Pink for a special lady

I learned at my sewing group on Wednesday, that an elderly lady who sits with us, is celebrating  her birthday next week. She is very sweet and I wanted to make a special card for her. She wears a lot of pink which really suits her, so that is what I chose for her card. A blog friend Darnell has been running another NEBUS challenge. (For the uninitiated NEBUS = Never Before Used Schtuff!). I have several unused items, bought over the passed months, that I am just waiting for the right opportunity to use, so I found a set of Sue Wilson dies, from the Gemini range. They come in three pieces, an upper and a lower smooth, shaped edge, and a fancy bit in the middle, and the set I have used here is called Pavo. They are wider than I expected, but they were easy to work with, and I think they look really pretty.

This card is a rather last minute entry for Darnell's challenge which ends tomorrow, so I had to photograph it by artificial light which has made it more of a peachy-pink than it actually is, and the backing card is bright white!

I used the upper and lower edge dies to trim away parts from a 17cm square, pre-cut card from my stash, and I also cut the back of the card to match. Then I found a panel of pink from my snippets box. It is actually a page from a wallpaper sample book I think. Some-one gave me loads of them ages ago. But it has a nice texture to it, and I was surprised at how well it cut with the dies. I again cut the upper and lower edges with the smooth dies, and this time I added the fancy part at the top.

The flowers were made with Heartfelt Creations Delightful Daisies stamps, and cut with the matching die. I have used the leaves before with my poppy set, but the flowers are another NEBUS item. I used Memento rhubarb stalk ink on white paper snippets, and copic pens to add some extra colour to the petals. Then I double layered each flower and found some pretty jewel flowers for the centres. The leaves are painted with H2Os which gives them a nice sheen, and they are left over from the poppy card I made a while ago, when I got a bit carried away and made loads too many.

The sentiment isn´t one I would put on many cards but it is very suitable for the recipient of this one. I have two stamps of this verse in different fonts, but neither would fit into my oval die, so I printed it out on the computer and then cut it with what I think is a D'sire die. The butterfly came to me a few years ago on a card or gift, so I thought it was time she flew on to a new home.

So I will be linking this up with Darnell's NEBUS Challenge.

I will also pop over and link it in Pixie's Snippets Playground.

Butterfly Challenge #38; Y is for Yarn

With the very hot summer we have had, time away visiting family, and visitors here, I have not managed to enter this challenge as often as I would like, so I was determined to have a go this time. When I saw the challenge was Y is for yarn, I was a bit dubious. Yarn to me means wool, but I read the post and it said, 'Wool or embroidery thread', and I have lots of embroidery thread so I went for that. (I actually have even more wool, but I do not usually use it on my cards). 

Anyway, I remembered a card I made years ago, according to the information on the photo I took, it was back in 2009!, and I thought I´d give it another try. I hunted around for the necessary stencil which I found, but there was no sign of the instructions, so I had to figure it out again. It also took me quite a time to find the decoupage sheet I bought to go with it. Then I needed to sort out card, threads and beads and I was all set to go. Here is the card I made.

I know, the green layer is not straight, but I used very strong glue, so it is staying that way. It is a good thing I only make my cards for family and good friends, and they are used to my idiosyncrasies. A new pair of eyes and steadier hands would come in useful!

This is the stencil for making the card. I think it is an old Marianne one, but I am not sure. The idea is to cut around the inside of it, leaving the 'bridges' between the circle and triangle, and also around the outside of the square. Then you use a pricking tool to mark the holes along the edges. I sketched a second template and marked where I wanted to sew, and having chosen a copper thread and a bright green one, to go with the centre image, and a few green beads, I did all the sewing trying to keep the template as flat and evenly tensioned as possible. 

When this is done, you cut away the 'bridges' so that the triangle is suspended in the centre. You have to be careful not to cut any of the threads. You really don´t want to do that! Do you hear the voice of experience speaking?.

Next you need to cut matching circles in the base card and a top layer, big enough to cover the actually stitching and template, but not so big that it hides the thread work, and fortunately the largest of my set of circle dies was just right. I was using a large pre-cut base card, so I decided it needed a second mat, and I cut a larger circle in this as it would be sandwiched between the other two. (If I´d stuck to one layer it wouldn´t look so crooked!) Before joining them, I used an X-cut corner punch to cut a small butterfly in each corner. Using a punch again made me realise why dies are so popular. It was hard work!

I used plenty of strong, quick-drying glue to attach the stitched template to the base card, and then glued the green layer to go on top. That's when I remember there was a tan layer to go between them so I had to glue that fast, and by the time I had added the green one it was dry and wouldn´t move at all.

I cut the triangular butterfly out, and the decoupage layers, and  assembled them on the centre, and added a matching plain triangle to the back to hide the stitching.

Finally I found a copper happy Birthday peel-off to go in the bottom corner, added some yellow stickles to the centre of the flower, and at the top I added two shiny butterfly stickers. I bought a set of these from Lakeland before they stopped selling craft items - ten years ago maybe? There were hundreds of them, and they are still so pretty. I have used them regularly, but there are still lots left.

