New Baby Card and Gift Box

Hi everyone, hope you are having a good week. We haven't been able to get away so far this year so I can't wait for tomorrow as we are having a long weekend away!

This was a card and box that I made for a lady at work who was just about to go on maternity leave.  I decided to buy a teeny t-shirt and make a box that would fit the card and the little gift.  I wanted it to be nice and bright and babyfied but not blue or pink ... 'gender neutral' I think is the PC term!

I started with a 5x5 card and covered it with some yellow star paper that I downloaded some time ago and got out my old favourite, Labels 1 and cut out a background for my topper.  I inked round the edge of the paper with my Ink Dusters which I find that I am much lighter handed with.  I do ink through dies sometimes with cut and dry, but I find on large areas I get lines with cut and dry that I don't when I use the Ink Dusters.

I used paper for the centre and the butterfly as I wanted to shape them which isn't as easy when you use card and it also gave a slightly lighter feel to it.  The bottom layer of the centre is a Fleur de Lis Motif with the centre cut out and on top of that some Anemone Flowers with the centre of the petals cut out.  I made the sentiment myself in Word and then cut it out using a small Classic Scalloped Circle.  I added a butterfly even though I didn't know if the baby was a boy or a girl as I thought it didn't look too girly (just as well as she had a boy!).  I could have sworn that the butterfly was a Marianne die, but it is actually a Memory Box die called Vivienne Butterfly.

All that was left was the box that I made on my trusty Ultimate Pro.  I still use the Ultimate Pro for loads of things including trying to make bows.  I don't put too many bows on my cards as making the bow look right can take as long as the rest of the card.  Why wont somebody make a die that I can make paper bows with?!

I made the holes in the box using the Classic Scalloped Circle dies and notice that I even got the holes in the right place on this one!!

Hope everyone has a great weekend and thanks for taking a look at my blog.

Feminine Sympathy Card

Another absolutely lovely week. I know this probably makes me a big old moaner but it's a bit too hot for me ... I can cope with the heat, but the humidity makes me feel like a limp lettuce leaf!

Anyway this is a card that I made for my aunt who sadly passed away after a short illness last year.  I didn't want to do a very dark or fussy sympathy card as this lady was always so full of the joys, could organise anything at the drop of a hat and was always on the go, so I kept it fairly plain but used pink rather than grey or black ink.

More apologies here for my photography, I made this card round at my mums house rather than in my usual crafting spot so the photos aren't that great and I just propped it up on one of my mums chairs!

I started off with an 8x8 card and did a plain mat of centura pearl white card.  Next up I embossed a plain white piece of super smooth card using my Regal Mbossability embossing folder.  I usually use MCS super smooth when doing matt white or centura pearl when I want a bit of sheen to the card.

I had already printed the sentiment off in Word, which I printed off several time on the sheet in slightly different colours, matching it as closely to the Jenny Bowlin Chewing Gum pink ink pad I used on the die cuts as I could.   The dies I used are Moroccan Accents for the long borders and the piece behind the sentiment and Spellbinders Crosses 2 for the centre.

All that was left to do was to ink the cross and the edges of everything else with my Ink Dusters and I was finished.  I was quite glad that I did this at mums, as I would probably have carried on adding pearls and things if I was in my usual crafty spot - knowing when to stop with cards is definitely one of my failings!

Anyway that's it for this week, let me know what you think and thanks for stopping by.

Botanical Birthday

Hello again.  I am going away this weekend so I am posting a bit early, I'm not quite brave enough to try and schedule a post yet.  So have a good weekend everyone, and I hope this lovely sunshine continues ... fingers crossed!

This card was inspired by a Sue Wilson card from 11 April 2013 called 'For You' (Sue's Blog - Particraft), as you can see I didn't have any of the same dies that Sue did so my version looks like this:

It is for my cousin who isn't a 'pink and fluffy' girl, so I wanted to make a card that suited her rather than glittz and bling it up like I would for my neices!  I'm not much of a 'pink and fluffy' girl either, but I do love letting loose with the glitter for others.

The colour of the card above isn't quite right so I took pictures without flash, but they look a bit too pink as you can see in the photo below, you will just have to imagine a colour somewhere in the middle of the two!

I started by cutting four of the corners from the Botanical Swirls and Accents Spellbinders set.  After putting the corners face down I used a tiny bit of repositionable tape runner to get the corners positioned how I wanted them and then glued them together where they overlap.  This made it easier to stick the corners down all as one unit when I was ready.  Then I cut out the whole set of Splendid Circles and used my Ink Dusters from Inkylicious to ink the second largest circle with Dusty Concord Distress Ink.

