can’t actually cut a decent circle. Still, I did manage to angle the knife so that the lid would have some flesh to sit on and not fall back through. We thought about using the flesh for something edible but ended up not actually removing too much of the meat of it, just the seeds and fibres. It was soooooo hard to dig out with a spoon so we just thinned it a little around the area we were working on and left the rest intact. (do you like the way I say ‘we’, as if I actually did anything towards it!?)

Circular!

the Lava Pit

Yuck!

Work in Progress

The following photos show Amy attacking the pumpkin with great gusto – it really doesn’t look much and I’m convinced it’s going to be a failure. At the very least, she’s going to slip with that knife at the last minute and make a mess of it!

See - I was there!

Amy Pumpkin Head

Result!

Well, we all had to take our doubts back! Every one of us is so impressed with the finished product. Can you see all those fine details in the fan and the hair? For a beginner, this is outstanding – well done Amy!