Now I will link this up to Mrs A´s Butterfly Challenge, and as the green card was from my snippets box, I will also pop over to the Snippets Playground to link it there.

Rudolph Day

Well Rudolph Day has rather taken me by surprise this month, but fortunately I have a couple of simple Christmas cards I made to try out a new Stampin´up stamp. Rudolph day occurs on the twenty-fifth of each month, when we are encouraged to make a card related to Christmas, and share it on Scrappy Mo´s blog. So why not join in. Here are my contributions this month.

I like cards that depict the Nativity story, but the Kings get most of the attention, so when I saw this image of the shepherds, I just had to buy it. It is a clear stamp, and I haven´t managed to get a very good impression from it yet. Perhaps I need a new black ink pad. However, after a couple of practice prints, I stamped it onto some off cuts of lightly patterned cream paper. This one was using a versafine ink pad. While searching for some dark card to go behind it, I found a piece of navy card that was just big enough to fold into this little base card. It is 9 x 12cms, so I cut my image with a stitched square Crealies die, and it just fitted the card. The sentiment is from a very old SeeDs stamp set, embossed with Stamp-n-stuff Winter Wonderland powder. This is white with silver glitter in it and it is very pretty in real life. Then I just added some sparkle to the star with stickles.

For my second image I used a Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad, but it was no better or worse than the first one. I again cut it with a Crealies square die, and this time I double mounted it with skewed squares of navy card and blue Christmas paper from my snippets boxes. I then found a piece of white paper with navy stars, that was big enough to cover a pre-cut 15cm white square card, and placed the mounted image centrally. The sentiment is from a set of Nativity stamps by Our Daily Bread.

So I´m off to link this up at Scraps of Life by Scrappy Mo, and see what ideas other folk have come up with this month.

I´m also linking up with Pixie´s Snippets Playground.

With Sympathy.

We had some sad news this week, when my husbands best friend in UK, lost his battle against cancer. I wanted to make a card for his wife, but knew it had to be a quick one so I could post it that day (Friday). We have no postal collections or deliveries at the weekend, so if I didn´t post it on Friday, it would have been at least Monday before it started on its journey.

You will know from my previous posts that I have recently placed a big order with Stampin´up, and another set of stamps I bought was a skeleton tree, this pretty blossom bough, and some appropriate sayings for Sympathy and Get Well cards. I believe the set was called Hopeful Thoughts. So I used them to make this card.

Sorry it is such a poor photo. The card has been sent so I couldn´t try again! The ribbon is actually a pretty olive green that exactly matched the distress ink, and the paper was not shiny!

I tried a few arrangements on scrap paper, and eventually chose this arch made by stamping the bough three times. I coloured the stamp with broken china and milled lavender distress pens, ´huffing´ on it before I stamped in case it was drying out. The sentiment came from the same set of stamps. I embossed a small strip of white paper with a Crafts-Too embossing folder and attached it below the image, cutting the complete piece to fit on a 7" square card. I distressed the edges and raised parts of the embossed strip with Memento bamboo shoots ink, and covered the join across it with a strip of green ribbon and added a bow.

Well I´m back today. Last night I had the same problem as our friend Veerle had last week, and was unable to add a photo, but I followed the advice kind friends gave to her, and cleared my cookies and browsing history, and today everything is fine. There is always something new to learn with the computer.

A Wreath is not just for Christmas, +Butterfly Challenge #36 - W is for Washi tape..

In my previous post I showed two Christmas cards I made with a new set of wreath stamps and dies from Stampin´up. Well when I ordered them, I ordered a little floral wreath stamp set too, which is also compatible with the dies, so here is what I made with them.

I started with a scrap of white card which I coloured with my palest violet copic marker, and then stamped with the floral wreath stamp. I cut this out with the dies and coloured the flowers and leaves with copic markers. I also stamped, coloured and die-cut the bow.

A couple of years ago I popped into the QVC reject shop while visiting Shrewsbury, and was disappointed to find that it no longer had the rows of craft items that I used to love browsing through. However they had a few bits and pieces and I picked up a bundle of washi-tape, in ten different colours, and for each colour there was a narrow tape with a geometric design, and a wider tape with a floral design. And, you´ve guessed it, they have never been used! So this month´s butterfly challenge was the perfect excuse for me to dig them out. I chose the green and lilac tapes, and used them to make a wide diagonal corner on another of those pre-cut square cards from my hoard! A lilac one this time. I added my wreath, and some little pink, blue and green shiny bird stickers that I picked up for pennies in a bin at The Range last month. Then I added a green and a purple 3D butterfly sticker to each corner, and stamped a simple sentiment that came with the wreath stamp set.

This is a useful card to have ready when I need one in a hurry so I thought I might as well make a second one. 

This time I chose a pale peach base card and found some yellow and orange washi-tapes to go with it. Using just the floral tapes this time, I made a band at the top and bottom of my card. I then stamped the wreath on white paper and used copic markers to match my colour scheme. I stamped and die-cut the bow, and the flowers from snippets of printed paper - the flowers were also included in the stamp and die sets, and this time I stamped the sentiment inside the wreath. The yellow and orange butterfly was from the same set of 3D stickers as the ones on my first card.

