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.

Bright Floral 18th Birthday Easel Card

Hi again, I hope everyone is still enjoying the weather.  It has been a bit mixed here this weekend, baking hot then heavy rain.  My son has gone camping with his girlfriend, so I hope the weather is sunny in Barmouth!

This card was made for my friends daughter who was 18 a little while ago who both me and my son are godparents to (or should that be 'my son and I')?  I liked the dimension of the flowers on this card and the fact that both the flowers and card colour are cheerful and bright.  I thought I would show it as quite a lot of my cards now have die cuts of one kind or another and this is one of the few that doesn't have a die cut in sight!

I started out with 6x6 card and folded the front in half to make the base of the easel.

Then from the Klever Konstruction CD by My Craft Studio I printed off a topper that I had added my own sentiment to in the MCS software, and also a backing paper, an extra strip to use as a stopper and finally a back plate for the message (you can just about see the back plate on the photo above).

Next I cut out some of the Klever Konstruction flowers that matched the colours (if not the shape) of the flowers on the topper and backing paper.  Then you heat them and mould them ... now this did take me a long time to get them how I liked them.  The good news is, if you mess it up you can just reheat them and start again.  The bad news is my fingers were sore from the pointy flowers by the time I had finished.  This might be because I over worked the flowers a bit as I hadn't used them before, but I thought the sore fingers were worth it when I'd finished.  I added some glue and large glitter to the centre of the flowers and then glued some leaves on to give a bit of contrast.

All that was left to do to the card was add the stopper bar (that I had already added some flowers to) and the card was finished.

As the flowers on the card were quite dimensional, I also made a box using my Ultimate Pro from Crafters Companion and printing another topper from the CD, changing the sentiment for the name.

I outlined the flowers in with a Quickie Glue pen and crystal glitter rather than adding more flowers as I thought they might get knocked off the box.  I did a close up picture of the glitter below as you can hardly see it on the photo above that shows the card and the box together.

I enjoyed making this card as it combines playing around on the computer and then getting crafty with what you have printed off.

Hope everyone has a great week and thanks for stopping by.