I've had some stamps for ages, but have only just really got the bug for stamping.  I find it much easier to stamp with Versamark or Perfect Medium and then use coloured embossing powder.  I am not sure why that works better for me, but I don't seem to get as many smudges.  Anyway the stamp on this card is one I have had in my stash and never used until now, unfortunately they weren't in packaging so I can't let you know what make they are, but it just fitted the second smallest of my Splendid Circle die cuts.

To finish off the card I made a couple of mats, one white which I pierced using a Tim Holtz ruler, and one of the same lavender colour that the Botanical Accent Corners were made from.  After sticking it all together I added a few gems and there it was!

As the card is really quite a simple one there were no bloopers either, although looking at it now I would probably put the white layer that I have pierced through an embossing folder!.

Anyway, I hope everyone a great and crafty week and thanks for stopping by.

Serif Twosome

Hello again, what a lovely sunny day we've had today, makes up for the week of rain!

This time I've got two Serif Cards in one post.  Both made for my nephews, you will see my nieces and nephews names pop up quite a bit in my posts as I mostly make cards just for me or my mum to send.

Both cards in this post are created in Serif Craft Artist 2, and as there isn't much technique actually making the cards after you have designed them on the PC, I have included two!  The thing I like about Craft Artist is that you can get great looking (in my humble opinion!) results fairly easily and can undo and redo until you get it right.  I have to say that I had a copy of Craft Artist for AGES and didn't use it until I saw Michelle Jackson-Mogford (Michelle's Blog) demonstrating on Create and Craft and I just had to have a go!

The first card is so new, I haven't even given it to him yet.  I used the Purple Ronnie digikits that I downloaded recently from Daisytrail, there are some really different sentiments and phrases, as well as lots of funny embellishments.  This was my first go at a double easel and it didn't go quite as smoothly as it could have as I ended up cutting a slice out of the middle of the folding part of the card between the two easels.

I used an A4 sized page and created the two easel parts (with a blooper as usual! ... more of that later) and the two shields.  I used the decoupage tool for the first time on the shields to give a different look.  On the second A4 page I created the base of the card and the Happy Birthday message.

To assemble I folded over the front of the A5 card and scored it down the middle to fold it to make the two easels.  I glued the base of the card down and then stuck the shields on with foam pads to act as stoppers for the easels, I put them at different depths so the easels would stand up at different angles (it was at this stage I realised that my easels wouldn't fit on the card properly so I had to cut the base card down to size.  After cutting out a slice of the base card I added the easels and then made a triangle of card and added the Happy Birthday message.  I bent the triangle of card back slightly so that when the easels are put flat the Happy Birthday would also fold a bit so I can get it in the envelope.  After that I added Card Candi and a bit of gold glitter which doesn't show up very well in the photo and there it was!

The second card, although created in Craft Artist, uses images from the Polkadoodles Pretty Tuff CD.  As Joe likes fishing and football, I went with that theme!

I used three papers for this 6x6 card, first I printed one design directly onto the card and although it doesn't show very well I inked round the edges using Ink Dusters.  Then in Craft Artist I opened an A4 page and brought on the star paper as the background, then in the top half of the page I added the figure and other embellishments adding shadows to them all and then created the text in the bottom section of the A4 page.

I went to my metal dies binder and found my favourite Spellbinders set Labels 1, and cut out the top and the bottom half of the page in different sized labels and then got a matching paper and cut out two more Labels.  I use Labels 1 all the time they are so useful for sentiments, frames, backing for the main element of the card, even as the card itself when I use the large ones. Anyway, back to the card!  I got out one of my fine liner pens and drew some dots and lines round the borders of the Labels as they needed something to make them stand out on the page.  All that was left to do was punch out the sentiment and a larger circle to mat it onto, added the buttons tied with a bit of bakers twine and that was that!

The bloopers for this time, both on the first card.  Firstly I couldn't get the easels to fit correctly so I cut out the middle strip between the two easels.  Secondly when I was in Craft Artist and I was matting and layering my rectangles, I removed the black borders on the right hand easel, but there they still were on the left hand easel.  Now I look at it I think I prefer the side with the black borders after all!!

Before I go I would like some advice ... I want to stick my heat proof craft sheet onto something.  I tried using an old cutting mat and some Collal glue, and you could say it didn't go well!!  First of all it didn't stick very well and second, I had a couple of goes with my Melt Pot (that's a whole other story!) and forgot that the cutting mat wasn't heat resistant.  So now I have a hilly, not stuck down very well craft sheet.  So my questions are 1) what glue do I use to stick it and 2) what do I stick my craft sheet onto?  Any help would be much appreciated.

Have a great and crafty week and thanks for stopping by.