Thinking of You card with a fake bow

Good afternoon all, I hope you have had a great week.

This week's card is another one that was inspired by Sue Wilson's blog (link to Particraft).  I made this card for someone who was ill, but a get well card wasn't appropriate and I thought of Sue's card and how I could adapt it.  It is quite different from my usual cards as the card I used is glossy photo card and the colours are bolder than I would usually use.

I started by making a 6x6 card out of some dark pearl card I had in my stash and on top matted a cream piece of card that I had pierced with my Tim Holtz ruler.  Next I printed a glossy piece of card from my Klever Konstruction My Craft Studio CD and then cut the middle edges using the Classic Scallop Edgeabilities.

Next I took two pieces of contrasting ribbon and wove them in and out of the border … it took a while and I didn't get it right first go as I had to keep altering the tension until I was happy with it.  As I have mentioned before bows are a bit of a trial for me, so I actually took a cream piece of ribbon and made a bunny ears shape and then hot glued a single loop of brown ribbon then had a look.  It still looked a bit thin so I did another piece of brown ribbon and made another wider set of bunny ears and  hot glued the cream and brown piece on top of them.  Well it looks like a bow to me!  With all the glue for the woven bits of ribbon and then the glue for the bow, there was a bit of a mess to cover so I got a large button and threaded through another piece of ribbon and tied a small bow and stuck it on top of the big bow.  I finished off with a hat pin, I have had the pins for ages and love the look when they are put on bows, but as I don’t make that many bows I hardly ever use them, so here was my chance.

The sentiment was printed on the PC and then cut out using a punch and matted on one of the Parisian Accents, with a bit of inking round the edge.  All that was left was the inner for the card, so I took the same image from MCS that I used for the card front and faded it down a bit, added a shape with a border and then added my message, and it was done.

Not a real blooper on this one ... more that I never get the corners quite right when I do the piercing round the edge of a card.  I hope the recipient didn't notice it, but it still bugs me when I look at the top photo!

Have a crafty week everyone.

Delicate Asters in Pink

Hello again.  This week I am back to my one of my favourites ... die cut flowers.  What I liked about this one was that it has plenty of dimension but the flowers are not actually very deep so it just went in a normal envelope (although I did put a piece of light card at the front of the envelope). 

Apologies (again!) for the photography, I thought these pictures weren't too bad but when I uploaded them I realised that at least two of them are a bit blurred. 

This was for my aunt in Ireland who was 90 this year and I thought I would try doing it back to front, in other words stamping white onto coloured card ... or not so white as it turned out.

I started by die cutting lots of the Heartfelt Creations Delicate Asters out.  I didn't pre stamp them and then cut them as I thought I would try just popping them on the stamp after I had cut them, it was irritating that no matter which embossing powder I tried, I couldn't get it to look white it always looked cream as you can see from the pics.  For the middle of the flowers I just brushed the ends on to a Perfect Medium pad and then dipped them in embossing powder.  After that I just put a pearl in the middle and I was quite happy with them (apart from the white looking cream!)

Next up was the background, I used the Embossalicious Rose Garden embossing folder and although it looks okay once the card was put together the embossing was definitely lighter in some patches than in others.  On the picture below, looking at the pink card, the top left is quite strongly embossed and the bottom right is a bit fainter - this could be down to my worn plates on my HappyCut but it doesn't happen with any other folders, so I'm not sure. After it was embossed I matted it onto a piece of white that I had pierced with my Tim Holz ruler.

I then cut out two of the Botannical Swirls and Accents corners, I love these, they look so effective and it makes the card as a whole a bit less pink.  As before I taped them together first before sticking them down so I didn't get wet glue everywhere.  My favourite nesties, Labels 1 was next to put the sentiment on, and I cut the larger shape out of Decorative Labels 1.  I was going to ink round the plain smaller label but decided I wanted it to stay white as the pink was getting a bit much.  If I did this card or similar again I would definitely use a paler pink.  All that was left was to cut out the sentiment with my Britannia Word dies and add some pearls and it was done.

No blooper this time either, although there was a lot of swearing under my breath when I was trying to stick the sentiment onto the label - I really must get a fine tip for my wet glue!

That's all for this time, thanks for looking.

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.