These cards can both be linked to Pixie´s Snippets Playground, and also to Mrs A´s Butterfly Challenge #36, +W is for Washi tape.

Wondrous Wreath.

I have managed a few hours in my craft room this week, so it was time to make a couple more Christmas cards to add to my stash.

I´ve mentioned before that Stampin´up don´t supply to Spain, but I have found that one of my blog-land friends has an online shop and by ordering through her, and having my order sent to my courier friend´s lock-up, he will then bring it over for me on his next UK/Spain trip. So when they brought out their new Winter catalogue, I decided to treat myself. One of the things I ordered was a set of stamps called Wondrous Wreath, and a matching set of dies, so I wanted to try them out. 

There were three layers of stamps so first I stamped the wreath in green onto a scrap of white paper. Then I added the darker green leaves. These could be made to match exactly the layer below, but I chose to off-set them a little for one of my trials. Lastly I stamped the red berries. I then cut this out with the inner and outer wreath dies. I used some more scraps of paper to stamp the red bow, and hanger and also die cut these.

I am still trying to use up some of my huge stash of pre-cut cards with envelopes, that are positively ancient now, so I chose a pearlised green 12 cm card and made a backing paper by shrinking down a 12" x 12" scrapbook paper that was in my digikit file. I added a border cut with a Fiskars punch, and some red stickles for a bit of sparkle. Red perfect pearls added dimension to the berries and that was my first card finished.

For my second attempt I chose a pale green base card and cut a backing paper from a red scrapbook paper that I printed out for an earlier project. Because I thought it looked too dark, I cut a mat for the wreath on my Silhouette Cameo, using a scrap of paper from my Christmas snippets box. A starry gold peel-off border and more perfect pearls on the berries completed this one.

The greetings on both cards are peel-offs as they were small enough to fit inside the wreaths.

I shall link these up in Pixie´s Snippets Playground.

Enchanted Sparrow Paperscape

My sister Jean, known to many of you through her own blog, had her birthday while I was away on holiday, so I wanted to make her card and have it packaged up, so I could post it to her from UK before I moved on to Denmark. Because of that, it was rather a rushed job, which I know I could add some refinements to if I did it again, but I also knew she would not be too critical so I sent it anyway!

I had been browsing through a site that sells svg cutting files, mainly for 3D projects, and my eye was caught by a very realistic little sparrow sitting on a blossom branch. It turned out to be intended as a paper wall hanging, so I bought the file called Enchanted Sparrow Paperscape, from a site called simply svg cuts, and I decided to make it up and just use cut corners to slot it into a plain white card to send to Jean.

Because it was all done in a bit of a rush, I packed it up and forgot to take any photos, but this weekend Jean sent me some, so here it is.

The background was a piece of plain white card, dusted with a range of distress inks, and then sprayed with perfect pearls sour apples mica spray.

There were then two layers of frame to cut, lots of little flowers and their centres, and the little bird which has nineteen individual pieces, thirteen of them being just for the wing! I was going to show you a map of the pieces but I have just realised it is probably copyrighted, so I had best leave it. But this close up shows the layers on the bird, and you can see that some of them are very tiny indeed. They are also very odd shapes, but I was pleased to find that it soon became fairly obvious which way they should go. Because I use the Designer Edition of the studio software with my silhouette cameo, I can import svg files and cut them straight away, so it was just a case of resizing everything together, so my hanging would fit on a reasonable size card, and sorting out which piece should be cut from which colour. It was a good opportunity to use up some very tiny snippets which I always have plenty of lurking in my boxes.

If I made it again, and had more time, I think I might double layer some of the flowers, and add more shading to their petals, and maybe a little sparkle to their stamens too.

Because I wanted Jean to be able to use this as a wall hanging if she wanted too, I did not add a sentiment to the front, but wrote inside the card instead.

This one can definitely be linked up to Pixie´s Crafty Workshop.

Noel, Noel for Rudolph Day.

Having been on holiday for the past two weeks, the 25th of the month seems to have come round a bit fast, but I have managed to get one card made ready for the Rudolph Day challenge. 

I used a new Sheena Douglass stamp that arrived in the post while I was away. The word as far the camels was one stamp. I stamped it onto an off-cut of plain white card, and added some extra palm trees for balance at the end. Then I made a mask and covered the letters and ground while I dusted on some distress ink. Next I removed the masks and used copic markers to colour the letters and the ground. I used a gold gel pen on the star.

I have a lot of pre-cut cards and envelopes from years ago and the DL ones are all a bit colourful for me, but I am determined to use them up, so I chose a yellow one for the base card. Then I covered most of it up with some blue background paper that I found in my Christmas scrap box.

I trimmed the coloured image panel and added it to the BP, and highlighted the edge of the panel and the BP with very thin gold peel-offs.

Finally I stamped a greeting from a new Stampin´up set.

Considering this was rather a rush job, I was quite pleased with how it turned out, and I hope to get a few more of these made soon.

I am entering this in Scrappy Mo´s Rudolph Day Challenge.

If you are trying to make a start on your Christmas cards too, why not visit her blog and find out all about it.