I don’t quite know why I’ve only photographed two of the four birthday cards I mailed in December but somehow I must have forgotten! Can’t imagine what it is about December which would make me forget stuff……

A GoldWinging friend of ours turned fifty last month so I sent him the ‘birdie’ card and the other with the sunflower was given to a dear friend whose age I’ll not broadcast here. This one was made for a sketch challenge at Stamp Club.

50th Birthday Card

Sunflower

Natural light

Wow, it was April when I last posted! I have been a little busy since then though so please forgive me. Firstly, our eldest son moved from here to California so we had to help him pack his belongings, ready his house for rental and bid him a tearful farewell. Then we had to go visit him for a few weeks . Since then we’ve been away on our GoldWing to Germany, celebrated our Millie’s first birthday and generally been very occupied. I have done some crafting though, just not got around to blogging it until now.

So, like buses, you wait for ages for one to arrive and two come together – here are a whole bunch of cards I’ve been making.

This first one was sent to thank a very dear friend who unfortunately lost her father last year – that’s not what I was thanking her for!!! She gave us a whole bunch of lovely furniture from his house to help finish David’s house and prepare it for his tenants, it saved us a lot of money and a lot of time too.

I used a card with an oval aperture already in place; through the oval is some watercolour paper which I ran through my Grand Calibur (GC) with an embossing folder and then coloured with some red ink; the nested hearts are a favourite of my Spellbinders dies; a couple of sentiments which I had in stock layered with brads on top of the card which I’d stamped around with Tapestry Peg Stamps and finally some yarns because…..well, I’ve got loads and really don’t use them enough!

Close up of the hearts

Random Cards

50th Birthday Card, oriental style

I coloured the white ribbon to match

New stamp with all these lovely cats

My Great-Niece was 18 last month

Cut out and mounted on 3D pads

Coloured with ProMarkers

Stamp Club

Show ‘n Tell was to use newspaper somewhere on a card. I used the technique shown on StampTV to distress newsprint and made the main layer from that.

Using newspaper somewhere

PaperArtsy stamp looked 'aged'

Spellbinder dies, tags and buckles

Project Book

We had been asked if we fancied a year-long project at Stamp Club and after everyone agreed they’d like that we were commissioned to make some sort of record of each technique we learned throughout the 11 months of the club year. We could make or buy the book itself so I used an album I’d picked up somewhere which had plenty of pages in it and which would, hopefully, cope with the thickness needed.

The front cover had a square aperture in it and I filled that with a clear plastic ‘shaker’ which I’d saved from brads or eyelets or something similar. It was a perfect fit for the hole and so I backed it with some die-cuts, added different coloured micro-beads and outlined the whole thing with a die-cut Nestie. I couldn’t resist using my recently acquired Fallen Angel die too and then, because I have trouble with a lot of white space, I stamped some hearts all over the cover itself.

I’ll add descriptions to each photo so click on the first one and then right-arrow through to see what’s what.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

July Inside

August

September

October

November

Miscellaneous

Finished book

StampTV

I think I’ve been bitten by the Challenge Bug! Over at StampTV they had this rather appealing sketch so I decided to give it a go. I swapped the rectangle for a circle and cut out the stamped and embossed image with a nestability – I took the starkness off the white card with a little red ink sponged over it whilst still in the die. I layered this onto some green cardstock (using a scalloped circle nestability) which is a perfect match for the green in the designer paper I used.

A very simple greeting stamped on the same green card and highlighted with a pink pen, added three little pink brads and rounded all corners with my Corner Chomper and that’s it, finished!

I think it looks pretty much like the sketch:

Sketch

A bit closer

Butterfly Birthday Card

Here’s an easel card I’ve made for an upcoming birthday. I used the Tim Holtz Sizzix Die Fanciful Flight and cut the metal layer from an old soda can which I’d carefully cut apart. After die cutting the shapes I laid them into a Cuttlebug folder and embossed the texture onto them (this also helped to flatten them!). The outer orange card is an adhesive backed one especially made for die-cutting – much easier than trying to glue all those narrow bits!

I used the Eyelet Square Nestability for the background and the same paper was used to make the stopper for the easel card using a Tim Holtz Decorative Strip Paper Rosette Die which is soooooo easy and so very effective.

Easel Card

Texture

And yet another Birthday Card

My great-niece is feeling soooo old – she’s counting down the days on FaceBook until she reaches………20! Maybe she’s just reminding me about the date so I don’t forget to send her card   Anyhow, I have posted it today and hope she likes it.

