Christening Card

I have never made a Christening card before so had to go searching for inspiration on the WWWW (Wonderful World Wide Web!). I don’t think I actually saw a Bookatrix card anywhere but something obviously made me think of this. So, I got out various pieces of pink card (did I mention it was for a little girl?) and made the card with four layers all cut out with fancy edging scissors and peel-offs laid around the edges. The back panel I ran through my Grand Calibur with a Sizzix embossing plate to add hearts and take away the plainness.

The name and verse were printed onto shrink paper and the larger one cut out with a label nestability, the smaller with a craft knife and fancy-corner scissors. When heating these to shrink them I placed them over a large can – not as easy as just shrinking them flat that’s for sure! They wanted to blow all over the place – even when I used my gentler heat-tool – so I had to keep chasing them and placing them back over the can to get that curved shape.

Before I did that, of course, I punched holes for the brads and coloured the edges with a little pink ink. After shrinking I gave them a coat of dilute PVA for protection.

I shaped the card to fit these hard plastic panels and used small brads to hold them in place. A bit of pink gingham ribbon with an overlay of organza ribbon wrapped around the whole book and a large, heart-shaped tag on the back to write the sentiment in and it was finished.

Well, actually it wasn’t! You can’t stick these things in an envelope! I had to make a box for it — you can see it in a photo below.

In its box

The finished card

The tag

Shows the embossing

Card and box

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

Sympathy/Thanks

Joseph’s Coat is an interesting technique involving the laying down of colour onto glossy card in various layers. If you Google it you’ll find all number of examples (try “Joseph’s Coat craft technique” or you’ll get links to the Technicolour Dreamcoat!).

I started with some pale yellows and oranges on the glossy card with bits of sponge and then stamped the 3 cats – it’s only one cat (which I purchased from Stamp Camp who were at the Happy Stampers Festival again this year) –  using Versamark and embossed with clear powder.

Once that cooled I applied more colours with sponge over the top of it all, allowed it to dry a little and then rubbed off the ink from the embossed cats. The embossing resists the ink yet allows the base colours to show through.

I mounted this onto some red holographic card,  punched the swirl using a Sizzix die and punched a couple of hearts from the same red card I’d used earlier. After they were glued on I outlined with white dots just to make them stand out a little.

I named this card sympathy/thanks which may seem a little strange but I was sending a thank you card to a lovely lady I’ve met through FreeCycle who has just given me a second pile of cat-food trays which can be used for all sorts of crafty things (see the earlier post about the stamp club challenge). When we went to collect them she mentioned that one of her 4 cats was very poorly and didn’t look like she would last much longer and indeed she did pass away the next day. So that’s why the card is both a thanks and a sympathy.

Close up of front

Going Dotty