Handicrafts by Kate Perry and other ramblings

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Rudolf a day late

Yesterday was the 25th April, so already another Rudolf day has come and gone. The aim is to make a Christmas card on the 25th of each month. Well this month I did actually get my card made on the right day, but I finished it too late to photograph, so I had to wait until this morning. Then I was out all day at my parchment craft class, so finally I am back at the computer, and this is the card I made. 
I had a new Marianne die in the post this week, and as usual I had to give it a quick try. I always do this with whatever bit of scrap paper is to hand, which is silly really as it is then often wasted. I did the same with this one, but as I had used white paper I tried giving it a spray all over with  perfect pearls, sour apples, and then darkened the embossing and edges a bit with a Memento cottage ivy ink pad. I felt the circle called for a little bird inside it so I found another trial cut, this time of the Marianne small bird on a branch die, and used my copic pens to colour it like a robin. Then I found a nestie circle that was more or less the right size for the ivy circle and used it to cut a hole in piece of thin white paper with white vertical glitter stripes. Behind the hole I used a small snippet of pale blue paper with white spots on it, and mounted it onto a pale green DL card. I glued the robin across the circle and then the ivy circle around the hole. For the lower part of the card I used some sticky ribbon and a cuttlebug slider label stamped with a simple greeting, and hung from it a little wooden charm that I bought at the Ally Pally show last year. It had a patterned fabric surface but I coloured over this so it looks vaguely like another robin. I thought the pearl spray on the ivy had got rather lost, so I added a little stickles to liven it up. It doesn't immediately strike you as a Christmas card, but it makes a change. As usual I am hoping to make a set of six of these, to add my stack, and ease the work when November comes around. So I'll get a production line going now, but first I will pop over to Stamping for Pleasure, to link this one to the Rudolf Day Challenge there. Why not join in and get a few cards made in advance this year.

Apparently the new style blogger does not allow you to upload a tall thin photo. It kept turning it on its side - landscape, so I had to cut and paste it onto a wide white square and put it on it's own instead of beside the writing. I do wish they wouldn't change things that are working perfectly well as they are!!

7 comments:

Di said...

Hi Kate - this is really lovely and you also used snippets so why not link into the snippets playground as well? Love, Di xx

Jean said...

Hi Kate love your card, the robins are sweet and I like the sparkly stripes in the background. Jean x

Sarn said...

Isn't Blogger being a nuisance at the moment?

Great Rudolph Day card hon. Thank you for entering my little challenge. Good luck in the prize draw. xxx

Saskia said...

Great card, really love it! And I'm at war with Blogger too. It doesn't understand timezones anymore!

kiwimeskreations said...

Love this - it is actually quite busy, but looks quite CAS.
Blessings
Maxine

Shoshi said...

Lovely card, Kate - I love the 3-D effect. Very nice design. As for new-style-blogger being such a pain with photos, for ages I've used Windows LiveWriter (part of the whole Windows Live package that you can download free) for composing my blog posts and it gives you an awful lot more control, and you can save drafts/recently published posts to your hard drive too, and it has lots of nifty features.

Thanks so much for your lovely comment on my blog about my latest zentangle! Yes, I love doing them, and it's something I can do when I haven't enough energy to sit at my table (which is pretty often at the moment I'm afraid). With art pieces like this, it's the initial drawing that takes the time - then it's fun all the way with the zentangling!! I drew my own hand first - left hand, as I'm right handed - then reversed the drawing, but really ended up doing it from scratch once I'd had a bit of practice. The more drawing you do, the better you get because your observation and hand-eye co-ordination improves with practice - like anything else really!

Anyway, glad you liked it!

Hugs,
Shoshi

Bernie said...

This is lovely Kate! Love your robins. I'm not thrilled with blogger either. Why do they have to fix things that aren't broken?!
Hugs