I’ve just received my Spellbinders Fallen Angel dies so had to use them. I cut them out of an old cereal packet and then coloured the raised bit with some red ink whilst all the pieces were still in the dies. I embossed them all with a sparkly green powder and then layered them onto the aperture card. I have a pack of snakeskin papers which I seem to be hoarding (what is it about craft supplies that mean you just have to look at them, stroke them and then put them away again without using any?!!)

Looking at it I decided it was a little lacking in something – plus, sending a sword through a heart to someone who thinks her life is ending ‘cos she’s 20 might not be such a good idea . I seem to be rather taken with this female face stamp at the moment – I chose it as a prize for entering an online contest (see the stamp here) at De-stempelwinkel who have taken over Non Sequitur stamps. I stamped and embossed in a green powder and then cut it out with a flower-shaped nestie adding a little ink to soften the white card.

Fallen Angel

Closer view

Rust, Gold & Ivory

Well, three challenges in one day! I have only ever entered one before, a couple of years ago – don’t know what’s come over me

This one is from StampTV, perhaps it was the colour choice that appealed to me – or perhaps it was the need to make a card for my brother-in-law encouraged a bit of killing two birds with one stone.

I stamped and gold embossed this ducky stamp from Crafty Individuals onto a rust card stock and then die cut it with Nestability Eyelet Squares. Another of the same die cuts was layered behind the first to make the medallion shape. I stamped and embossed just the small square portions of the image onto the same card, layered it onto gold holographic (which looks much more colourful on here due to the flash) and then again onto rust card.

A strip of rust card was covered with gold ribbon and adhered to the ivory base card and gold brads were used to help keep it in place. The small squares were mounted on 3D foam pads for dimension.

Small squares

Ducky stamp

90th Card

In August of this year it was time to celebrate a 90th birthday.  My eldest sister’s mother-in-law reached this milestone and, as I’ve know Wyn for many years, I made her a special card. Stepper Cards are popular at the moment and so that’s what I did (I also showed our stamping club members how to make them that month so it was a good time to practice). The daft thing is that my mother-in-law also turned 90 in September. I made her a lovely card from her son and me, and was commissioned to make something special by both of my sons. The bit that is daft is that I didn’t get a single photo of any of them

I’ll not go into great detail about the card design – there are lots of templates and instructions out on the WWW – so I’ll just show some close-ups of the various sections. Luckily, Wyn is a very short name which fitted onto the front of the card quite nicely. The chipboard letters were coloured with ink pads and the larger ‘W’ triple embossed with clear powder. The dragonfly brads and the jewelled brads on the other two letters were to help anchor them to the body of the card – I felt they might be a little too heavy to stay put with just glue.

The ’90′ numerals were orange striped to begin with so they needed colouring and triple-embossing, likewise the small flowers. I found a topper in my stash with the flower and buttons which looked suitable for an elderly lady and the only bit of stamping was the sentiment about brows wrinkling!

W

Wyn fitted nicely

Belt 'n Braces

Pretty backing paper

Used to be orange!

Triple Embossed

Topper

Finished

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

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?

Challenge Card

I’m trying something different…… throwing out a challenge to the ladies at my local Stamp Club. We meet once a month and I took a whole bunch of items with me last month and shared them out giving everyone two months to see what they can come up with.

The items I took were empty cat food foil trays, fancy plastic cocktail sticks and cleansing wipes. The trays were given to me via an offer on our local FreeCycle, the cocktail sticks I have had in my stash for well over 20 years (bought them when we lived in Southern California and we’ve been back a loooooong time now!) and the cotton wipes are actually just the ‘rough’ side of them – they come apart very easily and, as they were falling off and I was throwing them away, I decided that there really must be something I could do with them.

Here are some close-up photos of the items before I started doing anything to them – well, I did cut open the foil tray and start flattening it.

All had 3 of each

Cleansing pad

Cotton discs

Cocktail sticks

Tray

Altering Bits

I have recently been bought a Wizard and have succumbed to the lure of Nestabilities (not many – yet!) so had a play with the scalloped ovals and then a Sizzix embossing plate. Once I’d got them cut out I coloured them with some alcohol inks, chopped the ‘legs’ off the cocktail sticks and coloured them with the same inks while I was at it. I don’t have a photo of the latter on their own but you can see them when I’ve added them to the card with some fine gold wire curled around them.

Frames

Closer

Large Scallop

Embossed

Coloured

Sticks & Wire

Cotton Discs

As I added colour with the alcohol inks to these they distorted and became ovals instead of circles – not a problem as they echo the ovals I’ve punched out of the tins. They were very ‘floppy’ so I painted them with a few coats of pva and let them dry. I then embossed them with a clear/sparkle powder and stamped into them with a large stamp just to add a bit of texture.

Adding Colour

PVA

Embossed

Closer

The Card Design

A very popular card these days is this Tri-Shutter Card which I found at Crafts By Carolyn (who, in turn, links to Ellen from whom she got the idea) who has kindly posted downloadable files so you can make your own – thanks girls!

I cut the base from some plain card I had in stock and decided to decorate with a double-sided scrapbook paper. I coloured the edges of the card (which will be showing) with some brown inks, very roughly, and after cutting out all the small pieces I attached them patterned-side-up to what will be the front of the card.

Card supplies

Scrapbook paper

Inked edges

Papers glued

Different angle

The Back

As I was doing some ‘stamping’ for the reverse of the card I also used the reverse of the scrapbook paper. It’s a beautiful colour and I thought the black versafine ink was suitable for the sentiments and other stamped images. Also on the back I used some of the side pieces left from punching the ovals from the trays – smoothed them out and then ran them through the Wizard with a Fiskars Texture Plate in the feather design. I just cut small rectangles and rounded the corners before mounting onto some black card for definition. I stuck two of the cotton discs onto the large panel and curled some black wire into loops which I then anchored with tiny black brads.

Reverse

ART

Fiskars plate

Close Up

Faffing About!

Sometimes you can spend so long just faffing with details! I don’t think any card has ever taken so long to assemble but maybe that’s because I was chronicling it along the way? At Port Sunlight Stamp Festival I fell in love with a collage stamp set and so used the main image on the front of this card, again using the reverse of the scrapbook paper and layering on black card and adding some more tiny black brads. Behind it you can see I cut the scalloped shape in half and mounted that on the scrapbook paper and black card as well. I glued one of the embossed ovals to the centre panel and used some flower brads to attach it more firmly – they were gold so I dipped them into embossing ink and then black embossing powder and melted it.

My new stamp

Front

Brads

Finishing Touches

I have some wonderful glass mosaic tiles in lots of different colours so decided to add a few to the front, just glued them in place with some PVA. I then thought it may be nice to have a dangler from one of the creases so threaded a large bead (toned-down with a little alcohol ink) onto black cord and on the end of that used two small scalloped ovals – cut from the trays and slightly coloured – glued back to back. On the reverse of that panel I had to mount the stamped image onto some card as well as its paper and use raised sticky pads to get around the thickness of the cord there. I finished by wrapping some fancy yarn around a couple of the creases just…… well, just because!

Mosaic collection

Chosen colours

Tiles added

Dangler!

Front of card

Flower open

At our Stamp Club last month, we were challenged with making an unusual shaped card for our ‘homework’. So, last week I took along the round card I’d made for the Fresh as a Daisy competition at Happy Stampers Festival plus this flower.

I started with some plain, heavy, white watercolour paper onto which I traced the template (using carbon paper) which I found at Mirkwood Designs – they have some wonderful ideas here! I couldn’t print onto card as my current printer doesn’t like anything thicker than paper! I’m not sure how you would mail this – I guess you’d be better just handing it to the recipient, in a box would be nice. I coloured the traced shapes with various inks and stamped both a faint, all-over design on them plus some contrasting flowers from my collection of  Tapestry Stamps. I decorated both sides, of course, as they will both be on view. Then I cut them out, took quite a while as it’s fiddly but the end result is lovely.

Assembly

Ah, now I didn’t take any photos of the process I’m afraid, as this was a first attempt I assumed it wouldn’t be worth shooting! But, it’s fairly self-explanatory so I shall just show you the photos taken after the fact!

These show how it folds from the inside, it starts – obviously – with those spiky bits being folded over the sentiment (I used a generic ‘Best Wishes‘ as it wasn’t intended for any special occasion) which I’d stamped on some more of the watercolour paper and punched out with my largest circle punch. I edged it with a darker ink to make it stand out, as I did with all the petals too.

Inside

1st Folding

Inside Folded

Second Layer

Pretty apparent what’s going on here – the inner set of petals fold over the spiky bits quite neatly.

Second Layer

2nd Layer done

Outside Layer

I wasn’t able to get a ribbon to stay in place around the completed ‘card’ so I decided to add a decorative brad on one petal and glue the ribbon across the bottom on the outside to hold it in place. I then disguised this with another punched circle.

I don’t think anyone receiving this would guess what it’s going to be when opened.

Outside Folds

Flower Eyelet

All Tied Up

Underneath